Surely we all heard the biblical story about the famous and unfinished Tower of Babel, as a result of which there was a mixture of human languages, the so-called "Babylonian pandemonium". Of course, all this looks like a beautiful legend, but, nevertheless, the Tower of Babel mentioned in the Bible was really built under King Nebuchadnezzar II, and the city of Babylon itself was truly a pearl of the ancient world. The “father of history” Herodotus, who visited Babylon, was delighted with its grandeur and size, his descriptions of this great city, which can be called the metropolis of the ancient world, have come down to us.

Where is Babylon

But before sending back to the past, let's define the geography of our virtual journey and answer the question: "where was Babylon on the map." So, Babylon is located, or rather was, on the territory of modern Iraq, a little north of the Iraqi city of Al-Hilla, but now only ruins remain in its place, well, tourist stalls with souvenirs.

Here in this place once was the largest city of antiquity - Babylon.

But in the era of its heyday, Babylon was not only a city, but also a state, owning vast territories.

Map of the Babylonian kingdom.

History of Babylon

The history of the Babylonian kingdom is a whole series of dramatic ups and downs, uprisings and conquests, the ancient Babylonians themselves were more than once both in the role of conquerors and conquered.

It all started around the twentieth century BC, according to legend, the founder of the legendary city was the no less legendary king Nimrod, the great-grandson of Noah himself. He also began the construction of the very Tower of Babel, the completion of which was carried out much later by another great Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II.

Very soon, Babylon rose above the other cities of Mesopotamia and became the capital of a powerful kingdom that united all of Lower and a significant part of upper Mesopotamia. This period is characterized by the flourishing of urban culture, literature, art, jurisprudence (for example, at that time the famous code of laws of the Babylonian king, the greatest legal monument of the laws of antiquity, was created).

In 1595 B.C. e. Mesopotamia is invaded by the warlike nomads of the Hittites, who seize power over Babylon. And instead of destroying the Babylonian civilization already developed by that time, the nomads assimilate in it, gradually adopting the cultural traditions of the Babylonians. Their reign in the relative world lasted more than 400 years, until a new powerful, and, moreover, a very warlike power of the ancient world, entered the arena of history.

The Assyrians became famous for their incredible cruelty to the conquered peoples and the bad habit of erasing entire cities from the face of the earth, but when they conquered the Babylonian kingdom, its capital, beautiful Babylon, they did not touch it, but, on the contrary, assigned the city a special status, many Assyrian kings even engaged in the restoration of its ancient temples and building new ones.

But then came the turn of the fall of the Assyrian kingdom, which rested solely on the strength and fear of the conquered peoples. But nothing can last forever, and at one point a general uprising against Assyrian domination began, led by the future Babylonian king Nabopolassar. The uprising was crowned with success, the once formidable Assyria fell, and with its fall a new period of prosperity for Babylonia began. Babylon reached the peak of its power during the reign of the son of Nabopolassar, a very active and energetic king Nebuchadnezzar II.

Nebuchadnezzar pursued an active foreign policy of conquest, in particular, during his reign, Judea was conquered, and the Jews themselves were forcibly resettled in Babylonia. This period of their history, known as the "Babylonian captivity" is vividly described in the Bible.

In addition to Judea, Syria and Palestine were finally conquered. The city of Babylon itself was significantly rebuilt, it increased even more in size, becoming the largest cultural, commercial, and economic center in the then world. Contemporaries wrote about him with admiration.

Fall of Babylon

But as it usually happens, prosperity often leads to pride, and as the biblical story tells, the proud Babylonian king decided that he could build a tower to heaven and thus become equal to God (By the way, Nebuchadnezzar really tried to build such a tallest tower), but was angry God punished this arrogance by confusing the builders' tongues, as a result of which all building work had to be stopped. In reality, the fall of Babylon and its famous tower, which was a pagan temple dedicated to the Babylonian god Marduk, followed gradually over the centuries.

A new threat to Babylon came from the east, where an uprising against Media began, but it turned out that the Persians got a taste, and in addition to Media, they successfully conquered the Babylonian kingdom. Babylon itself was now the crown jewel of the Persian empire.

Alexander of Macedon, who had already successfully attacked the Persians, was seriously planning to make Babylon the capital of his vast empire, but he died suddenly, his heirs quarreled among themselves, and Babylon itself gradually found itself on the sidelines of history.

Architecture of Babylon

Perhaps most of all, the majestic architecture of the Babylonian kingdom struck contemporaries. In particular, one of the seven wonders of the world of the ancient world, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, was located here.

Palms, figs, and many other trees, luxurious gardens were planted on artificial terraces. In fact, Queen Semiramis has nothing to do with these gardens, human rumor called this miracle so already in later times, originally the hanging gardens were built by the same king Nebuchadnezzar for his wife Nitocris, who suffered from the stuffy climate of Mesopotamia, since she was born from the wooded area.

Another amazing architectural monument of ancient Babylon is the front gate of Ishtar, decorated with blue mosaics and bas-reliefs depicting sirrus and bulls.

Built in 575 BC. e. By order of King Nebuchadnezzar, these gates, which protect the northern entrance to the city, have been perfectly preserved to our time, were reconstructed by German archaeologists and can now be seen with your own eyes in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

The streets of ancient Babylon were not arranged randomly, but were built in accordance with a clear plan, one part of the streets ran parallel to the river, and the other part crossed them at a right perpendicular angle. The houses were usually three or four storey, the central streets were lined with stone.

In the northern part of the city there was a majestic royal palace, built, yes, again by Nebuchadnezzar, and on the other side the main temple of the city, a huge zikurat dedicated to the supreme Babylonian god Marduk, the same Tower of Babel from the Bible. According to Herodotus, a special priestess lived on top of this zikurat temple - “the bride of the god Marduk” and according to legend (at least, as the Babylonians told Herodotus, and he told us), the god Marduk himself from time to time rests on the top of the tower.

Religion of Babylon

Well, now is the time to touch on the ancient religion of Babylon. As we already know, the supreme god in the pagan pantheon of the Babylonians was Marduk, who, according to the Babylonian legend of the creation of the world, defeated the monster of chaos Tiamat, thereby bringing order to the eternal chaos and laying the foundation for our world. It was to this god that numerous temples and zikurats were dedicated, but besides him, ordinary Babylonians often worshiped a number of other smaller gods (some of which are incarnations of the same Marduk). For example, the Babylonian women prayed to the female goddess of love, Ishtar, who was the divine embodiment of the feminine. The goddess Ishtar was also dedicated to the famous front gate named after her, which we wrote about a little higher.

The gods of the Sun and Moon were also revered: Shamash and Sin, the god of wisdom and accounts of Nabu, and many other lesser known gods.

The Babylonian priests, servants of the gods, were also excellent scientists of the ancient world, and especially very good astronomers, for example, it was they who first saw and fixed the planet Venus in the starry sky, poetically called "morning dawn" by the time of its appearance in the sky.

Culture of Babylon

The culture of ancient Babylon, in terms of its degree of advancement, could only be compared with a no less developed culture. ancient egypt. So writing was well developed in Babylon, they wrote on clay tablets, and young Babylonians learned this art from an early age in special schools.

The Babylonian priests advanced the science of that time, mastered the art of healing, were well versed in mathematics and especially geometry. The author of the famous theorem of his name, the Greek Pythagoras in his youth studied among the Babylonian priests.

The Babylonians were first-class builders, excellent artisans, whose products went throughout the ancient east.

The Babylonian jurisprudence was dominated by the famous code of laws written by King Hammurabi, which had a great influence on the legal culture of the ancient East. The laws there, by the way, were quite harsh. How about, for example, such a law from this code: If a brewer brewed bad beer (and beer was already brewed in ancient Babylon), then he should have been drowned in this very bad beer of his own production.

Some laws of Hammurabi from the so-called “family code” are very curious, for example, one such law says that in the event of a wife’s infertility, the husband has the legal right to conceive a child from a “harlot”, but in this case he is obliged to fully support her, but not bring to the wife's house during her lifetime.

Art of Babylon

The art of ancient Babylon is actively represented by its wonderful architecture, bas-reliefs, and sculpture, which we have already mentioned.

For example, this is a sculptural image of a high-ranking official Ibi-Ila from the temple of Ishtar.

But such bas-reliefs depicting warriors and lions adorn the famous Babylonian gates of Ishtar.

And this is the same bas-relief with the code of laws of King Hammurabi, where the stern Babylonian king himself proudly sits on the throne.

Babylon video

And in conclusion, your attention is an interesting documentary film "The Mystery of Ancient Babylon".

Details Category: Fine arts and architecture of ancient peoples Published on 28.12.2015 16:09 Views: 8273

Let's start talking about the art of these two ancient civilizations with geography and history.

Mesopotamia- a historical and geographical region in the Middle East, located in the valley of two great rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates. The current Mesopotamian lands include Iraq, northeastern Syria, peripherally Turkey and Iran.

Mesopotamia Map
Mesopotamia is home to one of the great and ancient civilizations in the history of mankind - Ancient Mesopotamia.
Ancient Mesopotamia existed in the Middle East from the middle of the 4th millennium BC. e. to October 12, 539 BC e. ("Fall of Babylon"). At different times, the kingdoms of Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia and Assyria were located here.
From IV millennium BC. e. and up to the 13th century. n. e. here were the largest cities and urban agglomerations. In the Ancient World, Babylon was synonymous with the World City. Mesopotamia prospered under Assyrian and Babylonian rule, and then under Arab domination. From the time of the appearance of the Sumerians and until the fall of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom, 10% of the population of the entire Earth lived on the territory of the Mesopotamian lowland. Mesopotamia (Ancient Mesopotamia) is one of the oldest centers of civilization in the 4th-3rd millennium BC. e., which formed the ancient city-states: the Sumerian cities of Kish, Uruk (biblical Erech), Ur, Lagash, Umma, the Semitic city of Akshak, the Amorite / Sumerian city of Larsa, as well as the states of Akkad, Assyria and at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. - Babylonia. Later, the territory of Mesopotamia was part of Assyria (IX-VII centuries BC), the Neo-Babylonian kingdom (VII-VI centuries BC).
The first written documents belong to the Sumerians. Thus history proper began in Sumer and may have been created by the Sumerians.
Assyria- an ancient state in the Northern Mesopotamia (on the territory of modern Iraq). Assyria existed for almost 2 thousand years, starting from the 24th century BC. e. until its destruction in the 7th century BC. e. Media and Babylonia. The Neo-Assyrian power is considered the first empire in the history of mankind.

Assyrian Empire
Babylonia(Babylonian kingdom) - an ancient kingdom in the south of Mesopotamia (the territory of modern Iraq), which arose at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. and lost its independence in 539 BC. e. The capital of the kingdom was the city of Babylon, after which it received its name. The Semitic people of the Amorites, the founders of Babylonia, inherited the culture of the previous kingdoms of Mesopotamia - Sumer and Akkad. The official language of Babylonia was the written Semitic Akkadian language, and the obsolete unrelated Sumerian language was long preserved as a cult language.
Babylon- one of the cities of ancient Mesopotamia. An important political, economic and cultural center of the Ancient World, one of the largest cities in the history of mankind, the "first metropolis". The ruins of Babylon are located on the outskirts of the modern city of Al Hilla (Iraq).

View of Babylon from the former summer palace of Saddam Hussein (2003)
The highest rise in the economic and cultural life of Babylon is associated with the era of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II (VI century BC).
In the second half of the 4th c. BC e. was the capital of the state of Alexander the Great, later was part of the state of the Seleucids, Parthia, Rome. From the 3rd century BC e. gradually fell into decline.

Architecture and art of Babylon

In the first half of the II millennium BC. e. the most significant cultural region was the southern half of Mesopotamia, that is, the region of Sumer and Akkad, united under the rule of Babylon under King Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC).
The city of Babylon was once the center of world significance. But in connection with the events of subsequent eras, almost nothing remained of the city, or, rather, very little remained. Monuments visual arts very little has come down to us.
An idea of ​​the art of Babylon is given by the excavations of the contemporary city of Mari; many valuable artistic monuments have been preserved here.
The ruins of the city and the large palace of the ruler of the city of Zimri-Lim, as well as many valuable artistic monuments, were discovered here.

Zimri Lima Palace
Zimri-Lim was the king of Mari. Here he built a palace, which even from neighboring states came to see. This palace occupied an area of ​​over 2.5 hectares, with more than 260 rooms. The walls of the palace were up to 5 m high. A huge archive of cuneiform documents in Sumerian, Akkadian and Hurrian was found in the palace.
The plan of the palace is typical for Mesopotamia: large courtyards, around which there are various rooms. The palace included ceremonial and living rooms, sanctuaries, a palace school of scribes, a kitchen and pantries.
In some rooms of the palace, parts of wall paintings have been preserved - contour drawings painted in blue, dark red and black paints. The theme of the wall paintings is cult scenes. All paintings are distinguished by a strict symmetrical composition.
Forms for loaves or cheeses with figures of animals and humans have been found. In these small reliefs, there is a desire to depict the landscape in the tradition of Akkadian art.
Under the successors of Hammurabi, the power of Babylon weakened. Gradually, Mesopotamia, which wanted independence, began to fall away from it. After 100 years, Babylon was captured by the Kassites (ancient tribes from Western Iran), who formed the III Babylonian dynasty and ruled for about six hundred years (XVIII-XII centuries BC). Culturally, the Kassites were far inferior to the Babylonians.
After 612 BC. e., when the Assyrian capital of Nineveh was taken by the king of Babylonia, the primacy again and for the last time passed to the city of Babylon, which, while maintaining its political and economic significance, acquired the role of the largest trade and craft center of Western Asia.
The art of New Babylon was predominantly decorative. Most often, real and fantastic sacred animals, plants, and ornaments were depicted. There are almost no scenes similar to those of Assyrian reliefs and murals - military scenes of palace life.
After the death of Nebuchadnezzar II, the political and economic power of Babylon begins to decline. In 538 BC. e. Babylon was conquered by the Persian king Cyrus II and annexed to the Iranian state of the Achaemenids.
Nebuchadnezzar (604-562 BC) pursued an aggressive policy and significantly expanded the borders of the state. He carried out grandiose temple, defensive and irrigation construction.
Ziggurat- a multi-stage religious building in ancient Mesopotamia and Elam, typical of Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Elamite architecture.
A ziggurat is a tower of stacked parallelepipeds or truncated pyramids from 3 for the Sumerians to 7 for the Babylonians, who had no interior (there was a sanctuary in the upper volume). The terraces of the ziggurat, painted in different colors, were connected by stairs or ramps, the walls were divided into rectangular niches. Inside the walls were many rooms where priests and temple workers lived.

Ziggurat at Ur
Next to the stepped ziggurat there was usually a temple, which was not a prayer building, but the dwelling of a god. The Sumerians, and then the Assyrians with the Babylonians, worshiped their gods on the tops of the mountains. They built ziggurats from raw brick, reinforced with layers of reeds, and were lined with baked bricks on the outside. Rains and winds destroyed these structures, so they were periodically updated. The Babylonian ziggurats were already seven-tiered and painted in the symbolic colors of the planets.

Reconstruction of Etemenanki
Etemenanki A ziggurat in ancient Babylon. Exactly when the original construction of this tower was carried out is not known, but it already existed during the reign of Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC). The tower was destroyed and reconstructed several times. The last and largest reconstruction, which turned the tower into the tallest structure of ancient Babylon, was during the period of the Neo-Babylonian Kingdom.
Etemenanki is the alleged prototype of the Tower of Babel.

Babel Tower

This is the legendary tower, which is dedicated to the biblical tradition of the book of Genesis (Gen. 11:1-9). According to this legend, after the Flood, humanity was represented by one people who spoke the same language. From the east, people came to the land of Shinar (in the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates), where they decided to build the city of Babylon and a tower to heaven in order to "make a name for themselves." The construction of the tower was interrupted by God, who created new languages ​​for different people, because of which they ceased to understand each other, could not continue building the city and the tower, and scattered throughout the earth. Thus, the story of the Tower of Babel explains the appearance of various languages ​​after the Flood.

Pieter Brueghel the Elder "The Tower of Babel" (1563)

Palace of Nebuchadnezzar II

As a result of the excavations, the remains of two palaces of King Nebuchadnezzar II, which were located on artificial platforms, were discovered. The premises were located around open courtyards. The facade wall of the throne room of one of the palaces was faced with glazed brick with images on a dark blue background of a number of slender columns with golden yellow trunks and spiral curls (volts) of capitals twisting on two sides, between which garlands of lotuses hung, and above there was a frieze (framing decorative composition) from white-yellow palmettes (vegetative ornament) and turquoise-blue rhombuses. It gave the impression of a light fence intertwined with flowers.

"Hanging Gardens of Babylon". Color engraving by a Dutch artist of the 16th century. Maarten van Heemskerk (background - Tower of Babel)
The summer palace once housed the famous "Hanging Gardens of Babylon" (one of the seven wonders of the world), that is, green spaces on artificial terraces supported by vaults. Water from the Euphrates was supplied through canals, wells and other devices to irrigate these plantations.
Dusty and noisy Babylon did not please the queen, who grew up in the mountainous and green Media. To console her, Nebuchadnezzar II ordered the construction of hanging gardens.

Architecture and art of Assyria

The art of Assyria reached its highest development in the 1st millennium BC. e., when Assyria turned into a strong slave-owning state, subjugating almost all of Asia Minor as a result of aggressive wars.
Certain requirements were imposed on art: to glorify the deeds of the king and the military power of Assyria.
Art of Assyria I millennium BC e. had a more secular purpose, although it was associated with religion.

Architecture

Architecture was the leading art form in Assyria. Not only temples were built here, but also palace complexes and fortresses. The best-preserved and reconstructable structures date back to the reigns of the kings Ashurnasirapal II (884-859 BC), Sargon II (722-705 BC) and Ashurbanipal (668-633 BC). n. e.).
Assyrian palaces were huge complexes with official, residential and utility rooms grouped around courtyards. The rooms are corridor-shaped, narrow, their walls are decorated with reliefs and paintings.
A classic example of Assyrian architecture is the 8th century BC palace. BC e. King Sargon II in Dur-Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad). The palace was built on an artificial terrace, part of the palace protruded beyond the city wall. The palace complex included a sanctuary with a ziggurat tower of seven ledges.

A ziggurat is a multi-stage religious building typical of Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Elamite architecture.
The entrances were covered with arches, and on the sides of the arches were placed figures - gate sculptures in the form of lions and bulls with human heads and wings, made in the technique of relief, turning into a round sculpture. A technique-image of five legs was used so that one could see the "guardian" of the gate at the same time both at rest and in motion.
Columns with stone bases and wooden trunks were used as load-bearing supports.

Sargon II with a nobleman
In the decoration of the palace of Sargon II, tiles were used - glazed bricks with bright multi-color glaze.

Sculpture

Relief prevailed in sculpture. Round sculpture in the art of Assyria did not play a big role.

winged bull with human head found during excavations (Louvre)
From the time of Ashurnasirapal II, a wonderful alabaster frontal statue of Ashurnasirapal II himself (London, British Museum, height 1.06 m), depicting the king as a high priest, has come down. It was installed in the temple, in a cult niche, and was an object of worship. The image of the king is idealized.

Ashurnasirapal II on the throne
In the palace of Ashurnasirapala, flat reliefs depicting battles and royal hunting have been preserved. They represent a whole panorama of battle and hunting scenes.

wall paintings

Some rooms were decorated with paintings. For example, in the palace of Sargon II, processions are depicted in which the king appeared, accompanied by his entourage and warriors.

Ritual meeting of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirapal II after a successful hunt (Louvre)

The paintings were made on white lime plaster, which was applied in a thin layer to the mud wall over a layer of clay mixed with chopped straw. First, the contours of the images were applied with black paint, and then paints were applied: red-brown, blue, black and white, sometimes pink and blue. The coloring is conditional, planar, without shadows.

The third dynasty of Ur, which for some time united the countries of Mesopotamia under its leadership and once again revived the Sumerian culture, was overthrown by the combined efforts of Elam and the city of Mari, a strong Amorite state, in alliance with which were also the princes of Ashununak.

However, having defeated a common enemy, Mari and Ashnunak could not create a strong coalition. The center of a new, much stronger unification of the country was destined to become a small city of Babylon.

City of Babylon

Babylon occupied an exceptionally advantageous position in the country on the banks of the Euphrates in the place where the channels of the Euphrates and the Tigris are closest to each other. In fact, in the hands of Babylon, with sufficient energy of its rulers, all supervision over the irrigation of the country and over the trade movement along both rivers could be concentrated.

Having seized power in Babylon at the end of the III millennium BC. e, the Amorite Sumu-Abum laid the foundation for the so-called. I Babylonian, or Amorite dynasty (2000 BC), which again united the whole country. The creator of the final unity of the country, the greatest personality of the new historical period, was Hammurabi, one of the heirs of Sumu-Abum.

At present, science has a huge number of written monuments of Hammurabi's time, but it is very poor in material remains of architectural monuments of this period.

Babylon was subjected to near-total destruction many times. However, it was possible to establish that the city was built and expanded according to a certain plan. The main streets were crossed by transverse ones at right angles, which was not observed even in Ashnunak, a city with a relatively regular layout.

The houses in the residential quarter of Babylon were built of mud-brick with fired-brick foundations. A thick layer of ash indicates that the city was destroyed by a huge fire that destroyed all the wooden parts.

This event can be associated with the invasion of Babylon by the Hittites at the beginning of the 2nd millennium, which put an end to the Hammurabi dynasty, already weakened by a stubborn struggle with the "land of the sea" (the territory in the Tigris and Euphrates delta and along the northern coast of the Persian Gulf with a mixed Sumero-Semitic population).

After 120 years of the ambassador of the Hittite invasion, in 1750, a completely weakened country and the city of Babylon itself were captured by the Kassites descending from the Zagra mountains - wild tribes whose dominance lasted about 600 years.

Culture of Babylon. ancient culture Sumer has not ceased to exist. The basis of the culture of Babylon and subsequently Assyria remained Sumerian: technology, science, art, literature originated and received their first development in the south of Mesopotamia - in Sumer.

In Babylonian times, the Sumerian language was supplanted by Babylonian (Akkadian); the Sumerian language was retained only for the needs of worship.

Hammurabi subordinated the cult of local deities to the cult of the Babylonian god Marduk, who was declared the head of all deities. Babylon also became a religious center.

Hammurabi exercised all the fullness of his unlimited and divine - in the concept of his contemporaries - with the help of governors.

Hammurabi, like the pharaohs of the New Kingdom (but several centuries earlier than them), created a standing army. He collected the "codes of laws" that existed before him, creating a code that was uniform for the entire state.

The paragraphs of the Code of Hammurabi concerning the construction business are interesting. The builders were always considered only princes and kings. Along with slave labor, the labor of hired artisans - masons, carpenters and masons was also used in the construction business. The wages of the builder were strictly determined by law: “if the builder builds someone a house, then the householder must give him two shekels (i.e. 16.8 g) of silver for each cap, i.e. for every 35.234 sq. m at home.

In the absence of an accurate calculation, the houses probably fell apart very often, gave cracks. Hammurabi's legislation provided for such cases: "if a builder, while building a house for someone, does his work unsteadily, so that the house he built collapses and causes death to the householder, then the builder must be put to death."

If the collapse destroyed the property, then the builder was "obliged to compensate for everything destroyed, and for the fact that he built it unstable, so that the house collapsed, he must restore the collapsed house at his own expense."

Marie. The study of architectural monuments of the city of Babylon of the 1st dynasty, which have not survived to this day, has been replenished in recent years by excavations in Mari, a rich trading center. The city of Mari was sacked and burned, its numerous temples perished, and the palace of Zimrilim was also burned. The collapsed floors were charred, as well as many other wooden parts, and thanks to this they were preserved in relative integrity. The walls of the palace in some places have another 5 m in height, not only their plastering has been preserved, but in some places even the painting.

The city, located on the banks of the Euphrates, was well protected on one side by the course of the river itself, and on the other sides by a wall. Its fortifications are very similar to those of the Hittite city of Carchemish, which also stands on the Euphrates.

The excavations unearthed a part of the city, which apparently had a relatively regular layout. The houses were built of mud, and in some cases the masonry of the lower part of the walls was of stone. Some yards were paved with stone pebbles. The walls were plastered and whitewashed from the inside. Every house was sewered.

A characteristic feature of the planning and development of this trading city was the arrangement of small squares surrounded on all sides by houses; massive adobe pillars supported a covered gallery around the entire square, where vendors sat in the shade of an awning.

3ikkurat and Ishtar Temple. The most interesting is the high part of the hill, where the most ancient temple of the goddess Ishtar was found (Plate 86, Fig. 4) and a ziggurat, poorly preserved, very low, devoid of the usual external stairs for these buildings and retreating both from the “southern” one and from “ northern" types of ziggurat in relation to placement on the general plan of the site. The ziggurat in Mari was, as it were, part of the temple and adjoined directly to the back wall of the sanctuary.

The room of the sanctuary was completely dark and was probably illuminated by lamps.

During excavations in the temple, parts of copper sculptures depicting lions were found.

Castle. The palace is especially interesting for its excellent state of preservation, and also for the fact that the text of a letter from Hammurabi to King Mari was found in its archive, from which it is clear that the palace was considered one of the wonders of that time (Plate 86, Figs. 1 and 2; Table 87, Figs. .1-4).

The palace in Mari occupied an area of ​​more than two hectares and consisted of more than 200 different rooms. It was surrounded by a wall, of which only traces have survived.

The entrance to the palace was on the north side (Plate 86, fig. 1), it was preceded by a platform paved with irregularly shaped slabs. The wide entrance (6.1 m) had two powerful, protruding towers on the sides. The passage 2.4 m wide was paved with burnt bricks and was locked from the inside with a double-leaf door. It was followed by a guardhouse b. Then the visitor, through the passage, which was on the same axis as the front door, got into the trapezoid-shaped courtyard, paved with bricks. From here, through a side entrance, he penetrated into a very wide unpaved corridor d, probably dark, communicating with the inner large paved courtyard e. A semicircular staircase at the back of the courtyard led to the throne room e, the walls of which were covered with paintings. In the center of the courtyard there was an elevation 2.2 m high with a canopy, which was supported by light wooden supports (there are traces of holes for them in the floor). Apparently, the tsar stood on this dais during solemn audiences.

Living spaces. To the left of the entrance, in the northeast corner of the palace, was a complex of living quarters, located around a small open courtyard and intended for ambassadors, couriers and guests. Visitors had at their disposal not only living rooms, but also baths, showers, a sauna with a small cloakroom. The palace archives were also located here - thousands of tablets with the correspondence of the kings of Mari.

The vessel from the palace bathrooms, connected to the latrine, has been perfectly preserved (Plate 87, fig. 3). It contained two bathtubs, probably one for cold and one for hot water. They were emptied by scooping up water with a vessel found during excavations and still standing in place, in a niche in the wall. The walls of the latrine and the floor were covered with bitumen. The floors were provided with drains and sewer pipes, which connected to the main sewer, in some cases consisting of ceramic pipes, in other cases lined with stone slabs with vaulted ceilings.

In the north-western corner of the palace, to the right of the entrance, there were private chambers of the king, also located around the courtyard (Plate 86, fig. 1k). The floors of the royal rooms were covered with a thick layer of perfectly smoothed plaster, the adobe walls were lined with a layer of clay plaster with chopped straw and whitewashed. Both the inner and outer surfaces of the walls to a height of 1.8 m were decorated with paintings.

Black and white, cobalt blue and red (ocher) were intertwined in geometric patterns or went in stripes. Along with this, paintings were found depicting people - processions and individual scenes.

Next to the royal chambers was the palace school of scribes. Both of its rooms were occupied by rows of earthen benches on which the disciples sat cross-legged; next to the benches were flat vessels for soaking clay tablets and for washing hands (Plate 87, fig. 4).

Utility rooms. The entire western side was reserved for utility rooms - kitchens and pantries. In the corner of the courtyard of this part of the palace, two furnaces of the usual type for Mesopotamia were found, round in plan, covered with a dome. One of them was equipped with a low ladder, which made it possible to regulate the baking of bread.

From the southern side of the palace stretched a long corridor, on both sides of which there were pantries (pl. 86, fig. 1o). Giant pithoi were kept here - sharp-bottomed vessels for storing supplies.

places of worship. From the point of view of planning, the religious premises in the very center of the palace are of the greatest interest in the entire palace ensemble.

The huge hall looks like an elongated rectangle (Plate 86, Fig. 1k; Table 87, Fig. 1). Its unusually powerful walls, preserved to a height of 5 m, in ancient times had at least 9.5 m in height. On the eastern side, a small room adjoined the hall, a transversely located cult niche or cella, to which 10 steps led from the hall (Plate 87, fig. 2). The cult character of the cella is determined by the pedestal found in it for the statue of the deity, over which a canopy was arranged in ancient times.

There were two doors in each of the longitudinal walls of the hall. In this case, therefore, we are dealing with a plan similar to a large extent to the plan of the ancient temple of the goddess Ishtar in Assur or the plan of a residential building of the so-called "northern" type, where the entrance was located on the side, in the longitudinal wall, and not along its axis.

The neighboring hall i, which is the same elongated rectangle, is separated by a massive wall from the room just described, but communicates with it by two side passages. It is somewhat smaller (length - 25.5 m, width - 8 m). In the center of one of the long sides of the hall, along the axis of the entrance, there was a pedestal for a cult statue, about a meter high. Three steps led from three sides to the pedestal, made of mud. The wall to which it adjoined was decorated with a painted wooden shield. The pedestal, lined with stone in front, was covered with marble-like wooden paneling in the upper part. The stone cladding was covered with a thin layer of lime plaster, painted with light red ocher and painted along the edges with an ornament in the form of a white-yellow spiral with yellow flames inscribed in it.

Details of the ornament speak of the significant role of fire and water in the cult of the deity to whom this temple was dedicated.

Table 86 1. Palace in Mari, plan (a - entrance, b - guards, c - courtyard, d - dark corridor, e - large courtyard, e - throne room or sanctuary, g - room for visitors, h - large pre-temple courtyard,
and - cella, k - inner royal temple, l - royal premises, m - school, n - utility rooms and kitchens, o - storerooms, p - archive). - 2. Palace in Mari (aerial photography). - 3. Cult statue from Mari of the same time with vessels (fountain) in hands. - 4. Temple of the goddess Ishtar, plan.

Courtyard. The entrance opening in the wall opposite the pedestal of the statue had no doors. Through this open passage it was possible to enter a large courtyard h, which was 29 m long and 26 m wide. Traces of the extraordinarily careful decoration of the walls and details of this courtyard have been preserved: the architraves of its six doors were decorated with red stripes, the walls covered with lime plaster were painted triple red and blue stripes; on the eastern wall of the courtyard, a painting of a more complex nature has been preserved.

Wall paintings had to be protected from rain and sun. This was achieved in two ways: the courtyard was surrounded covered gallery or installed along the walls Small stone pedestals with holes for light wooden supports that supported fabric or mats stretched over them.

On the east side of the yard was a large brick box, covered inside and out with a piece. It served, probably, for planting plants and indicates that some parts of the palace could be landscaped.

Opposite the cult pedestal was the main entrance to the courtyard with a double door and a monumental portal with protrusions and niches characteristic of Mesopotamia buildings, the alternation of which was emphasized by the whitewashing of the former and the painting of the latter red. The doors of the portal opened wide during solemn ceremonies in the temple, and not everyone received access to the courtyard. The builder subtly calculated in this case the impression of a distant perspective that opened before the spectator standing at the entrance; the light half-light of a huge courtyard covered with a colored canopy, the play of sunlight accidentally penetrating the courtyard, the bright colors of the wall painting were replaced by the darkness of the cult part of the temple - the dwelling of the deity, which was preceded by the courtyard.

Sculpture. The statue of the goddess, found in the temple, wearing a tiara entwined on both sides with horns (a common sign of a deity), held a vessel in her hands, a symbol of fertility bestowed by the floods of the river (Plate 86, fig. 3). The statue stood on a pedestal in the hall and at the end of the enfilade of the entrance, the courtyard and the temple itself, visible to everyone in the radiance of lamps and precious utensils of gold and silver. The attention of the spectators had to be focused precisely on this most important part of the temple, and this goal was achieved in a way that had never been seen in Egypt and also unusual for Mesopotamia. The bowl in the hands of the goddess was hollowed out inside, and the channel from it went through the entire statue. Obviously, at the right moment, when it was required in the course of the service, with the help of a device still unknown to us, a jet of water spouted from the vessel in the hands of the goddess.

In the palace of Mari we find the first example of the introduction of a cult statue into an architectural ensemble and at the same time the first example of a “fountain figure” in history.

Overlapping, lighting, entrances. The premises of the palace were illuminated with the help of open courtyards, from where light penetrated through very high doorways. No trace of windows has been found in the surviving walls. Some parts of the palace had a second floor.

The method of arranging the ceilings became quite clear for the first time. The rolling of logs, resting their ends on thick walls, and in the presence of a second floor also on wooden vertical supports, was covered with a thick reed mat or wickerwork of branches, on which a series of bricks were applied, smeared with a thick layer of stuff. On such a flat roof, which represented a significant load, a drain was arranged for rainwater, which flowed through a downpipe made of baked clay into underground sewer pipes.

It is characteristic that the doors in some cases did not cover the entire height of the doorway and were rather a symbol of the sacred border, like a high threshold, under which the remains of ritual sacrifices, the bones of dead animals are usually found. Mats also played an important role, with which, if necessary, they hung doorways, winding them on a rotating roller, as was done in Egypt.

Underground rooms were found in the palace (their purpose has not been established), where adobe stairs led.

The design of the entrance to the palace is of great interest from the point of view of the history of the emergence of individual elements of the architecture of Mesopotamia. This monumental entrance, together with the wide room following it, is a typical “bit-khilani”, common for later Assyrian architecture, but borrowed, as Assyrian sources say, from Syro-Hittite architecture.

In the architectural complex, which included a ziggurat with a temple at its foot, the remains of a portico with two columns at its corners were discovered. Only stone bases have survived, their wooden trunks have decayed.

The invasion of the Hittites on Babylon and the ensuing long period of disintegration and anarchy suspended the monumental construction of Babylonia for a long time. It took about two hundred years until the country could recover enough to resume construction. A new powerful upsurge of art in general and architecture in particular came along with the flourishing of Assyria.

Architecture of New Babylon

Assyria's successor was New Babylon.

The Babylonian king Nabupalassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar II united under the rule of Babylon, which became the center of world power under them, all of Mesopotamia, stopped the Egyptian aggression in Syria, subjugated Phenicia and Palestine.

Nebuchadnezzar II built Babylon on a grand scale, which was subjected to unprecedented destruction on the orders of Sennacherib during the invasion of the Assyrians in 689. Nebuchadnezzar wrote to himself that he, "like his precious life, fell in love with the construction of palaces." The king himself cut down cedars in Lebanon for his palaces.

The canals of Babylon were cleared, the main procession road was paved, the temples of various gods (up to 40) in Babylon and other places were restored. Nebuchadnezzar died in 561 BC. e. Of his successors, only Nabonidus (566-538 BC) was engaged in construction. However, the new period of growth turned out to be short-lived for Babylonia. The fragility of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom is proved by its quick death in the fight against the warlike tribes of the Iranians, Persians and Medes, united by the Achaemenid dynasty. The Persians easily defeated the Babylonian troops and in 538 BC. e. entered Babylon without a fight. In contrast to the Assyrians, the Persians did not touch the cities).

Having become part of the Persian state, Babylon did not play its former role. The history of neo-Babylonian culture and construction is thus limited to seventy years from the fall of Nineveh to the capture of Babylon by the Persians (607 - 538 BC).

The new Babylon - the center of the great Asian power - with its huge size and its luxury, undoubtedly, far surpassed the Assyrian cities (Table 107). An idea of ​​the plan, structure and main buildings of the city can be drawn from the materials of the Babylonian chronicles, according to Greek writers, for example, Herodotus, who visited Babylon in the 5th century BC. BC e., finally, according to the excavations of our time.

The British Museum in London contains small clay cylinders with Nebuchadnezzar's cuneiform records of his work on the restoration and construction of temples, palaces and fortifications in Babylon. The records of Nebuchadnezzar report that the temple ziggurat was built in due time by the "ancient king", but that its upper part was never completed. We are talking here about the famous, according to the biblical legend, the “Tower of Babel”. Nebuchadnezzar completed the ziggurat with seven floors, raising it to a height unprecedented in the entire architecture of Mesopotamia (Table 107, figs. 1-3). In total, there were 53 temples in Babylon, old ones restored and newly built. A new phenomenon in the Mesopotamian city was the construction of altars and chapels scattered along the streets.

Palace building also occupied the Neo-Babylonian kings. Nabupalascap built himself a new palace in the old part of the city. Nebuchadnezzar reports on the construction of his huge palace in one of the records that have come down from him, where he speaks of raising the terrace and the construction of the entire complex of palace buildings, especially boasting about the speed of work. With the palace construction of Nebuchadnezzar, the question of the so-called. "hanging gardens", later attributed by legend to Queen Semiramis.

Sources speak in detail about the military-defense construction of Nebuchadnezzar. In Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar built two new walls, so that the city was surrounded by a triple wall of walls "as high as a mountain" (pl. 108, figs. 1 and 2; pl. 109, fig. 2). The wall had a total thickness of up to 30 m, for every 20 m of its length there was a tower. The stories of several writers agree that a team of four horses could move and turn around along the edge of the wall. The wall was built of baked bricks, liquid asphalt (bitumen) served as a binder. The wall was surrounded by a moat, also lined with bricks. Outside the walls, every inhabitant of Babylon had his own piece of cultivated land, so as not to need food during the siege.

Babylon according to Herodotus. Babylon is described in most detail in the first book of Herodotus' Histories. Babylon, according to him, “lies in a vast plain, looks like a quadrangle, each side of which contains one hundred and twenty stages” ... “It is arranged as beautifully as no other city known to us. Babylon is first of all surrounded by a moat, deep, wide, and filled with water; behind the moat is a wall fifty cubits wide and two hundred cubits high. The royal cubit is three fingers larger than usual”… “Digging a ditch, the workers at the same time were making bricks from the earth they were excavating; having prepared a sufficient number of bricks, they burned them in furnaces. Hot asphalt served as cement, and every thirty rows of bricks they laid a row of reed wickerwork in the wall; first they strengthened the edges of the moat, and then they erected the wall itself in the same way. On the wall, at both ends of it, single-tiered towers were placed, one opposite the other; in the middle between them there was a passage for four horses ... "The walls on both sides reach the river; starting from the river, the walls curve and stretch along both banks in the form of a dam of baked bricks. The city itself is full of houses of three and four levels and is crossed by straight streets, both those that run along the river, and transverse ones leading to the river. On each transverse street to the dam, running along the river, there were gates, of which there were as many as the streets, these gates are also made of copper and lead to the river itself.

... “Another wall stretches around, inside the first; it is only slightly weaker than the outer one and narrower than hers. In one part of the city behind a large strong wall is the royal palace, in the other - the temple of Zeus-Bel with copper gates. It is a quadrilateral, each side having two stages; he survived until my time. In the middle of the temple stands a massive tower, one stage each in length and width; another tower was placed above this tower, a third tower above the second, and so on up to the eighth. The ascent to them is made from the outside; he goes in a ring around all the towers. Having risen to the middle of the rise, you find a place with benches for rest ”; those who ascend the towers sit here to rest. On the last tower there is a large temple, and in the temple there is a large, beautifully decorated bed and a golden table in front of it.

Herodotus also describes in detail the water structures of Babylon; located along both banks of the river "embankments, worthy of attention in size and height", "pool for the lake", "having a volume of four hundred and twenty stages" and "a round wall along the edges of the lake." In Babylon itself, Herodotus describes "a bridge made of pieces of hewn stone, with iron and lead serving as cement." The bridge was drawbridge, “at the beginning of the day they laid quadrangular logs; along which the Babylonians crossed; logs were removed at night so that the Babylonians would not cross the river and rob each other ”(Herodotus, “History in Nine Books”. Translated by F. Mishchenko. M. 1888, vol. I, pp. 93, 94, 95, 97, 98).

Babylon by excavation. Excavations carried out in the 20th century, despite the fact that they are not completely completed, allow us to present a fairly complete picture of Babylon in the 6th century. BC e. (Table 107, Fig. 1). It was a grandiose and systematically built city (with a population of at least 200 thousand inhabitants). The length of the walls of Babylon was 18 km). The length of the inner walls of the city, including the "New City" on the right bank of the river, was 8150 m. the same angle of 16°. The city was surrounded, according to archeology, by a triple (and not double, as Herodotus says) wall and a moat. The Euphrates divided it into two halves; the eastern one was older, it contained the “inner city”, like an acropolis, with a temple and a ziggurat. To the north of them were the palaces of Nebuchadnezzar, the most grandiose of which was the southern one. There was also a market inside the city. Outside the city walls, excavations have uncovered numerous suburbs; a cemetery was moved to the southwest of the new city; the northern palace was also taken out of the city walls.

layout. Babylon had 9 gates (from the west - the gates of Adad; in the north - Lugalgirra, Ishtar and Sina; in the east - Marduk and Ninurta; in the south - Enlil, Urash and Shamash); each of them was the beginning of one of the long straight streets that divided the whole city into squares. The streets were named after the deities to whom the gates were dedicated. From the Ishtar gate, located next to the palace and opening the road to the north, the largest street of Babylon went inside the city - the “Processional Road”, crossing the “Marduk Street”, which led from the southeast towards the main temple of the city. The procession road had an average paved strip, at least 7.5 m wide, of rectangular slabs of white limestone with stripes of red breccia. The streets of residential areas were very narrow (4.0-1.5 m) in order to create protection from the sun.

temples. In the Neo-Babylonian temples, the longitudinal-axial plan dominated, most clearly represented in the temple of Nin-Mah, located next to the Ishtar gate (pl. 108, fig. 1). In the center of the temple was a courtyard with a well; around the courtyard were asymmetrically located rooms for the priests, and in the north, at the end of the passage (obviously, behind the outer line of the wall), the altar. The temple of Gula (tower of healing) included in its plan two courtyards, the dwellings of the priests, a room for an oracle and a hospital. The vast area occupied by the main temple and the ziggurat (Plate 107, figs. 1a and 2) opened onto Marduk Street with grandiose double gates. Three days a year they were open for processions, the rest of the time they remained closed. The sanctuary itself consisted of six separate chapels dedicated to six gods.

A huge ziggurat dominated the entire inner city (Plate 107, fig. 3). The coloring of its tiers was, apparently, symbolic: the first floor was white, the second - black, the third - red, the fourth - blue, the fifth - scarlet (apparently purple-brown), the sixth - silver, the seventh - gold. The excavations have established only the site and the huge foundation pit of this "Tower of Babel". Reconstruction by R. Koldewey gives an image of a ziggurat rising vertically in a huge array, which is at odds with the traditional idea of ​​it as a stepped pyramid, but is closer to the data of the excavations in Ur (Plate 109, fig. 3). The traditional design (Plate 107, Fig. 3) represents a general view of the citadel of Babylon from across the river, from the side of the new city. The height of the Babylonian ziggurat was estimated at 90 m. Its base was a square with a side of 91.5 m. king's stamp. The outer color surface of its tiers was probably made with glazed cladding. The upper tier (temple) had two metal horns - a symbol of the solar deity.

Ishtar Gate. The gate of Ishtar, the goddess of love and fertility, especially popular in Mesopotamian religions, has been studied better than other monuments (Pl. 107, Fig. 4; Pl. 108, Fig. 4). The huge massive towers that flanked the vaulted entrance to the city were decorated with symmetrically arranged glazed brick reliefs 1.5 m wide and 1.10 m high (Plate 108, fig. 5). On a dark blue background, white or yellow bulls are depicted in relief, shown in motion. The brightness of the color and the extraordinary abundance of the enamel surface gave the entire decoration of the Ishtar gate a particularly picturesque character. The images of lions made of glazed bricks on the walls bordering the road in front of the gate belong to the same cycle. The proportions of the Ishtar gate - two towers and a vaulted passage between them - on the facade were obviously close to a square. The width of the walls along the river was 7.0 and 7.8 m.

House. The residential buildings of Babylon are little known to us. Herodotus' reports about three-four-story houses in Babylon itself, as well as about vaults and domes on them, have not yet been confirmed by archeology. The façade of the residential building overlooking the street was a windowless array with an entrance door covered by an arch (Plate 109, fig. 5). The walls were made of mud and were probably covered with white plaster. Inside the house there was a courtyard, where asymmetrically located living quarters opened, small in size, protected from the heat by very thick walls, which occupied up to 40 percent. total built-up area (See the description of the “southern type” residential building in the chapter “Architecture of the Ancient Mesopotamia”).

Table 108 Palace of Nebuchadnezzar (VI century BC). - 1. Plan (a - guard rooms, b - hanging gardens, c - court servants' quarters, d - courtyard with a well, e - Nebuchadnezzar's throne room, f - palaces and living quarters of the king). — 2. Reconstruction. - 3. Incision. — 4. Excavations of the Ishtar Gate; 7th-6th centuries BC. -5. Emolated brick relief from the Ishtar Gate (circa 570 BC).

Palace of Nebuchadnezzar. The palaces of Nebuchadnezzar are best studied. The main one, the southern one, was located in the old part of the city. He stood on a huge brick terrace reaching up to 30 m in height (Pl. 108, figs. 1 and 2; Pl. 107, fig. 16). The palace was divided into two parts, eastern and western, and according to the plan it was a trapezoid of not quite correct shape. The entrance was from the east, on one of the short sides. Five courtyards followed approximately the same axis, one after the other, uniting the palace complex. The first part, the eastern part, was assigned to the garrison of the palace, the guards. In the northern corner of the trapezoid, in the first part of the palace, on high brick vaults (Plate 108, fig. 1 b and fig. 3), the famous “hanging gardens of Babylon”, which antiquity ranked among the “seven wonders of the world." The western part of the palace, located on the sides of a small square courtyard, was intended for courtiers and employees. The main palace centers ”was the third, middle part, with a huge square courtyard, in the middle of which was the well of the city. To the south of this courtyard, according to the old Mesopotamian tradition, according to which the living quarters were located facing north, was the famous throne room of Nebuchadnezzar. Its facade was lined with glazed tiles. The throne room e, elongated in the transverse direction, was about 60 m long, its walls were about 7 m thick. There is no doubt that the hall was covered with a vault, the span of which should have reached 18 m. The tiled decoration of the hall's facade has been preserved. Rows of palm trees, lotus flowers and stylized columns with double capitals rose rhythmically against a dark blue background; the trunk of the columns was yellow, and the volutes of the capitals were blue (Plate 106, Fig. 9). Below, obviously, there was a lion frieze, beloved in Mesopotamia. The throne room had three symmetrically arranged entrances, but was devoid of windows.
One of the small doors in the back wall led to rooms from which the king emerged. The "new" western part of the palace, which had its own wall, adjoined the main palace; two square courtyards were not the centers of the living quarters of the king himself. The system of successive deployment along almost one axis of a series of courtyards that served as centers around which the complexes of premises were grouped is something new in comparison with the asymmetric and closed arrangement of parts of Sargon's palace.

Borsippa. The building activity of the neo-Babylonian kings was by no means limited to one capital. Borsippa, south of Babylon, can be cited as an example of the layout of a provincial city of this era (Plate 109, Fig. 6). The plan of this city formed a clear square, oriented not to the cardinal points, but to the direction of the winds. According to the data of Babylonian meteorology, "the favorable wind of the goddess Ishtar" was blowing from the northwest, and "a cloudy wind" bringing rain from the southeast; from the southwest, the "wind of storms", the god of war; these unpleasant winds were to be opposed by the strong walls and moat of the city. With mathematical precision, the city was divided by streets into regular squares.

In the middle of a large square, a small one was allocated - for the temple quarter. It is characteristic that the chapel of the local god Nebo, the temple and the ziggurat were located along an axis somewhat deviating from this mathematical correctness. This axis was a continuation of the street along which the king entered Borsippa and which, from the very gate, went at an angle to Nebo street, parallel to other main highways. It is interesting to note in the plan of Borsippa the reflection of the class composition of the Babylonian city. Noble people in the city settled in the northwestern area, separated from the city by a strip of childbirth. The ruler's palace was located on the shore of the lake, in the northern corner of the city.

The art of the ancient peoples of southern Mesopotamia is usually designated as Babylonian art; this name extends to the art of not only Babylon itself (early II millennium BC), but also the once independent Sumerian-Akkadian states (IV-III millennium BC), then united by Babylon. For the Babylonian culture can be considered the direct successor of the Sumero-Akkadian culture.

Architecture and construction

Babylonian architecture is characterized by the observance of the old traditions of the architecture of Mesopotamia: the whitewashed blank outer walls of temples and palaces were dissected only by alternating niches and ledges. All buildings were built from raw bricks.

The central temple of the city was dedicated to each patron god, it had its own estate economy, in which free and slaves worked, and later exclusively slaves. Residential buildings were built around the central temple, and later the palace complex.

Building was done spontaneously, between the houses there were unpaved curves and narrow alleys and dead ends. The houses were mostly rectangular in plan, without windows, and were illuminated through doorways. The patio was a must.

Outside, the house was surrounded by a mud wall. Many buildings had sewerage. The settlement was usually surrounded from the outside by a fortress wall, which reached a considerable thickness. This type of settlement, characteristic of Mesopotamia, finally takes shape by the end of the 4th - beginning of the 3rd millennium BC.

In Mesopotamia, they tried to build on elevated places, which to some extent protected from frequent, sometimes catastrophic floods, the temple stood on a high platform, to which stairs or ramps led from two sides. The sanctuary of the temple, usually rectangular, sometimes oval, was shifted, as a rule, to the edge of the platform and had an open courtyard.

In the depths of the sanctuary was a statue of a deity, to whom the temple was dedicated. Until the beginning of the 3rd millennium, access to all parts of the temple was free, but later the uninitiated were not allowed into the sanctuary, as well as into the courtyard surrounding the sanctuary. The main and almost the only element of the decor was the division of the outer and inner walls with narrow rectangular niches. It is possible that the temples were painted from the inside, but in the humid climate of Mesopotamia, the paintings could not be preserved for a long time. The only temple of early times with murals, which is known to us so far, is the temple in Tell-Uqair: the altar of the temple, its inner walls and columns of the entrance were covered with polychrome painting (of course, not a fresco - the walls were simply painted dry) with geometric patterns and images of animals in soft reddish-brown tones.

A peculiar and atypical building found in Uruk. Like most monuments of Sumerian architecture, it has come down to us in ruins. The age of mud-brick construction is short-lived, and clay, more precisely, mud brick molded from it, often with an admixture of chopped straw or reed, was the only building material in Mesopotamia. Floor beams and doors were wooden, and imported wood was valued so dearly that moving from one house to another usually took the wooden parts of the house with them. The building was a vast closed courtyard, surrounded by columns and semi-columns with a stage platform at one end of the courtyard and side stairs leading to it. The uniqueness of this building, apparently, is associated with its public purpose - apparently, a building for public meetings, which is typical for the period of primitive communal democracy (very short in the history of Mesopotamia).

From the middle of the III millennium BC. the rulers of Mesopotamia began to build palaces for themselves with many courtyards, sometimes with a separate outer fortress wall. One of the early palaces of this type is the so-called "Palace A" in Kish. This is the first example of a combination in the Sumerian construction of a secular building and a fortress - a system of bypass walls protected the palace not only from the enemy, but also from the inhabitants of the city "Babylon was not only a very large city, but also the most beautiful of all the cities that I know" - wrote Herodotus.

The appearance of the city in the Neo-Babylonian period.

With the help of archaeological discoveries and ancient literary texts, it has become possible in part to resurrect Babylon, at least in our imagination. In addition to the writings of Herodotus of the fifth century BC. (the accuracy of which, in describing the facts, must leave the reader in some doubt), we have a detailed corpus of cuneiform writing about the city. Although the high water table prevented archaeologists from "digging deep into Babylon's past," at least a fairly detailed picture of the city's later period, from the 6th century B.C. This is explained, perhaps by the fact that Herodotus visited Babylon during the reign of the famous Nebuchadnezzar.

The form of the city was outlined by the Euphrates, which since ancient times divided it into two unequal parts: the "old city" in the east and the smaller "new city" in the west. Between them, the Euphrates flowed from north to south along the main channels, which "watered" each of the two parts. In the eastern part of the city was the royal palace and the main religious buildings of the city.

Called by Nebuchadnezzar "a miracle of mankind, the center of the earth, a bright and majestic place of residence," the royal palace was located on the northern edge of the old city, near the fortress. The hill in the direction of the northeastern corner of the palace was probably the site of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Only the cellars of this structure have survived, representing an irregular quadrangle in plan, the walls of which carried the weight hanging gardens located at the height of the walls of the palace. The ground part of the building apparently consisted of a series of powerful pillars or walls covered with vaults, judging by the surviving underground part, which consisted of fourteen vaulted inner chambers - a series of earthen terraces that supported tree plantings. Supposedly it was an "architectural gift" from Nebuchadnezzar to his Persian wife, who longed for the scenery of her mountainous homeland.

To the south of the palace, at the junction with the Euphrates, there were two buildings dedicated to the gods. The first was the majestic ziggurat, a step pyramid 91.5 meters high on a square platform whose side was approximately 91.5 meters long. The center of the structure was made of sun-dried bricks encased in a layer of fired bricks. The platform rose seven steps of decreasing size each, and was crowned with a sanctuary, which was approached by a wide staircase. At the top of the ziggurat, priests performed rituals and said prayers on behalf of the masses of people who gathered at the foot of the building. The ziggurat of Etemenanki was called - "The House of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth."

To the south of the ziggurat was a temple complex dedicated to the patron god of Babylon Marduk and his divine wife. Called Esagila - "The House That Exalts His Head", in his sanctuary had metal-plated or gilded walls and ceiling.

Throughout the city there were many hundreds of altars and sanctuaries so that the Babylonians could serve their gods, in order to receive gifts from them in connection with this.

The whole city was surrounded by a protective moat and a brick wall, equipped with signal towers located at 20-meter intervals. The wall was approximately 8 km long and, according to Herodotus, "was wide enough to allow a four-horse chariot to turn around on its raised platform." Separate fragments of the walls crashed into the banks of the Euphrates, since its path, as mentioned above, crossed the city.

Nine extremely fortified gates, each named after a deity, provided pedestrian access to the network of streets and districts of the city and to rural settlements outside it. The restored Ishtar Gate is now in the Berlin Museum, with superbly sculpted bulls and dragons shimmering in colorful glazed brick.

Outside the city walls, in the northeast, there was a special temple for the celebration of the local "New Year's Festival". It was connected to the city by a celebratory street called the "Processional Way", which passed through the "Gate of Ishtar", next to the palace and the ziggurat, and then turned west to cross the Euphrates by a bridge leading to the residential quarters of the "new city".

Before his death, Alexander the Great conceived the superstructure of the ziggurat of Babylon. The upper part was torn down, only to presumably be restored to great brilliance. But the conqueror was not destined to live to see the implementation of this project. Over the following centuries, the scattered bricks were taken apart by the peasants for the implementation of much more modest plans, that is, the repair of their homes.

It is impossible to form a complete picture of Babylon without characterizing its cultural life. But, unfortunately, only a few evidence of the flourishing of art in this city-state has come down to us. It should be noted the preserved monuments of Babylon, discovered by archaeologists in other, sometimes remote places. So, in Susa, the city of the state of Elam, neighboring Babylon, the famous "Stela of Hammurabi" was found - a set of royal laws carved in stone and immortalizing not the military, but the cultural deeds of the ruler. The stele in its upper part contained a relief image of the king himself, receiving symbols of power from Shamash, the god of the sun and justice. The picturesque elaboration of the folds of clothing, the softly sculpted faces of Hammurabi and the deity in front of whom he faces, the style of transferring the muscles of the body indicate that the art of Babylon developed under the strong influence of the art of Sumer and especially Akkad. But in the Babylonian sculpture there is more tranquility. It bears the trace of a solemn ritual established at court. This is manifested both in the slow gesture of Hammurabi's hand extended to the god Shamash, and in the reverent restraint of his facial expression, in the smoothness of the outline of his clothes.

Features of the Babylonian culture can be traced more clearly in the monuments of the neighboring states of Elam and Mari. In them, one can more accurately capture those, at first glance, inconspicuous changes and shifts that distinguish Babylonian works from Sumerian ones. So, the famous alabaster statue of the 18th century. BC. the goddess of love, fertility and beauty, Ishtar (the personification of the planet Venus), although close to the Sumerian images of Inanna, attracts a number of new features. A small figurine, only about a meter high, shows the goddess in the prime of her youthful beauty. The master first of all emphasizes her charming femininity. The figure of Ishtar is slender and proportionate. Under a light, only conditionally outlined fabric, a high chest shines through, a thin waist is indicated. A heavy, bell-shaped skirt elongates the proportions, smoothes the lines of the body. But the brightest is the goddess's youthful face, with a chiseled chin, high cheekbones and a small mouth, framed by thick strands of lush hair falling over her shoulders. The head is crowned with a high horned tiara, which gives great significance to the whole appearance of the goddess. One can imagine what impression this statue made on the worshipers. After all, her hands, easily and naturally holding a massive jug at the waist, connected, in turn, with a complex system of drains, were considered to have a sacred gift to exude clear water on a hot day. Although the statue does not reveal movement and its legs, protruding from under the heavy folds of the skirt, are tightly closed, it is devoid of that stiffness and pillar-like monumentality that distinguished the statues of previous centuries.

Certain innovations can also be seen in the decoration of the palaces and temples of Elam and Mari. The powerful five-step ziggurat (13th century BC) of the religious center of Elam Dur-Untash, now Choga-Zambil, is much more elaborate in its details than the Sumerian ziggurats. It includes brights, vaulted rooms and passages. The palace of the ruler of Mari, Zimrilim, with its multi-colored wall paintings in bluish-green, brown and ocher tones, bears clear traces of the influence of Egyptian culture.