Iraq http://journals.cambridge.org/IRQ Additional services for Iraq: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here ON BABYLONIAN LAVATORIES AND SEWERS A.R. George Iraq / Volume 77 / Issue 01 / December 2015, pp 75 - 106 DOI: 10.1017/irq.2015.9, Published online: 05 January 2016 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0021088915000091 How to cite this article: A.R. George (2015). ON BABYLONIAN LAVATORIES AND SEWERS. Iraq, 77, pp 75-106 doi:10.1017/ irq.2015.9 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/IRQ, IP address: 86.21.165.92 on 09 Jan 2016 IRAQ(2015)7775–106Doi:10.1017/irq.2015.9 75 ON BABYLONIAN LAVATORIES AND SEWERS* ByA.R.GEORGE Thisstudybeginsbyexaminingthearchaeologicalanddocumentaryevidenceforlavatories(toilets)andfoul- water drains in ancient Mesopotamian dwelling houses. It goes on to investigate the use, etymology and historyof the Akkadian word asurrû: in the Old Babylonian period it served mainlyas aterm for a kind of foul-waterdrainor“sewer”butlatershedthatmeaning. Introduction ItmightbesaidthatthestudyofancientMesopotamiaowesagreatdealtothelavatory(a.k.a.toilet). The many thousands of cuneiform tablets from the royal libraries of Ashurbanipal, excavated in the 1850s on the mound Kuyunjik at Nineveh and now housed in the British Museum, form the foundation stone of the field of Assyriology. Many of them were discovered in Room XLI of the palace of Sennacherib, Ashurbanipal’sgrandfather, a chamber that wasidentified byits excavator, Austen Henry Layard, as an archive room (he called it the Chamber of Records). Because different fragments of the same tablets were found scattered on both sides of the wall that separated Room XLI and the unconnected gallery Room XLIX, the pioneer Assyriologist and archaeologist George Smith assumed that Room XLI was not the tablets’ place oforigin, but that they had fallen into this space from the storey above when the ceiling and floor collapsed during the burning of the citadel of Nineveh in 612 B.C. Because it is now thought unlikely that the building actually had anupper storey, the mound of tablets lying on the floorof Room XLI must have owed its presence there to some other reason; perhaps it was a dump where the Babylonian intelligence agency discarded what it did not need.1 The chamber’s function can then be determined by its size, location and layout, rather than by its contents. Accordingly John Russell, the modern expert on Sennacherib’s palace, considers that the “original use of Room XL, judging from the wall niche, was as a bathroom” (Russell 1991: 66–67).2 Room XLI lay between this bathroom and a large reception room (XXIX), so Layard’s Chamber of Records, the final resting place of much of the Assyrian royal libraries, can now be identified as the anteroom of a royal lavatory. NoonedoubtsthatancientMesopotamianpalaceswereprovidedwithbathroomsandlavatories. But how was it for the common people? Were their dwelling houses also equipped with such amenities? In his book on The Ancient Mesopotamian City, Marc Van De Mieroop called attention to the threat that contaminatedwater supplies posed to life in ancient urban centres. He wrote(1997:159): Thentherewastheproblemofhumanwaste.Archaeologicalevidenceoflatrinesinprivatehousesislacking, andpublictoiletsdonotseemtohaveexistedeither.Peoplecoulddefecateinfieldsandorchards… When reading this for the first time a disturbing vision arose in which even the grandest of Babylonian ladies, when feeling a little discomforted at night, had to leave her chamber, cross the *Itismostfelicitousthatthepublicationofthisarticletakes 1ImaginingascenariomuchasinMari1100yearsbefore: place in avolume of Iraq that honours Dominique Collon, thevictorssortedthepalacearchivesforpoliticalandmilitary fromwhomIlearnedmuchwhenweco-editedthejournalfor intelligence(Charpin1995).Ithasbeenobservedthatvery sixteenissues.Iampleasedthatshewillfindwithinacylinder few state documents from the last three decades of the seal(Fig.12),butregretthatitwillbedisappointinglyfamiliar. AssyrianempirewererecoveredatNineveh(Parpola1986). Iamgratefultoaudiencesatpapersgivenbetween1998and Maybe they were too valuable to the conquerors to leave 2003inLondon,CambridgeandHeidelberg,andin2014in behind. Oxford and Cambridge, for their guidance, help and 2ButseeReade1986:219–20,whodoesnotruleoutthe suggestions in connection with the research that led to this chambers’permanentuseforstoringtablets,i.e.asarchive article;andtoBirgerHelgestadforsupplyingFig.6. rooms. IraqLXXVII(2015) ©TheBritishInstitutefortheStudyofIraq2015 76 A.R.GEORGE courtyard,unboltthefrontdoor,hurryalongthestreets,waketheguardatthecitygate,ignorehis curses, avoid the attentions of wild dogs and other animals, finally to find relief in a convenient field or date-grove. Since then, in a chapter entitled “Urban form in the first millennium BC”, Heather Baker has made general statements about lavatories in Babylonian houses that help to dispelthistroublingpicture(Baker2007:73): Bathroomstendtobefoundinprivatehouseswhichareofalargerthanaveragesize,andonlyveryfewbuilt toiletshavebeensecurelyidentified.Presumablyotherhouseholdsmadeuseofportablecontainers…The builttoiletsconsistedofbakedbrickfixturesoveradeepverticalshaft…[and]tendedtobelocatedinthe leastaccessiblepartofthehouse. At the time of reading Van De Mieroop’s book, the problem of sewage disposal in urban Mesopotamia struck me as deserving examination, so I began to explore the archaeological and Assyriological evidence for lavatories. The enquiry focused in particular on the Akkadian word asurrû, which themodern dictionaries translateas“foundationstructure,lower(damp)courseofa wall”(CADA350),“Grundmauer”(AHw77),“‘lowercourse,footing’ofwall”(CDA26).Ashort book review made a preliminary survey of the evidence, concluding that asurrû was “part of the foundationstructurethatcould drain offwater fromthelavatoryand atthesametimegiveshelter to nesting snakes and mongooses” (George 1999: 551). This identification has had some influence,3 but has never been properly substantiated. The present paper began as a belated attempt to make good that lack bycollecting attestations ofasurrû that associate it with drains. It developedintoanexaminationoftheAssyriologicalevidenceforlavatoriesandsewers,concluding with a study of the keyword asurrû. Before tackling the philology, I shall briefly describe some of thearchaeologicalevidence(seefurtherMcMahon2015,unavailableatthetimeofwriting). LavatoriesandsewersinMesopotamianarchaeology A thorough presentation of the archaeological evidence for ancient Mesopotamian drainage installationshasbeenpublishedbyChristianeHemkerasAltorientalischeKanalisation(1993).Her study makes it clear that already by the middle of the third millennium the technology of urban drainage was highly developed in southern Mesopotamia and her illustrations show a variety of installations that could be used to carry away sewage. One such structure is the ring-drain or seepage-pit(Sickerschacht),averticalshaftlinedwithacolumnofperforatedtubularpotteryrings, one on top of the other (Fig. 1). Such drains are found in many periods and at many sites, from fourth-millennium Warka to first-millennium Babylon (Hemker 1993: 128–67). The technology first appears in dwelling houses in the third millennium, at Fara and Khafaje. Typically a ring- draindrainedwaterproofedfloorsandwassometimessurmountedbyaslottedbrickstructurethat could hardly be anything other than a pedestal lavatory. Good examples of these structures already occur in the mid-third millennium: at Tello, in a building of uncertain function dated by Hemker to the Ur I period (p. 132 no. 260c, here Fig. 2), and later at Tell Asmar, in a building contemporary with the Earlier Northern Palace (p. 131 no. 259b with Abb. 433; Lloyd 1967: 186 withpl.41b;hereFig.3).Neitherbuildingwascertainlyaprivatehouse. The drainage installations studied by Hemker can be contextualised by Maria Krafeld- Daugherty’s study of ancient Near Eastern dwelling houses and room usage, Wohnen im Alten Orient (1994). Her chapter on “Toiletten und Waschplätze” (pp. 94–124) concludes that lavatories are rare in the archaeological record. Isolated Old Babylonian examples have been excavated at Tello, Kiš, Mari and Tell ed-Der (she ignores the first millennium). Onlyat Tell Asmar (Ešnunna) intheAkkadianperiodandatUrintheIsin-Larsaperiodwerelavatoriesmoreplentiful.Theyfell into two types: the hole in the floor (“Abtritt”) and the pedestal or sit-upon type (“Sitztoilette”). Both types were drained, she maintains, less often by a cesspit (“Senkgrube”) than by a more complex drainage system or sewer (“übergeordnetes Kanalsystem”). The latter technology 3e.g.Baker2004:166“drain”;Jursa2005:31“drain(?)”; 2004: 27 n. 126; id. 2005: 78 n. 1; id. 2007: 219 l. 175 Heeßel 2007: 26 sub Vs. II 15′ etc. “Abflußrohr”; Geller “latrine”;Worthington2006:37n.73“toilet”. ONBABYLONIANLAVATORIESANDSEWERS 77 Fig.1 EarlyDynasticperiodring-drainatKhafaje,TempleOvalM44:8(fromDelougaz1940:124fig.113). Thecapismissing,affordingaviewdowninsidethedrain presupposed the use of rinse-water to carry solids through the system. Bathroom floors had to be waterproofedinbakedbrick,anexpensethatwasaffordablebyfew. As Krafeld-Daugherty demonstrates, Tell Asmar affords an excellent case-study in third- millennium sewage disposal. It is well known that the Akkadian-period Northern Palace was provided with installations that most interpret as lavatories. Some drained directly into seepage- pits, while others discharged through underfloor drains into a covered sewer that ran under the adjacent street(Lloyd1967:188,pls.37, 40,76D,78A–B;Fig. 4).Ifthesewere lavatories,then,as observed by Ernst Heinrich, they must have been flushed by water.4 As we shall see, in the documentaryrecordwateroccursinconnectionwithlavatoriesasmusâtu“rinse-water”. RuthMayer-Opificius’sarticleontheroughlycontemporaneousArchHouseatTellAsmarbriefly discussestheevidenceforlatrinesinprivatedwellinghousesatthesite(1979:51–54;furtherKrafeld- Daugherty1994:106–08).Slottedbrickpedestals,surmountingdrains,werefoundinsomehouses; theycanonlybesit-uponlavatories.AfineexampleoccursinStratumIVa,HouseXXXIIRoom4 (Fig.5).Itwasdrainedbyaverticalseepage-pit,nodoubtaring-drain(Hill1967:151).Anexample ofapedestallavatoryintheUrIIIrebuildingoftheArchHousedemonstratesthecontinueduseof thisraretechnologyattheendofthethirdmillennium(Krafeld-Daugherty1994:108). 4QuotedbyMayer-Opificius1979:51–52:“InTellAsmar Wasserspülung gewesen seien, denn sie stehen evident mit siehtessoaus,alsobdergrößerenTeilderToilettenander dem Hauptsiel in Verbindung, das unter der Straße läuft Ostfront des ‘Northern Palace’ tatsächlich WC’s mit undnachNordenentwässert.” 78 A.R.GEORGE Fig.2 Cross-sectionandplanofapedestallavatoryabovearing-drain,Tello(fromdeGenouillac1936:pl. XXIII).Thefloorwaswaterproofedwithbrickandlimestoneslabs The situation two hundred years later is revealed by the early second-millennium private dwellings excavated by Leonard Woolley at Ur. Ring-drains were a prominent feature in the excavations (Fig. 6). Some of the grand Old Babylonian houses at Ur were equipped with more than one such drain (Fig. 7). No. 1 Boundary Street is an apparently typical house belonging to a well-off family. It had a bathroom with a ring-drain for waste water. There was also a ONBABYLONIANLAVATORIESANDSEWERS 79 Fig.3 Cross-sectionofpedestallavatoryabovearing-drain,TellAsmar,RoomD17:21,drawnbySetonLloyd (fromLloyd1967:pl.41b“housecontemporarywiththeEarlierNorthernPalace”).Thefloorwaswaterproofed withbitumen ring-drain in the courtyard. Not only did this drain prevent the flooding of the courtyard in a downpour, but also it could serve to receive waste water from the kitchen and night soil from chamber pots. Under the stairswas a small chamber that was equippedwith the building’s third ring-drain. This closet must have been a lavatory. No. 4 Paternoster Row was even better provided: it had similar provision, but with the addition of a fourth ring-drain in the kitchen. Similar facilitieswere found in the large houses of about the same date excavated in 1987–89 by Jean-Louis Huot at Larsa. The bathroom of House B 59 was equipped with a ring-drain surmountedbyapiercedslablaidinafloorofbakedbrick(Fig.8). Woolleydescribesthering-draintechnologyofUrindetailandtakesitasself-evidentthatring- drainsweresoak-awaysforsewage,i.e.cesspits(WoolleyandMallowan1976:22–23): Acircularshaftametreorsoindiameterwasdugtoadepthofperhaps10m...,andinthiswasbuiltupa verticalcolumnofterracottapipes...Therimsarewidenedoutascollarstogivegreaterstability...andin thesidesaresmallroundholestoallowoftheescapeofmoisture...Thedrainsarereallyseepage-pits;any moisturepoureddownthemwouldrunoffintothesubsoil;thesolidsewagewouldremainandincourseof timewouldfill thepit, whenitwouldbedugoutandremade.Thesamesystemprevailsininnumerable Easterntownstodayandisfarlessinjurioustohealththanmightbeanticipated. Woolley’sanalysiswassubstantiatedbywhathefoundatthebottomofsomering-drainsatUr.He reportsofthemanyexamplesheexcavatedinAreaEH(whichdatedfromthe“Neo-Babylonianto 80 A.R.GEORGE Fig.4 Planandsections(top)andphotographs(bottom)ofsewersytem,TellAsmar,Akkadian-period NorthernPalace(fromLloyd1967:pls.40,78A–B) thePlano-convexperiod”):“occasionallythebaseofonewouldbefilledwithandsurroundedbythe greenishclayeymatterwhichresultsfromthedecayofsewage”(Woolley1955:41). In a study of the social typology of the Ur housing, Paolo Brusasco writes of lavatories (1999–2000:86): Thesearenormallysmallandnarrowchambers,pavedwithbricks,andwitharegularlatrineopeningsetup towardsthefarendoftheroom.Herethereisasortofdaisonwhichlaysadrainsurroundedbyaraised brickstance.Thedrainitselfconsistsofaslitwideningtoacircle(WoolleyandMallowan1976:25).Suchan installationisthusverysimilartothosethatcanbeseeninthelatrinesofanyArabtownhouseoftoday... One may note that only 6.2% of the buildings excavated in the neighbourhoods under excavation are providedwithsuchfacilities. ONBABYLONIANLAVATORIESANDSEWERS 81 Fig.5 RemainsofpedestallavatoryandpavedfloorinanAkkadian-perioddwellinghouse,TellAsmar, StratumIVa,HouseXXXIIRoomJ18:4(fromHill1967:pl.70C;Mayer-Opificius1979:55Abb.4) Whathedescribesisarefinedvarietyofthehole-in-the-floorlavatory.Simplerholesinthefloor,like thatinHouseB59Room21atLarsa(Fig.8),wouldhavebeenmoredifficulttousecleanlyasalavatory. Theymayhavebeenfittedwithasuperstructure madeofperishablematerialssuchasreed andclay. PedestallavatoriesofbrickarenotablyabsentintheOldBabylonianmansionsofUrandLarsa. Brusasco uses the rareness of lavatories in the houses at Ur to speculate that “small unroofed latrines at the city’s periphery [were] routinely shared by those households who lack[ed] sanitary services. Others may well [have] use[d] nearby orchards or gardens”. As we shall see, in the documentaryrecordthereissomesuggestionofcommunallavatoriesatcitygates. Krafeld-Daugherty’sstudyofroomusageinancientMesopotamianhousesdrawsattentiontothe typicallocationoflavatoriesinsmallclosets,especiallyunderthestairs,asatUrandTelled-Derin theearlysecondmillennium(Krafeld-Daugherty1994:111).Inhisreviewofherbook,J.N.Postgate notesthatthesamepreferencehasbeenobservedmuchearlier,atAbuSalabikhandperhapsLarsa 82 A.R.GEORGE Fig.6 LeonardandKatharineWoolleyatUr,withring-drainsinsitu(photographBM-Ur-GN-1592 reproducedbypermissionoftheTrusteesoftheBritishMuseum).Clearlyvisible,betweenthewalloftheleft- mostdrainshaftandthering-drainitself,istheusualpackingwithpotsherdstoimprovedrainage (Postgate2000:251). Postgatealsostressesthatdifferentarrangementsmusthaveobtainedinnon- urbansettings: Theoccurrenceoflatrinesisoneareawherethedifferencebetweenurbanandruralsettlementsislikelytobe verymarked;theurbanexamplesweresometimesconstructeddirectlyabove(orinOldBabyloniantimes channeledinto) verticalshaftsmadeofsuperimposedceramiccylinders(piercedatintervalsandpacked round with sherds to assist drainage), and since the tops of these shafts are rarely preserved, I suspect thattheyweremuchcommonerasurbansewersthan[Krafeld-Daugherty]allows. Goodexamplesoffirst-millenniumwaste-waterdisposalwerefoundinBabylon,especiallyinthe ruin-moundMerkesexcavatedbyRobertKoldewey’sassistant,OskarReuther,in1907–12(Reuther 1926).HouseXIIhadabathroomwithaslopingfloorthatdrainedintoaring-drain.HouseIIhadat leastthreering-drains:one,ofuncertainfunction,inRoom19;anotherinRoom12,thebathroom; andathirdinRoom13,atinyclosetwhichcouldonlybereachedthroughthebathroom.Inthiscloset wasakindofpedestalmadeofbakedbrick,whichwascertainlyasit-uponlavatory(Hemker1993: 147;hereFig.9).5Thering-drainbeneathitfunctionedasacesspit. The preceding paragraphs (which present only a selection of the evidence) have focused on lavatories serviced by ring-drains constructed directly underneath, but Krafeld-Daugherty is right 5Krafeld-Daughertyseemsunawareofthislavatory.She two examples after the Ur III period, both in Old asserts(1994:117)thatthepedestallavatorywasaforeign Babylonian Tello. She may or may not be right about the ideaimportedfromtheIndusvalleyinthethirdmillennium origin of the pedestal lavatory in the Indus valley (cf. (so already Delougaz: see Mayer-Opificius 1979: 53), and Hemker1993:179–80),butclearlythetechnologysurvived only temporarily fashionable, claiming knowledge of only theOldBabylonianperiodinBabylonia. ONBABYLONIANLAVATORIESANDSEWERS 83 Fig.7 PlansofearlyOldBabylonianhousesatUr,(left)No.1BoundaryStand(right)No.4PaternosterRow, showinglocationsofring-drains(adaptedfromMiglus1996:212) toobservethatmanylavatoriesdrainedintoremoteinstallationsthroughundergroundsewers.The under-street drain that removed waste from the Akkadian-period Northern Palace at Tell Asmar has already been mentioned. The identity of an installation in the Arch House (House II Room 44, Stratum IVb) that discharged via a drain through the exterior wall is contested (Mayer- Opificius 1979: 52). Some assert that the drain emptied on to a street, an unsatisfactory location for the disposal of sewage, but the excavator identified the structure as the “remnants of a toilet” (Hill 1967: 161) and reported that its drain led to an “unused open space” (ibid. pp. 150–51; pl. 67B). In any event, the lavatory and its drain did not survive the house’s remodelling in Stratum IVa and were perhaps a failed experiment (Mayer-Opificius 1979: 53; Krafeld-Daugherty 1994: 107). Later lavatories in the same house were also associated with baked-brick drains that ran underfloorsandwalls(Hill1967:164,pl.70A). Ring-drainsinfirst-millenniumBabyloncouldalsobeusedincombinationwithindirectdrainage systems.InHouseIVinMerkesaring-draincollectedwastewaterfromtwodifferentrooms,using short lengths of tapered clay piping fitted together to make long underfloor drains (Hemker 1993: 148; here Fig. 10). Such tubular drains were undoubtedly what are known in Akkadian as nansạ bu, which were good for removing waste water but too narrow to have functioned well as sewers. Underfloor drains of larger capacity could be constructed from baked brick. One was found at Babylon to take waste water out of a house and into a ring-drain situated under the adjacentstreet(Hemker1993:69–70;hereFig.11). ThearchaeologicalevidenceveryclearlyshowsthatancientMesopotamiandwellinghousescould beequippedwithlavatories.Thesevariedfromthehole-in-the-floortypetothepedestaltype.They sometimes drained directly into their own seepage-pits, but otherwise discharged via underfloor channels into pits in adjacent spaces. The technology,however,wasexpensiveand, even in thelate periods, only a minority could afford housing fitted with such a luxury. What, then, of the Assyriologicalevidence? Lavatoriesincuneiformtexts Quite recently Ariel Bagg published an article with the promising title “Ancient Mesopotamian sewagesystems accordingtocuneiform sources” (2006).The article contains auseful surveyofthe archaeological evidence collected by Hemker for drainage installations, both horizontal and