CONSTRUCTION

Houses were generally built of locally available materials, but for palaces and temples, city walls, and other public buildings the materials, which often included such things as as cedar beams, decorative stones, and precious metals, were drawn from a wide area and the work of their construction would be undertaken by large sectors of the community, including both laborers and specialists such as architects, builders, stonemasons, carpenters, painters, and those skilled in creating inlays. Some of the reliefs in the Neo-Assyrian palaces depict the work of quarrying stone and creating and transporting the huge statues of winged bulls that guarded the palace entrances; texts often detail the materials used and the effort expended in obtaining them, and the records indicate the size of the labor force. The quantities of bricks required for public buildings could be vast. For example, the archaeologist Max Mallowan calculated that the city wall at Kalhu required in the region of 70 million bricks, which, at the rate of brick-laying recorded in Assyrian times, would have taken 700,000 man-days to lay.

The symbolic beginning of the construction of a temple was performed by the king, who carried the first basket of soil (see photo p. 20) or made the first brick, as is stated in royal inscriptions and vividly shown in carved reliefs or stone or metal pegs incorporated into the buildings. Inscribed clay cylinders,

Reed huts of the Marsh Arabs, Chebayish, southern Iraq. The inhabitants of the region in ancient times dwelt in similar structures. (Corel Corp.)

Cones or tablets, and votive deposits of beads or protective figurines might be placed within the foundations. In Ashurnasirpal's palace at Kalhu the excavators found a gazelle beneath the paving of a passage and miniature pots and sheep bones beneath the floor of one of the rooms in the domestic wing.

Building Materials

The nomads who traveled through regions of Mesopotamia dwelt in tents, probably constructed of skins or cloth over wooden poles or branches, but the majority of Mesopotamians lived in houses.

Reeds. In southern Mesopotamia and particularly in the marshy region around the head of the Gulf, buildings could be constructed of reeds, bound together in bundles and covered with reed mats. Some fourth-millennium seals depict houses or farm buildings of reed bundles, and the rarity of early settlements detected in the region could reflect the widespread use of such structures. The tall bundles that flanked the entrance to these buildings were the symbol of the goddess Inanna, probably originally the numen of the storehouse. Reed structures built by the Marsh Arabs of modern times demonstrate

The material's versatility, allowing the construction of substantial and beautiful halls (mudhifs).

Mud. The most widely available material for construction was mud, which was mixed with straw, dung, or another temper such as sand. This could be simply used as tauf (pise—packed mud) to build house walls but was generally made into bricks (see photo p. 72). The latter were shaped by hand or formed in molds and dried in the sun. Early bricks were rectangular but in the ED period plano-convex bricks were made. Shaped like a low loaf of bread, they had the advantage of allowing unskilled laborers rapidly to construct walls by laying them in herringbone courses of alternating bricks on their sides, held in place by liberal applications of mud mortar. Later bricks were generally square.

Bricks could also be fired in a kiln or brick stack. Baked bricks were used for the lowest courses of walls, for drains, where bitumen was employed to make them watertight, and for paved courtyards and other exposed architecture such as the facades of buildings; important buildings, such as the ziggu-rat at Ur (see photo p. 201), might be encased in baked bricks as a protection against the elements. The use of bitumen as a mortar, particularly in the construction of large structures such as city walls, also provided an effective protection against damp. Courses of reed matting and layers of bitumen were interspersed between those of brick in the construction of ziggurats to counteract rising damp from the foundations, and weepholes also assisted drainage and prevented damp decay. Bitumen was also employed as a waterproofing material for bathrooms and constructional timbers such as doors. Brick walls were often plastered to protect them against rain. Mud could be used as the plaster but a stronger and more attractive plaster was made of gypsum or lime, made by burning limestone. Floors could also be plastered but were often just of beaten earth.

By the later second millennium bricks were occasionally molded into more ambitious shapes. An early example of this is in the Kassite temple of Innin (Inanna) at Uruk, where walls were decorated with statues of water and mountain deities built up of courses of specially molded bricks, each bearing a section of the design. The glazed low-relief images of dragons, bulls, and lions that adorn the Ishtar Gate (see photo p. 34) and the walls of the Processional Way and the bricks that decorate the throne room entrance at Babylon are the culmination of the technique. Flat glazed ornamental bricks were also found in Assyrian cities, including Kalhu, and in Fort Shalmaneser they depicted a magnificent gateway in which stood two figures of King Shalmaneser beneath the winged disc of Ashur.

Early brick-built temples were strengthened with buttresses. Making a virtue of necessity these soon became a decorative feature too, relieving the monotony of the brick walls and creating patterns of light and shade. These were echoed in the interior by recesses. The constraints of roofing using brick also led to the early development of arches, used above doors in houses and tombs, and brick-built barrel or corbelled vaults, seen, for example, in ED tombs at Ur where they were also executed in limestone.

Stone. In northern Mesopotamia where stone was more easily acquired, the foundations and lower courses of houses and walls were often made of stone. Stone came into more common use in first-millennium Assyria when the brick walls of palaces were clad in stone slabs decorated with low-relief carvings. In the south, where most stone had to be imported, it was less commonly used, but construction in stone did occur. An early and probably experimental example was the Limestone Temple in the Eanna precinct of fourth-millennium Uruk. Another early temple here was built of limestone in conjunction with a mixture of crushed baked brick and gypsum, which formed a sort of concrete. Some of the tombs in the Ur Royal Cemetery were built of stone. Diorite and other types of stone were used for some architectural elements, such as the sockets in which the door pole turned. Sometimes the bottom of the pole was fitted with a copper or bronze shoe. Limestone slabs were used for paving, for instance in Fort Shalmaneser at Kalhu.

Wood. Although some buildings had brick vaults, the roofs of most were constructed of timber beams over which reed mats or palm fronds were laid then covered with mud plaster. The beams needed to roof houses could be made of trees that grew in Mesopotamia, such as date palm, pine, and poplar, but for larger buildings such as temples, more massive beams were required. These came from imported trees, particularly cedar from the Amanus Mountains. Timber was also used to make doors, window frames, and other fittings. Cedar, being aromatic, was also favored for constructing palace and temple doors, which would give off a delightful scent as they were opened or closed, but for most people and buildings lesser timbers such as pine and boxwood sufficed. Wooden pillars might support a first-floor balcony in houses, and timber centering could be used to give support to brick and stone vaults.

Decoration. Uruk-period temples were often decorated with cone mosaics: geometric designs constructed from clay cones whose flat surface was painted, usually red, black, and white, and which were embedded into the wall plaster so that only the painted surface was visible. In one example from Eanna in Uruk, the clay cones were replaced with cones of colored stone. As well as being decorative, cone mosaics reinforced the surface of these structures, which at Uruk included semi-engaged pillars. Using a similar technique, large clay nails with glazed heads were used to decorate the temple of Nabu in the Assyrian city of Dur-Sharrukin.

The plaster walls of buildings could be brightened up by being painted, although traces of these paintings have rarely survived. One exception is the Uruk-period temple at Uqair, where the inside walls were painted with geometric designs and animals including leopards. Another is the early-second-millennium palace at Mari. Here many of the public rooms had painted decoration: murals showing offerings to the god Sin and the goddess Ishtar in the latter's shrine; the investiture scene in the Court of Palms; and the hunting scenes and other royal activities on the walls of the king's apartments. Many paintings survive on the walls of the eighth-century provincial palace of Til

A relief from the palace of Sargon II (721-705 B. C.E.) at Dur Sharrukin showing Phoenicians transporting timber by boat from the Levant to Assyria. (Gianni Dagli Orti/Corbis)

Barsip, where the king is shown in audience and on the hunting field. Paintings are also known from other palaces, such as the floral and geometric murals at Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, the figures of courtiers on the walls of Dur-Kurigalzu, the magnificent royal scene from Dur Sharrukin, and the painted decoration at Fort Shalmaneser in Kalhu, including a procession of eunuchs in the queen's apartments. The latter has been analyzed, revealing that it was executed on a plaster base composed of clay, chalk, and fine sand, covered by a finer light brown plaster. On this the designs were painted using iron-based pigments for red and brown, carbon for black, Egyptian blue (an artificial copper carbon silicate), and a mixture of limestone and gypsum for white. In other paintings lapis lazuli and copper oxide were also used for blue, bitumen for black, and malachite for green. Paint was probably applied to many of the stone reliefs and statues of Assyrian palaces and to the tiers of ziggurats: These

Traditionally were colored (from bottom to top) white, black, red, blue, orange, silver, and gold.

Panels of aromatic wood might also decorate the walls of major buildings, or they might be hung with carpets or textiles. Carpets may also have been laid on the floors: In Nineveh stone imitations of such carpets, beautifully patterned and with tasseled edges, were carved on some of the floors. From the later second millennium external walls were sometimes decorated with glazed bricks, of brilliant blue, orange, green, yellow, red, and white. In the Assyrian palaces of the first millennium, the walls were often faced with carved stone relief scenes depicting military victories, lion hunts, and other royal achievements: powerful propaganda reinforcing the divinely accepted authority of the regime. Stone statues of imposing size depicting winged bulls and lions guarded the gateways of these palaces (see photos pp. 28, 104, 106, 169, 180).