Fig. 26 Map of Nineveh made by Felix Jones in 1852 showing the walls, the two citadels, and modern Mosul across the Tigris.
Part of the reason that the subject was neglected for so long lies in lack of explicit cuneiform texts on the subject. Before the days of printing and of technical university education, the knowledge required to practise such a field of expertise as water management was gained through the apprenticeship of a family member, natural or adopted. A man would thus be responsible in the most personal way for handing on his own knowledge and skill and that of his colleagues. Almost all of it would be done without a need for written manuals or records of projects. There are two exceptions: the basic mathematical exercises written by schoolboys who learned to calculate, for instance, the man-days required to build a dyke of particular dimensions; and the detailed reports to the king by regional governors concerning the regulation of river flow and maintenance of canals, weirs and sluices. The former are known mainly during the early second millennium BC, and are barely relevant. Of the latter, the most extensive is the correspondence of the governor of Saggaratum, a town on the lower Habur river, around 1800 BC.3 He served under king Zimri-Lim of Mari, a city on the Euphrates just downstream from the Habur, which depended on the regulation of water flow from Saggaratum for the irrigation of its crops, and for the safe passage of boats; a long canal ran alongside the Habur and bypassed the mouth of the river where it joined the Euphrates. His letters contain many poorly understood technical terms for weirs, sluices, dykes and the activities associated with them, so that accurate translation is impossible; but a sharp sense of urgency for getting the right labour force in place is often expressed with the fear of dire consequences for failure. Letters of a similar kind must have been written throughout the centuries in every great city of Mesopotamia. The only royal inscription known to us that describes engineering for water management at length is Sennacherib’s Bavian Inscription. It was chiselled into a rock face overlooking the headwaters of the new scheme.
Most of the early progress in water management can be traced only by archaeologists, and can be hard to date with precision. Several centuries before the lifetime of Sennacherib the qanat system had been developed in the region now in modern Oman and Abu Dhabi,4 where it allowed a sudden expansion in the size of settlements (see Figure 27). Qanat refers to the system of collecting water that seeps from rock through a long line of tunnels leading from near the foot of a mountain to a settlement far beyond the mountain. Each tunnel was perforated at intervals with vertical shafts for access. Relieving people of the need to haul water up from deep wells, or fetch from a distance, the system is likely to have originated where rivers were rare and ground water deep. In an area where shaft mines were sunk into rock, observation of seepage through underground rock and soil is likely to have stimulated the invention. Such an environment is to be found in modern Oman, where the Hajar mountain range—ancient Agarum—was exploited for its copper over many centuries. Where mountain water drains down underground to supply the great oasis of Al-Ain–Buraimi (now on Oman’s border with Abu Dhabi), aflaj have been traced with their dependent settlements, dating from around 1000 BC. The term qanat in Iraqi and Syrian Arabic, derived from Akkadian qanû ‘reed; pipe’, is known as falaj (plural aflaj) in Oman, a word derived from Akkadian palgu ‘ditch, water channel’, and it is significant that both words have close links with the Assyrian language used in the time of Sennacherib. The Assyrians of the 7th century were in contact with that distant area: Sennacherib’s grandson Ashurbanipal received tribute from Izki in Oman, a town which still bears that name.5 The qanat system was eventually adopted by the Achaemenid Persians, who are erroneously credited with its invention.6
Fig. 27 Diagram to show a qanat: aerial view and side section.
Contrary to assertions (based on the misinterpretation of an Akkadian text) that the Urartians of eastern Anatolia used qanats in the 9th to 7th centuries BC,7 the qanat is not found among Urartian waterworks. Nevertheless, the 50 km-long ‘Semiramis’ canal built by their king Menua (c.810–785) bears testimony to how the Urartians were able to expand their settlements by ingenious and energetic management of water in other ways. In western Iran another 50 km-long open canal, now known as the canal of Darius, was not built by him, for we can now read an inscription on it: its actual builder was an Elamite king of the 14th century BC.8
Ashurnasirpal II in the 9th century BC used a construction largely comparable to the qanat for his tunnel at Negoub, tunnelling through intransigent conglomerate rock with vertical access shafts from the surface at intervals (see Plate 2).9 But it was not a true qanat, for by this method river water, rather than seepage through rock and soil, was diverted to his palace and garden at Nimrud. Sennacherib made a similar construction at Arbela, probably also to bring river water to an appropriate point. Only the entrance to this tunnel has been found, bearing his inscription:
Three rivers which (flow) from Mt. Hani, a mountain above Arbela, (and) the water of the tributaries that are to the right and left sides of those rivers, I channelled and incorporated them. I dug out a canal and caused its flow to go straight through Arbela, residence of Ishtar, the exalted lady.10
As discussed in the previous chapter in connection with Archimedes and the invention of the water-raising screw, the phenomenon of the named inventor or culture hero in Greek tradition stands in sharp contrast to the anonymity of non-royal inventors and high achievers in the Ancient Near East. In Assyrian tradition we do not know who engineered Sennacherib’s aqueduct and adjacent watercourses, but in Greek tradition we do know that an engineer named Eupolinos constructed a tunnel and water system for Polycrates on Samos less than two centuries later, which shows how recognition for individual achievement in Greek society was different from that of the ancient Near East. Only by archaeological research can we be sure of identifying prior invention: recent discoveries of a tunnel with shafts, to supply water in Bronze Age Troy, dated to the third millennium BC,11 and an elaborate system for controlling water around Lake Copais near Thebes in Mycenaean Greece,12 dated to the mid second millennium BC, show that we have underestimated the ingenuity and achievements of anonymous people in earlier times.
What instruments were used? Quite precise survey work is required to construct long watercourses over uneven terrain. Neither texts nor sculptures offer information. The Assyrian king, whose prerogative was the building, beautifying and repair of temples, is sometimes shown standing before a god who holds out to him a rod and a ring of coiled rope, as if to emphasize the duty, divinely ordained, of the ruler to his god in the matter of surveying and measuring land. Much can be done with a measuring rod (Akkadian ginindanakku) and a long string of specified length (ašlu), and there is no evidence for the existence of more sophisticated devices. However, to make the alignment required for the qanat-type of tunnel with shafts made for Nimrud by Ashurnasirpal in the 9th century, and the similar tunnel made for Arbela by Sennacherib in the early 7th, it is likely that the suspended sighting tube was used.13 The ideal gradient for which the engineers aimed has been reckoned at one metre per kilometre.14
Stone aqueducts in the shape of long bridges for carrying water over a valley are commonly associated with Roman engineering. Bridges built to span short widths of water, as opposed to pontoon bridges made of rafts strung together for wide rivers, were probably a feature of many Mesopotamian cities at earlier periods. Sargon had built a bridge with a single arch on his citadel at Khorsabad, though not crossing a river bed,15 and there are examples of ancient bridges that are older still, such as stone bridges with arched culverts, of Mycenaean date.16 Where Sennacherib’s watercourse guided water across the wadi (a valley down which water flows intermittently) at Jerwan, it passed along a stone aqueduct supported by a row of pointed arches and buttresses. Its width without the buttresses is 22 m, and the total length more than 280 m (see Figure 31 and Plate 12).17
Sennacherib would have benefited from the experience of his father’s schem
es to supply the new capital at Khorsabad with water. Sargon described his installations with extreme brevity, using ambiguous and rare vocabulary that can be translated in different ways according to the preconceptions of the translator.18
(Sargon) the clever king, who thinks of good things, who put his mind to settling people on uncultivated ground and opening up neglected land for planting orchards, at that time over a spring (namba’e) at the foot of Mt Muṣri, a mountain above Nineveh, built a city and called it Fort of Sargon. A high garden (kirimāhu) in the image of the Amanus mountains in which all the aromatic plants of northern Syria, fruits of the mountains, are planted, I built beside it.19
Another inscription adds:
to open up springs (innī) in an area without water-sources (kuppī) as karattu (unknown word) and to raise up the waters of abundance above and below like the gushing of flood-water.20
Sargon used the word kirimāhu for the first time. As already discussed in the context of Sennacherib’s prism inscription, it referred to a landscape garden, set upon the high citadel alongside the palace. In Sargon’s case the whole citadel was an entirely artificial construction, imitating an ancient city, towering above the level of the surrounding fields. His phrase ‘to raise up the waters of abundance above and below’ must refer to methods by which he supplied the citadel with water. The drains built for the buildings on the citadel at Khorsabad are so magnificent that one supposes a vast amount of water was anticipated. One system collected water from roofs, upper storeys and courtyards through vertical pipes, then led it through under-floor piping, made of interlocking terracotta sections, away from the building. Another system collected sewage from comfortable lavatories consisting of a stone or brick seat with a central hole; the effluent fell down a pipe into a sewer, big enough for a man to walk upright along its length. It was vaulted with baked brick, and waterproofed with bitumen (see Figure 25). Presumably this great sewer collected from many sources and led the sewage outside the citadel wall.21 The whole system must have been planned coherently before the buildings were begun. These remarkable installations show that daily comfort and convenience were just as important as ostentation and superficial grandeur.
Whether Sargon’s engineers succeeded in matching the water supply to the drainage system may be questioned; one wonders whether Sennacherib decided to set up Nineveh as his capital because only there could he access the water of the river Khosr and its many tributaries. Sargon credited the god Ea–Nishiku with the power to provide water, as did his son, and he wrote a prayer on the threshold to the temple he built to Ea on the citadel:
O Nishiku, lord of wisdom, creator of all and everything, for Sargon king of the world, king of Assyria, governor of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, builder of your shrine: Open up for me your depths, bring for me its water-sources, make the waters of abundance and prosperity irrigate for me in its environs! Decree for his destiny broad understanding and wide intelligence, perfect his works and may he achieve his desire.22
Whereas Sargon had built up terraces for his new citadel at Khorsabad, Sennacherib took over a citadel already high from the debris of more than 2,000 years of building. The South-West Palace of Sennacherib, built on top of the old citadel at Nineveh, stood beside its garden which was elevated on a series of artificial terraces, with an aqueduct bringing in water halfway up the garden.23 Those great building works were one end-product of a tremendous feat of engineering and water management which was executed in four phases.24 The various inscriptions do not acknowledge the extent to which Sennacherib relied on the work done by previous kings, but he supplies an unparalleled wealth of detail. All the texts are remarkable for the detailed interest shown in engineering, a characteristic so striking that it can only mirror the king’s personal predilections. When one considers the huge scale of operations, one can only admire the fact that the king, beginning as soon as he came to the throne, had completed all four phases within fifteen years (see Figure 28).
The river Khosr flows through the middle of Nineveh so that the city is divided into two separate parts, each with its own high citadel: Kouyunjik on which the great palaces were found, and Nebi Yunus (see Figure 34b). It joins the river Tigris on the western side of the city.25 At most seasons the water in the Tigris is quite clean and drinkable, but in spring and early summer, when the snows in the mountains are melting, the turbulence of extra water stirs up dirt, causing temporary unpleasantness. Moreover, the bed of the Tigris on the western side of the city lies many metres lower than the neo-Assyrian citadel, and the difference in height makes it very hard to raise water to the citadel, too high even using banks of shadufs. The water of the river Khosr is always fresh and clean, having made a fairly direct journey from the mountains some 80 km away, and tumbles down quite steeply into the Tigris. But the advantage of purity is coupled with the disadvantage that it is prone to violent spate when snows melt fast or when rain falls torrentially. In that condition it threatened the very walls of Nineveh, especially the part of the Kouyunjik citadel where the South-West Palace was situated. The king explained how such floods in the past had damaged the palace of his predecessors and had washed away some old royal tombs. If harnessed carefully, using the height of its upper courses to lead off canals, the river water could be used to create gardens and orchards around the city, and to provide good drinking water for the citizens.26
Fig. 28 Sketch map to show rivers, canals and roads to the north-east of Nineveh.
During the past century several different scholars have contributed to the complicated task of understanding these networks, through surface survey and, most recently, the use of satellite photographs.27
On rock faces at the head of the main systems, sculptured panels of bas-reliefs showed the king and processions of gods, the best preserved being at Maltai and Khinnis (see Figures 29, 30, 32, and Plates 11, 13). For lesser canals an occasional niche in a suitable expanse of rock contains the figure of the king. At least 13 such places with niches or panels have been located; 18 canals are referred to in the first stage of the project, 16 in a later phase. The long but damaged Bavian inscription, engraved into the rock high up overlooking the first stretch of canal, gives an overall account of all the different networks.28 Each scheme had reservoirs, dams, weirs and sluices associated with it for regulating the flow and making the best possible use of the water at different times of year, at seasons of excess and seasons of shortage.
In the first project a canal about 13.4 km long was cut from the village of Kisiri to Nineveh, to control the flow of the lower course of the Khosr. Designed to water orchards to the north of the citadel mound, it may have run from the Shallalat dam, which still survives today, and was a favourite picnic spot for Agatha Christie and the British archaeologists excavating at Nimrud in the mid 20th century.29 It was one of Sennacherib’s earliest projects, carried out around 705–703 BC, and is often known as the Kisiri canal.
In a second phase another canal was constructed to the south-east of the first one, controlling the flow of water that drained from Mt. Muṣri (modern Jebel Bashiqah), and it joined the Khosr just outside Nineveh. This canal, often known as the Muṣri canal, was about the same length as the first one, and may have incorporated canals built by Sargon.
In a third, and far more ambitious phase, referred to as the ‘northern system’, a channel may have begun at Maltai, and perhaps joined a huge canal located near the village of Faida, then possibly joining up with the Bandwai canal, eventually flowing along a terrace beside the Tigris and bringing water to the town Tarbiṣu north of Nineveh. This was built some time after 694, following the building of a new city wall and ditch around Nineveh in c.696.
The fourth system, created around 688, is the one best known because of the work of Jacobsen and Lloyd. The source is in the mountains at Khinnis, on the Gomel river, where water is channelled into a dam and flows out alongside the river but at an ever higher level, skirting a mountain to leave the Gomel river and cross a different river at Jer
wan, collecting more and more water from joining streams and springs at many points, eventually joining the Khosr (see Plates 9, 10). By the time it reached Nineveh, the water had flowed along man-made channels for some 90 km. Because the beginnings of this last canal are quite remote, the remains are still visible and can be traced rather better than the earlier canals.
The author visited Bavian–Khinnis in 1967. There the natural river comes out from a gorge and begins a steep descent in the direction of Nineveh. It is a place of great beauty, with marvellous views to the south-west across patches of meadowland bright with flowers and delicate grasses. On vertical rock faces the Assyrians carved panels of sculpture showing the king, stately and dignified, facing the many great gods who favoured and supported his enterprises. On some panels he holds the rod and ring of kingship, or extends his arm towards a deity who offers those symbols to him (see Figures 29, 30, Plate 11). A square, rock-cut cistern with statues of lions on opposing sides allows water to collect and to spout through the mouths of the lions, a fountain providing a convenient and elegant drinking-place for the sculptors and engineers who spent weeks there working on the project. The long inscription, devoted to details of construction of all four projects, was chiselled on another rock face.30 In accordance with traditional procedure for composing royal narratives, highlights from the text were copied for re-use in subsequent inscriptions, and edited for different locations.
The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced Page 11