http://www.aina.org/books/eliba/eliba.htm
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http://www.aina.org/books/eliba/eliba.htm#c18
NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S BABYLON
THE time of Babylon's greatest material wealth and splendour, and the period which is reflected in much of the later tradition about Babylon, was the reign of Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 B.C.).
At the time of Nebuchadnezzar the city of Babylon spread out on both sides of the Euphrates. What we may call the 'old city' was the part on the east bank, and this was somewhat larger than the 'new city' opposite. Close by the east bank and in the centre of the city as a whole stood Etemenanki, 'House of the platform of Heaven and Earth', the great seven-storeyed ziggurrat or temple tower (90), already very old but splendidly rebuilt at this time. This was possibly the original behind the 'tower of Babel' story of the Bible (Genesis xi 1-9), though of course the Biblical tradition relates to a period over 2000 years before Nebuchadnezzar. This great tower, with a small temple on its summit, rose to a height of almost 300 feet and dominated the view across the plain for many miles around. The dimensions varied at different rebuildings, but excavations show its base at its maximum extent to have formed a square with sides of about 300 feet. This ziggurrat's main mass was of trodden clay, though there was a casing of burnt brick nearly 50 feet thick. A staircase about 30 feet wide led up to the first and second stages; how the higher stages were reached is not certain, but presumably there were further staircases or ramps
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There were other temples in the city quite distinct from Esagila. Within the temples the usual (though not the invariable) layout was as follows. The god's statue stood in the middle of one long wall of an oblong chapel, and in the wall opposite was a doorway into an ante-chamber. The ante-chamber was very similar in shape to the main chapel and ran parallel to it. In the wall of the antechamber farthest from the chapel was another doorway giving access from the main courtyard, so that when both the antechamber door and the chapel door were open the populace could see through to the statue of the god himself. In the case of Marduk's shrine the doors opened towards a point a little to the north of east, as befitted a sun-god, though some other temples had quite different orientations. At the sides and back of the antechamber and chapel and around the courtyard there was a series of other chambers, used no doubt as store-rooms for the equipment used in the cult.
The temple-complexes themselves did not mark the whole of the piety of the Babylonians, for along many of the streets, particularly at the approaches to the temples, at the city gates and at cross-roads, were to be found small altars. These amounted, according to the cuneiform texts listing such things, to nearly 400, of which some have been found in excavations. In addition to these there were, according to the same series of texts, nearly a thousand roadside shrines scattered about the city.
In the northern part of the old city, just inside the inner walls, stood the principal palace of Nebuchadnezzar. As was usual in the ancient Near East, this was not only a royal residence but also a garrison and an administrative centre. Basically this palace (which went back to a period long before Nebuchadnezzar) was built round a series of five courtyards, used respectively (going from east to west) for the garrison, the secretariat, the State rooms, the King's private quarters, and the women's apartments or harem. In the women's apartments there lived not only Nebuchadnezzar's queen but also concubines sent to the King from all parts of the Empire. This was of course usual with ancient Oriental monarchs. One might imagine that with so many women, shut away with no company but their own, and with most of them sexually frustrated, strife and quarrelling sometimes broke out in the royal harem-and it did. We know this without any doubt as we have a cuneiform text (earlier than the time of Nebuchadnezzar) laying down regulations to deal with such problems in a royal harem.
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Nebuchadnezzar without mentioning the famous Hanging Gardens which he is credited with planting there (92). The difficulty is to disentangle fact from legend. Unfortunately, although there are plenty of references to the Hanging Gardens in classical authors, indicating that there must have been some striking piece of landscape gardening in the city, there is little if any evidence of them from cuneiform texts of the period. However, the classical writers must have had some basis for their reports and the Hanging Gardens cannot be dismissed out of hand as figments of the imagination. According to the classical writers, the gardens were installed by a king to please a Persian concubine who was depressed by the unbroken flatness and longed for her native mountains. It was supposed to have been built near the river on a foundation of arched vaults, and to have risen in a series of terraces to a height of 75 feet. The whole structure was then waterproofed with bitumen, baked brick, and lead, with the object of keeping the vaults underneath it dry. Finally the terraces were covered with earth to a depth sufficient to support even large trees. Trees were then planted and provided with a constant supply of water from the Euphrates by irrigation machines
Like every city, Babylon was recognised by its inhabitants as being made up of a number of distinct districts, the names and characteristics of some of which we know. Roughly speaking, the temples, palaces and other public buildings were in the western half of the old city, with the residential quarters in the eastern half and across the Euphrates in the new city (though the new city also contained several temples)(94). Its main streets were laid out in a direction from north-west to south-east, the object of this being to give the city the full benefit of the prevailing north-west wind to carry away smells and keep the temperature down. The streets of Babylon, of which twenty-four are mentioned in one text, bore names like 'Marduk shepherd of his land', 'He hears from afar, and 'May the enemy not have victory'. The last was the name of a section of a road which entered the city through the Ishtar Gate in the north wall, just east of the palace (1). This road is now usually known as the Processional Way, from the fact of its being the principal street used by Marduk when the priests took him through the city on ceremonial occasions. It was an efficient piece of road engineering; up to 66 feet wide in parts, it consisted of a brick foundation covered with asphalt to form a bed for large paving slabs of limestone. The north approach to the Ishtar Gate took the traveller between high walls decorated with rows of lions, sixty on each side, in red, white and yellow enamelled tiles (89). A similar technique was employed inside the Ishtar Gate itself, where bulls and dragons were depicted(93). From the Ishtar Gate the Processional Way ran parallel to the Euphrates half-way through the old city and then turned west to pass between Etemenanki and Esagila towards the river, where it passed over a bridge into the western half of Babylon. The remains of this bridge have been found, and it proves to have been built on piles made of bricks bonded with bitumen. These piles were 30 feet wide and 30 feet apart, except near the western bank where the gap was 60 feet, to facilitate the passage of ships. The piles were rough boat-shaped, their sides curving inwards to a point at the upstream end to cut down resistance to the current. The classical writers speak of this as a stone bridge, which presumably indicates that the piles were crowned with stone blocks which carried the bridge itself, running from one pile to the next on heavy wooden beams. The course of the Processional Way in the western half of Babylon can only be guessed, since the Euphrates has changed its bed and now flows through the middle of that part.
Winding through the old city, making a wide curve from its inlet from the Euphrates in the north-west corner to the point at which it passed through the inner wall in the south-east, was the ancient canal Libil-hegalla, whose name meant 'May it bring prosperity'. The origin of this canal may well have gone back to Hammurabi 1200 years before, but it was Nebuchadnezzar who restored it, lining its bed with bitumen and burnt brick. Other less venerable canals brought prosperity to the gardens and orchards of the new city on the west bank and to the suburbs on both sides.
The whole city was protected by formidable fortifications. Around the main built-up area on both sides of the Euphrates ran a powerful defensive system consisting of a double wall of unbaked brick with an encircling moat. The inner part of this double wall was 21 feet thick, with towers regularly placed every 59 feet. Separated by a space of 24 feet was the outer part of the wall, 12 feet thick, with towers every 67 feet. Outside the walls came the moat, with its bed lined with burnt brick and bitumen; the source of its water was of course the Euphrates. Entrance to the city was through the Ishtar Gate or one of seven other powerfully fortified great gates, which all had massive doors armoured in bronze. The bridges over the moat which must have existed in normal times would no doubt be dismantled in times of emergency.
As a further protection to the city, Nebuchadnezzar constructed a great outer fortification, consisting of another double wall which, starting from the east bank of the Euphrates a mile-and-a-half north of the Ishtar Gate, ran in a south-easterly direction to a point level with Esagila, and then turned south-westwards to meet the Euphrates again, a quarter of a mile south of the inner defensive system. This outer double wall was limited to the protection of the old city.
The population of Babylon was a very mixed one, both racially and socially. As to race, Nebuchadnezzar impressed labour gangs for his public works in Babylon from the whole of his Empire. Many of these were no doubt only too glad to return to their native lands when their task was over, but others certainly stayed for good in Babylon, either settling down with wives who had followed them from their homeland or marrying local women. Such foreign settlers were no more than the most recent importation of foreign blood. There were many other peoples who during the preceding centuries had been in the city, whether as conquerors, captives or just visitors, long enough to interbreed with Babylonian ladies. Amongst these were Hurrians, Cassites, Hittites, Elamites, an occasional Egyptian, Aramaeans, Assyrians, Chaldaeans, and, in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar himself, Jews. Babylon was a thoroughly mongrel city.
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Socially there were two great divisions in the city, which to some extent cut across each other. One division was between free men and slaves, the other between temple personnel and laity. The temple personnel, who included people ranging from the lowest grade of slaves to high-ranking priests who could challenge the actions of the King himself, formed almost a State within a State. The temple of Esagila owned, and its officials administered, huge estates. Taken as a whole, the temples of Babylonia at this time probably owned at least half the total land of the country, and played a major part in the control of the national economy. The agents of the temple were responsible for a good deal of the external trade of Babylonia. From Babylon such men might travel to Syria to buy olive oil or timber, or to Asia Minor for alum and gall-nuts for dyeing, or for metal ores. Payment by the temples would be in the form of wool or barley. The goods bought from Syria or Asia Minor would be carried on pack-asses as far as the Euphrates, and then shipped direct to Babylon. Trade was also conducted between Esagila and the temples of other Babylonian cities, mainly by river, the ships used being in some cases owned by the temples and in others hired from private owners: their maximum capacity at this time seems to have been about sixty tons.
Some of the farms belonging to Esagila were let out to farmers who paid rent in the form of a share of the produce, whilst others were worked by the temple's own slaves. It was on the farms that the majority of the temple slaves were employed, as agricultural labourers engaged in the seasonal round of ploughing, sowing, reaping and threshing, as herdsmen to tend the temple flocks and herds, as fowlers and fishermen, or as blacksmiths and carpenters to repair the ploughs and other equipment. Above all, there were gangs, both of temple slaves and hired labourers, who worked in the unceasing effort to keep the canals in good repair for irrigation and shipping.Amongst personnel not belonging to the temple, the lowest category from the legal point of view was of course the slave, though the standard of living of a slave in a wealthy household might be a good deal higher than that of a poor free man. Whether the lot of a particular private slave was better or worse than that of his counterpart in temple ownership obviously depended upon the personal relationship between slave and master. Some masters were undoubtedly very hard men, who made their unfortunate slaves so desperate that they ran away. On the other hand, with an easy-going master, an ungrateful slave might become lazy, indolent and unmanageable, and we hear of one aging couple who had to take measures to bring a slave, presumably of this kind, under the control of the temple-slave administration
The duties of male private slaves mainly involved manual labour, and would depend to some extent upon the trade or craft of the owner. A female slave, when young, would probably act not only as a maid to the lady of the house but also as a concubine of either the master of the house or one of the teenage sons. Any children born to the slave-girl would become slaves unless the head of the family formally accepted them as his own children, which would probably only
happen
if his wife were childless. When the slave-girl grew old and ugly, she
would come in for such duties as grinding the corn, drawing the water,
and so on. The average household at the time of Nebuchadnezzar had two
or three slaves, though of course an average does not tell the whole
story: wealthy families might own considerably more and poor families
none. We do find some wealthy families owning a hundred or more slaves,
but most of these would have been used on the land or in workshops and
would not have been included in the household. Free men might engage in a wide range of crafts or professions, though this is not the same as saying that any particular man had a wide choice of craft or profession. The hereditary principle was very strong, and the chances were very much that a man would follow in his father's footsteps. Amongst the crafts and professions we find mentioned in the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar are matmakers, weavers, stone-masons, laundryman, goldsmiths, fishermen, boatmen, leather-workers and shoemakers, confectioners, bakers, brewers, oil-pressers, brickmakers, blacksmiths and coppersmiths, millers, fowlers, carpenters, canal-diggers, and sheep-shearers, to mention but a few.
Training for such crafts and professions was mainly by apprenticeship, either to a private master-craftsman or with a guild. Formal education was probably available in association with the temples for those wishing to enter the learned professions based on scribal craft, but we know little or nothing of the details of this at this period.
At the apex of society was the royal court and the King, Nebuchadnezzar himself. Nebuchadnezzar is most famous as a brilliant strategist and general, but nothing will be said here about his army or his military activities, as the details would be too similar to those of the Assyrian army discussed in Chapter V. Besides being a great soldier, Nebuchadnezzar was a great builder, and most of the palaces, temples, fortifications and canals of Babylon were restored during his reign.
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