The Babylonian World - Historia Antigua

— Urban form in the first millennium BC —
and, at Babylon houses, were occasionally equipped with vertical drains leading
rainwater down an external waterpipe and into a sump dug into the adjacent street.
Bathrooms tend to be found in private houses which are of larger than average
size, and only very few built toilets have been securely identified. Presumably other
households made use of portable containers; waste may have been collected for use
as fertiliser outside of the city, a practice that is well attested ethnographically. The
built toilets consisted of baked brick fixtures over a deep vertical shaft. In the absence
of a continuous and reliable water supply, it would have been more hygienic to keep
the use of water in the toilets to a minimum. The toilets tended to be located in the
least accessible part of the house, as viewed from its main entrance.
INFLUENCES ON URBAN LAYOUT
The ‘Oriental city’ – a concept which has itself been justifiably questioned in recent
years (see Liverani 1997) – has often been seen as a product of haphazard, unplanned
development in comparison, for example, with the allegedly more ordered urban
settlements of Classical antiquity. It is now generally recognised that a much more
nuanced and less Eurocentric approach is desirable in the study of ancient urbanism.
On the other hand, there are certain features which the Neo-Babylonian city apparently
shares both with those of other areas and periods within Mesopotamia and with later,
historically documented cities of the Middle East. This applies most particularly to
the residential areas: scholars have often remarked, for example, on the close similarity
in character between the areas of Old Babylonian housing excavated at Ur and the
residential quarters of later Islamic cities. The housing quarters of the first millennium,
in so far as they have been uncovered, seem to conform in general to their earlier
counterparts. It is worth noting at this juncture that some features which can be seen
as responses to specific socio-cultural conditions (e.g. a strong desire for privacy on
the part of the household) can equally well be interpreted as adaptive measures in
the face of an extreme climate. Take, for example, the houses with their blank,
windowless façades and their enclosed internal courtyards. Such a configuration both
helps to ensure privacy for the family within and facilitates thermal insulation and
the optimal circulation of cool air, and it seems unproductive to attempt to weigh
up the relative influence here of culture versus climate. Both factors seem to have
ensured the long survival of the courtyard house as the typical dwelling type throughout
the region until modern times, but clearly we have to be wary of assuming (rather
than demonstrating) that the underlying social structure was similar in antiquity on
the basis of such longevity.
The residential areas were but one element of the Babylonian city, and a systematic
analysis of urban form requires a consideration of how all of the parts functioned
together. Moreover, different sectors of the city may well have been subject to different
degrees of planning, and different influences on their layout. Having briefly mentioned
two of the factors that contributed to shaping the configuration of the residential
districts, we may now address some of the other pertinent considerations affecting
the shape of the city.
The concept of urban planning implies a degree of agency, that is, an authority
responsible for conceiving a plan and implementing it. Normally this would be the
king. It is not possible to study the history of Mesopotamia without repeatedly
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