The civilization of Babylonia and Assyria

Its remains, language, history, religion, commerce, law, art, and literature

by Morris Jastrow | 1915 | 168,585 words

This work attempts to present a study of the unprecedented civilizations that flourished in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley many thousands of years ago. Spreading northward into present-day Turkey and Iran, the land known by the Greeks as Mesopotamia flourished until just before the Christian era....

This hugeness was further accentuated by the high towers that were attached to the temples in the case of the chief edifices of both Babylonia and Assyria and of many of the minor ones as well. The tower, as has already been pointed out, represents a mountain in miniature and is to be explained as an endeavor on the part of a people coming from a mountain home to reproduce in their new surroundings the belief which placed the seat of the gods on mountain tops.

The tower as a sacred edifice thus rests on a totally different conception from the temple proper which is an outgrowth of the ordinary house; and since we find the tower as an adjunct to the temple in all the important Sumerian centres of the south, we may in connection with other evidence ascribe the tower to the influence of the non-Semitic element, and the temple as above described to be the sacred edifice expressive of Semitic ideas. The two together and temple and tower are thus invariably combined furnish, accordingly, another illustration of the composite character of the Euphratean culture.

The aim of the builders in harmony with the underlying motif of the towers was to make them as high as possible an aim that is well expressed in the inscription of Tiglathpileser I., above referred to, who, speaking of two towers that he erected in connection with the double temple of Anu and Adad, states that he reared them "up to heaven." The simplest method of construction to convey the picture of a mountain was to place one stage above the other, each stage or story being somewhat smaller in proportions than the one immediately below it.

The number of stages thus superimposed varied from four which seemed in the earlier period to be the usual number [1] to seven. It is of course possible that the number seven was associated with the moon, sun and five planets, but there is no satisfactory evidence that this was the case.

Such symbolism could only have been introduced at a time when the original purpose which inspired the building of these towers had been lost sight of. A tablet discovered by the late George Smith and recently published furnishes the height of the seven stories of such a stage tower in Babylon (zikkurat, "high place" as the Babylonians called it) as 300 feet. In this ease each story was not only smaller in circumference, but the stages diminished in height as one proceeded to the top.

Elsewhere, however, as at Khorsabad, the four lower stages were of equal height. Whether in all cases the outer casing of bricks were glazed and colored is a question that cannot be answered definitely, though the indications are that such elaborate decoration was exceptional and limited to the towers built in later periods by Assyrian rulers, who were fired with the ambition to outdo their Babyloniain predecessors in grandeur. I

t is probably safe to assume also that in the earlier periods, both in Babylonia and Assyria, the towers did not rise to more than 100 or 150 feet. Such a structure in comparison with the ordinary low one-storied houses and even the temples and palaces, though higher, consisted of only one story would seem huge indeed.

Up to the present the best preserved zikkurat found was that unearthed by Botta at Khorsabad, of which portions of four stages remain with abundant traces of coloring in the case of the exterior casings. Fortunately, we have two other means of forming more accurate views of the appearance presented by these towers when complete than would be possible by a conjectural reconstruction in the first place by a representation of a tower on a Babylonian monument, and secondly through the preservation of a structure in the Euphrates district which, though dating from the Mohammedan period, is modelled on the pattern of a Babylonian zikkurat.

PLATE XXXIX

Fig. 1 (left), Stage towers of Anu-Adad temple at Ashub
Fig. 2 (right), Mohammedan tower at Samarra on the tigris (9th century A.D.)

The picture of a zikkurat occurs on a so-called Boundary stone, [2] recording the grant of a certain piece of property through a ruler of the thirteenth century B.C. ; it shows a structure of four stages superimposed, with indications of a winding ascent from one story to the other and crowned with a chapel. The stages decrease in size as one proceeds upward, and the same is the case with the very remarkable stone structure still standing at Samarra some ninety miles above Bagdad. Here we have a stage tower of seven stories on the top of which is a little rotunda in which the muezzin takes his stand to call the faithful to prayer.

A glance at this Mohammedan minaret is sufficient to show the direct and continuous line of tradition leading from the zikkurat to the towers of the Mohammedan mosques on the one hand, and to the belfries, campaniles and steeples of Christian churches on the other. [3] In Babylonian and Assyrian architecture the tower is always separate from the temple proper as though to symbolize the independent origin of the two structures, the mountain-motif and the house-motif.

Generally the tower is back of the temple, at times to one side, but, even when it is accorded a position immediately adjacent to the temple, as in the case of the two zikkurats attached to the temple of Ami and Adad at Ashur, one standing to the right, the other to the left of the double temple, the tower is yet a distinct structure, the ascent being independent of the temple. In the case of many mosques the Babylonian-Assyrian tradition is followed through the virtual independence of the minarets as adjuncts to the mosque, though in others the minaret is directly attached and eventually becomes a steeple placed on or at the side of the mosque.

Similarly in the church architecture of Italy we find a tower built quite independently of the church as in the case of St. Mark's in Venice and of the cathedrals in Florence and Pisa, while in Norman architecture the belfry becomes attached to the church, and in Gothic architecture the tower becomes a steeple placed on the church, and with a complete departure from its Babylonian-Assyrian counterpart is looked upon as a symbol of the spirit of Christianity, calling upon its followers to direct their thoughts heavenward.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Though towers of two and three stages also occur.

[2]:

See Jastrow. Bildcrmappe zur Babylonisch-Assyrischen Religion No. 38.

[3]:

See on this subject Thiersch, Pharos, Antike, Islam und Occident (Leipzig, 1907).

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