It has been guessed that this bas-relief, which is unique in its way,

merely represents the brick-kilns used in the construction of the palace of

Sennacherib. To this objection there is more than one answer. The Assyrian

sculptures we possess represent but a small part of the whole, and each

fresh discovery introduces us to forms previously unknown. Moreover, had

the sculptor wished to represent the kilns in which the bricks for the

palace were burnt, he would have shown the flames coming out at the top. In

reliefs of burning towns he never leaves out the flames, and in this case,

where they would have served to mark the activity with which the building

operations were pushed on, he would certainly not have omitted them. Again,

is not the building on the left of the picture obviously a flat-roofed

house? If that be so we must believe, before we accept the kiln theory,

that the sculptor made a strange departure from the real proportions of the

respective buildings. The doorways, too, in the relief are exactly like

those of an ordinary house, while they bear no resemblance to the low and

narrow openings which have been used at all times for kilns. Why then

should we refuse to admit that there were vaults in Nineveh, when Strabo

tells us expressly that "all the houses of Babylon were vaulted."[205]

Thomas invokes the immemorial custom of the East to support the evidence of

this curious relief:--the great church of St. Sophia, the Byzantine

churches and the Turkish mosques, all of which had no other roof but a

cupola. In all of these he sees nothing but late examples of a

characteristic method of construction which had been invented and perfected

many centuries before at Babylon and Nineveh.

From the monuments with which those two great cities were adorned nothing

but the foundations and parts of the walls have come down to our day; but

the buildings of a later epoch, of the periods when Seleucia and Ctesiphon

enjoyed the heritage of Babylon, have been more fortunate. In the ruins

which are acknowledged to be those of the palaces built by the Parthian and

Sassanid monarchs, the upper structures are still in existence, and in a

more or less well preserved condition. In these the dome arrangement is

universal. Sometimes, as at Firouz-Abad (Fig. 52), we find the segment of a

sphere; elsewhere, as at Sarbistan (Fig. 53), the cupola is ovoid. Our

section of the latter building will give an idea of the internal

arrangements of these structures, and will show how the architect contrived

to suspend a circular dome over a square apartment.[206]

These monuments of an epoch between remote antiquity and the Graeco-Roman

period were built of brick, like the palaces of Nineveh.[207] The

exigencies of the climate remained the same, the habits and requirements of

the various royal families that succeeded each other in the country were

not sensibly modified, while the Sargonids, the Arsacids and the Sassanids

all ruled over one and the same population.

[Illustration: FIG. 52.--The Palace at Firouz-Abad; from Flandin and

Coste.]

[Illustration: FIG. 53.--The palace at Sarbistan; from Flandin and Coste.]

The corporations of architects and workmen must have preserved the

traditions of their craft from century to century, traditions which had

their first rise in the natural capabilities of their materials and in the

data of the problem they had to solve. The historian cannot, then, be

accused of going beyond the limit of fair induction in arguing from these

modern buildings to their remote predecessors. After the conquest of

Alexander, the ornamental details, and, still more, the style of the

sculptures, must have been affected to a certain extent, first by Greek art

and afterwards by that of Rome; but the plans, the internal structure, and

the general arrangement of the buildings must have remained the same.

[Illustration: FIG. 54.--Section through the palace at Sarbistan; from

Flandin and Coste.]

There is nothing hazardous or misleading in these arguments from analogy;

from the palace of Chosroes to that of Sargon is a legitimate step. Some

day, perhaps, we may attempt to pursue the same path in the opposite

direction; we may endeavour to show that the survival of these examples and

traditions may very well have helped to direct architecture into a new path

in the last years of the Roman Empire. We shall then have to speak of a

school in Asia Minor whose works have not yet been studied with the

attention they deserve. The buildings in question are distinguished chiefly

by the important part played in their construction by the vault and the

dome resting upon pendentives; certain constructive processes, too, are to

be found in them which had never, so far as we can tell, been known or

practised in the East. We can hardly believe that the chiefs of the school

invented from the foundation a system of construction whose principles were

so different from those of the Greeks, or even of the later Romans. They

may, indeed, have perfected the system by grafting the column upon it, but

it is at least probable that they took it in the first place from those who

had practised it from time immemorial, from men who taught them the

traditional methods of shortening and facilitating the labour of execution.

The boundaries of Asia Minor "march" with those of Mesopotamia, and in the

latter every important town had buildings of brick covered with domes. The

Romans frequented the Euphrates valley, to which they were taken both by

war and commerce; their victories sometimes carried them even as far as

Ctesiphon on the Tigris, so that there was no lack of opportunity for the

study of Oriental architecture on the very spot where it was born. They

could judge of and admire the beauty it certainly possessed when the great

buildings of Mesopotamia were still clothed in all the richness of their

decoration. The genius of the Greeks had come nigh to exhausting the forms

and combinations of the classic style; it was tired of continuous labour in

a narrow circle and sighed for fresh worlds to conquer. We can easily

understand then, how it would welcome a system which seemed to afford the

novelty it sought, which seemed to promise the elements of a new departure

that might be developed in many, as yet unknown, directions. If we put

ourselves at this point of view we shall see that Isidore and Anthemius,

the architects of St. Sophia, were the disciples and perpetuators of the

forgotten masters who raised so many millions of bricks into the air at the

bidding of Sargon and Nebuchadnezzar.[208]

Whatever may be thought of this hypothesis, there seems to be little doubt

that the Assyrians knew how to pass from the barrel vault to the

hemispherical, and even to the elliptical, cupola. As soon as they had

discovered the principle of the vault and found out easy and expeditious

methods of setting it up, all the rest followed as a matter of course.

Their materials lent themselves as kindly to the construction of a dome as

to that of a segmental vault, and promised equal stability in either case.

As to their method of passing from the square substructure to the dome we

know nothing for certain, but we may guess that the system employed by the

Sassanids (see Fig. 54) was a survival from it. It is unlikely that timber

centerings were used to sustain the vaults during construction. Timber was

rare and bad in Chaldaea and men would have to learn to do without it. M.

Choisy has shown--as we have already mentioned--that the Byzantine

architects built cupolas of wide span without scaffolding of any kind, each

circular course being maintained in place until it was complete by the mere

adherence of the mortar.[209]

M. Place, too, gives an account of how he saw a few Kurd women build an

oven in the shape of a Saracenic dome, with soft clay and without any

internal support. Their structure, at the raising of which his lively

curiosity led him to assist, was composed of a number of rings, decreasing

in diameter as they neared the summit.[210] The domes of crude brick which

surmounted many of the Kurd houses were put together in the same fashion,

and they were often of considerable size. When asked by M. Place as to how

they had learnt to manage brick so skilfully, the oven-builders replied

that it was "the custom of the country," and there is no apparent reason

why that custom should not date back to a remote antiquity. The Assyrians

had recourse to similar means when they built the domes of their great

palaces. They too, perhaps, left a day for drying to each circular course,

and re-wetted its upper surface when the moment arrived for placing the

next.[211]

[Illustration: FIG. 55.--Restoration of a hall in the harem at Khorsabad,

compiled from Place.]

From the existence of domes--which he considers to be almost beyond

question--M. Place deduces that of semi-domes, one of which he assigns to

the principal chamber of the harem in the palace at Khorsabad (Fig. 55).

Feeling, perhaps, that this requires some justification, he finds it in a

modern custom, which he thus describes:--"In the towns of this part of the

East, the inner court of the harem is, as a rule, terminated at one of its

extremities by a vault entirely open at one side, in the form of a huge

niche. It is, in fact, the half of a dome sliced in two from top to

bottom; the floor, which is elevated a few steps above the pavement of the

court, is strewn with carpets and cushions so as to form an open and airy

saloon, in which the women are to be found by their visitors at certain

hours. This divan is protected from rain by the semi-dome, and from the

sun by curtains or mats hung across the arched opening. This arrangement

may very well be dictated by ancient tradition. It is well suited to the

climate, a consideration which never fails to exercise a decisive influence

over architecture."[212]

[Illustration: FIG. 56.--Royal Tent, Kouyundjik. British Museum.]

[Illustration: FIG. 57.--Tent, Kouyundjik. British Museum.]

And yet there would, perhaps, have been room for hesitation had no support

to this induction been afforded by the figured monuments; for the

inhabitants of the province of Mossoul have deserted the traditions of

their ancestors in more than one particular. They have given up the use of

crude brick, for instance, so far, at least as the walls of their houses

are concerned. They have supplied its place with stone and plaster, hence

their dwellings are less fresh and cool than those of their fathers. In

such a question the present throws a light upon the past, but the two have

distinctive features of their own, even when the physical characteristics

of the country have remained the same. The best evidence in favour of the

employment of such an arrangement in Assyria is that of the bas-relief. We

there not infrequently encounter an object like those figured on this page.

Sometimes it is in the midst of what appears to be an entrenched camp,

sometimes in a fortified city. Its general aspect, certain minor details,

and sometimes an accompanying inscription, permit us to recognize in it the

marquee or pavilion of the king.[213] Now the roofs of these structures

evidently consist of two semi-domes, unequal in size and separated by an

uncovered space. If such an arrangement was found convenient for a portable

and temporary dwelling like a tent, why should it not have been applied to

the permanent homes both of the king and his people?

Arches still standing in the city gates, fragments of vaults found within

the chambers of Sargon's palace at Khorsabad, the evidence of the

bas-reliefs and the existing methods of building in Mesopotamia--all concur

in persuading us that the vault played an important part in the

constructions of Assyria, and consequently in those of Chaldaea; but we

should not go so far as to say that all the rooms in the palace at

Khorsabad and elsewhere were covered with barrel vaults, domes, or

semi-domes. Our chosen guides, have, we think, allowed themselves to be a

little too absolute in this particular; it is quite possible that by the

side of the vaulted chambers there were others with wooden roofs. This

conclusion is suggested partly by Sir H. Layard's discovery of considerable

quantities of wood ashes in the palaces he excavated, partly by the

evidence of ancient texts that wood was often used throughout this region

to support the roofs at least of private houses. We may quote, in the first

place, some remarks in Strabo's account of Susiana, which the Greek

geographer borrowed from one of his original authorities: "In order to

prevent the houses from becoming too hot, their roofs are covered with two

cubits of earth, the weight of which compels them to make their dwellings

long and narrow, because although they had only short beams, they had to

have large rooms, so as to avoid being suffocated." This same writer, in

speaking of these roofs, describes a singular property of the palm-tree

beams. The densest and most solid of them, he says, instead of yielding

with age and sinking under the weight they have to support, take a gentle

upward curve so as to become better fitted than at first for the support of

the heavy roof.[214]

The necessity for the presence of a thick roof between the sun and the

inside of the rooms is here very clearly affirmed. It will also be noticed

that the general form of apartments in Susiana and Assyria did not escape

the observer in question. As he saw very clearly, the great disproportion

between their length and their width was to be explained as easily by the

requirements of a wooden roof as by those of a clay vault.

In his attempt to describe Babylon, Strabo says[215]: "In the absence of

timber, properly speaking, beams and columns of palm-wood were used in the

buildings of Babylonia. These pillars were covered with twisted ropes of

rushes, over which several coats of paint were laid. The doors were coated

with asphalte. Both doors and houses were very high. We may add that the

houses were vaulted, in consequence of the absence of wood.... There were,

of course, no tile roofs in countries where it never rains,[216] such as

Babylonia, Susiana and Sittacenia."

Strabo himself never visited Mesopotamia. This we know from the passage in

his introduction, in which he tells us exactly how far his voyages

extended, from north to south, and from east to west.[217] When he had to

describe Asia from the Taurus to India, he could only do so with the help

of passages borrowed from various authors, and in the course of his work it

has sometimes happened that he has brought into juxtaposition pieces of

information that contradict each other.[218] Something of the kind has

happened in the lines we have quoted, in which he first speaks of pillars

and timber roofs, and ends by declaring that all the Chaldaean houses were

vaulted, although vaults and timber could not exist together. The truth is,

in all probability, that one system of covering prevailed here and another

there, and that the seeming contradiction in the text is due to hasty

editing. We may conclude from it that travellers had reported the existence

of both systems, and that each was to be explained by local conditions and

the varying supply of materials.

The two systems still exist side by side over all Western Asia. From Syria

to Kurdistan and the Persian Gulf the hemispherical cupola upon a square

substructure continually occurs. The timber roof is hardly less frequent;

when the apartment in which it is used is of any considerable size it is

carried upon two or three rows of wooden columns. These columns rest upon

cubes of stone, and a tablet of the same material is often interposed

between them and the beams they support. A sort of rustic order is thus

constituted of which the shaft alone is of wood. We reproduce a sketch by

Sir H. Layard in which this arrangement is shown. It is taken from a house

inhabited by Yezidis,[219] in the district of Upper Mesopotamia called

_Sinjar_ (Fig. 58).

[Illustration: FIG. 58.--Interior of a Yezidi house; from Layard.]

We are inclined to think that both systems were occasionally found in a

single building. The tunnel vault and the joisted ceiling were equally well

suited to the long galleries of Assyrian palaces. In one room, or suite of

rooms, nothing but brick may have been used, while in others wood may have

had the preference. Still more probably, one architect may have had a

predilection for timber, while another may have preferred clay vaults. In

either case the general arrangement, what we may call the spirit of the

plan, would remain the same.

When wooden roofs were used were they upheld by wooden uprights or by

columns of any other material? Botta was at first inclined to say yes to

this question, but he did not attempt to conceal that excavation had

discovered little to support such an hypothesis.[220] Such pillars, were

they of stone, would leave traces among the ruins in the shape of broken

columns; were they of burnt bricks (and there could be no question of the

crude material), those bricks would be found on the spot they occupied and

would easily be recognized by their shape, which, as we have already shown,

would have been specially adapted to the work they had to do.[221] The

points of junction with the pavement would also be visible. If we contend

that they were of wood, like those of the house figured above, we must

admit that, at least in the more carefully built houses, such precautions

as even the peasants of the Yezidis do not neglect must have been taken,

and the timber columns raised upon stone bases which would protect them

from the sometimes damp floors. Neither these bases nor any marks of their

existence have been found in any of the ruins; and we are therefore led to

the conclusion that to search for hypostyle halls in the Assyrian palaces,

would be to follow the imagination rather than the reason.

If we admit that architects made no use of columns to afford intermediate

support to the heavy roofs, we may at first be inclined to believe that

wooden ceilings were only used in very narrow apartments, for we can hardly

give a length of more than from twenty-four to twenty-seven feet to beams

that were called upon to support a thick covering of beaten earth as well

as their own weight.[222] Perhaps, however, the skill of their carpenters

was equal to increasing the span and rigidity of the beams used by a few

simple contrivances. One of these is shown in our Fig. 60, a diagram

composed by M. Chipiez to give an idea of the different methods of

construction used by, or, at least, at the command of, the Assyrian

builder.

All the rooms were surmounted by flat roofs, and our horizontal sections

show how these roofs were accommodated to the domes or the timber ceilings

by which they were supported. On the left of the engraving semicircular

vaults are shown, on the right a timbered roof. The arrangement of the

latter is taken from an Etruscan tomb at Corneto, where, however, it is

carried out in stone.[223] A frame like this could be put together on the

spot and offered the means of covering a wider space with the same

materials than could be roofed in by a horizontal arrangement. Further back

rises one of those domes over square substructures whose existence seems to

us so probable. Behind this again opens one of the courts by which so much

of the area of the palace was occupied. The composition is completed by a

wall with parapet and flanking towers.

[Illustration: FIG. 59.--Fortress; from Layard's _Monuments_, 1st Series.]

After considering the method employed for roofing the palace apartments, we

come naturally to investigate their system of illumination. In view of the

extravagant thickness of their walls it is difficult to believe that they

made use of such openings as we should call windows. The small loop-holes

that appear in some of the bas-reliefs near the summits of towers and

fortified walls were mere embrasures, for the purpose of admitting a little

air and light to the narrow chambers within which the defenders could find

shelter from the missiles of an enemy and could store their own arms and

engines of war (see Fig. 59). The walls of Khorsabad even now are

everywhere at least ten feet high, and in some parts they are as much as

fifteen, twenty, and five-and-twenty feet, an elevation far in excess of a

man's stature, and they show no trace of a window. Hence we may at least

affirm that windows were not pierced under the same conditions as in modern

architecture.[224]

[Illustration: FIG. 60.--Crude brick construction; compiled by Charles

Chipiez.]

And yet the long saloons of the palace with their rich decoration had need

of light, which they could only obtain through the doorways and the

openings left in the roof. When this was of wood the matter was simple

enough, as our diagram (Fig. 60) shows. Botta noticed, during his journey

to his post, another arrangement, of which, he thinks, the Assyrians may

very well have made use.

[Illustration: FIG. 61.--Armenian "Lantern;" from Botta.]

"The houses of the Armenian peasantry," he says, "are sunk into the ground,

so that their walls stand up but little above the level of the soil. They

are lighted by an opening that serves at once for window and chimney, and

is placed, as a rule, in the centre of the roof. The timber frame of this

opening is often ingeniously arranged (Fig. 61). Four thick beams, but very

roughly squared, intersect each other in the middle of the house. Across

their angles slighter joists are placed, and this operation is repeated

till a small dome, open at the top, for the entrance of light and the

escape of smoke, has been erected."[225]

[Illustration: FIGS. 62-65.--Terra-cotta cylinders in elevation, section

and plan; from Place.]

In the case of vaults how are we to suppose that the rooms were lighted? We

can hardly imagine that rectangular openings were left in the crown of the

arch, such a contrivance would have admitted very little light, while it

would have seriously compromised the safety of the structure. According to

M. Place the desired result was obtained in more skilful fashion. In

several rooms he found terra-cotta cylinders similar to those figured

below. These objects, of which he gives a careful description, were about

thirteen and a half inches in diameter and ten inches in height. We may

refer our readers to the pages of M. Place for a detailed account of the

observations by which he was led to conclude that these cylinders were not

stored, as if in a warehouse, in the rooms where they were afterwards

found, but that they formed an integral part of the roof and shared its

ruin. We may say that the evidence he brings forward seems to fairly

justify his hypothesis.

Penetrating the roof at various points these cylinders would afford a

passage for the outer air to the heated chamber within, while a certain

quantity of light would be admitted at the same time. The danger arising

from the rains could be avoided to a great extent by giving them a slightly

oblique direction. To this very day the Turkish bath-houses over the whole

of the Levant from Belgrade to Teheran, are almost universally lighted by

these small circular openings, which are pierced in great numbers through

the low domes, and closed with immovable glasses. Besides which we can

point to similar arrangements in houses placed both by their date and

character, far nearer to those of Assyria. The Sassanide monuments bear

witness that many centuries after the destruction of Nineveh the custom of

placing cylinders of terra-cotta in vaults was still practised. In spite of

its small scale these circles may be distinguished in the woodcut of the

Sarbistan palace which we have borrowed from Coste and Flandin (Fig.

54).[226]

These same writers have ascertained that the architects of Chosroes and

Noushirwan employed still another method of lighting the rooms over which

they built their domes. They gave the latter what is called an "eye," about

three feet in diameter, through which the daylight could fall vertically

into the room beneath. This is the principle upon which the Pantheon of

Agrippa is lighted; the only difference being one of proportion. In

Persia, the diameter of the eye was always very small compared to that of

the dome. If we are justified in our belief that the constructors of the

Parthian and Sassanide palaces were no more than the perpetuators of

systems invented by the architects of Nineveh and Babylon, the Assyrian

domes also may very well have been opened at the summit in this fashion. In

the bas-relief reproduced in our Fig. 42, the two small cupolas are

surmounted with caps around a circular opening which must have admitted the

light. Moreover, the elaborate system of drainage with which the

substructure of an Assyrian palace was honeycombed would allow any rain

water to run off as fast as such a hole would admit it.[227]

Whatever may be thought of these conjectures, it is certain that the

architects of Nineveh--while they did not neglect accessory sources of

illumination--counted chiefly upon the doors to give their buildings a

sufficient supply of light and air. As M. Place says, when we examine the

plans of Sargon's palace at Khorsabad we are as much astonished at the size

of the doorways as at the thickness of the walls.[228]

"There is not a single doorway, even of the smallest chambers, even of the

simple ante-rooms for the use of servants and guards, that is not at least

six feet or more wide; most of them are ten feet, and those decorated with

sculptures even wider still." In their present ruinous state, it is more

difficult to say for certain what their height may have been. Judging,

however, from the ruins and from the usual proportions of height and width

in the voids of Assyrian buildings, the doors at Khorsabad must have risen

to a height of between fifteen and twenty-two feet. "Such measurements are

those of exceptionally vast openings, especially when we remember that most

of them gave access, not to state apartments, but to rooms used for the

most ordinary purposes, store-rooms, ante-rooms, kitchens, serving-rooms of

all kinds, and bedrooms. When we find architects who were so reluctant as

those of Assyria to cut openings of any kind in their outer walls, using

doorways of these extravagant dimensions, we may surely conclude that they

were meant to light and ventilate the rooms as well as to facilitate the

circulation of their inhabitants."[229]

Even in halls, which were lighted at once by a number of circular eyes like

those described and by a wide doorway, there would be no excess of

illumination, and the rooms of Assyria must, on the whole, have been darker

than ours. When we remember the difference in the climates this fact ceases

to surprise us. With our often-clouded skies we seldom have too much light,

and we give it as wide and as frequent passages as are consistent with the

stability of our buildings. The farther north we go the more strongly

marked does this tendency become. In Holland, the proportion of voids to

solids is much greater than it is on the facade of a Parisian house, and

the same tendency may be traced from one end of Europe to the other. But

even in Central Europe, as soon as the temperature rises above a certain

point, curtains are drawn and jalousies closed, that is, the window is

suppressed as far as possible. And is not that enough to suggest a probable

reason for the want of windows characteristic of an Oriental dwelling? An

explanation has been sometimes sought in the life of the harem and in the

desire of eastern sovereigns to withdraw themselves from the eyes of their

subjects. The idleness, almost amounting to lethargy, of the present

masters of the East has also been much insisted on. What, it is asked, do

these men want with light? They neither read nor work, they care nothing

for those games of skill or chance which form so large a part of western

activity; absolute repose, the repose of sleep or stupefaction, is their

ideal of existence.[230]

These observations have hardly the force that has been ascribed to them.

The harem is not the whole palace, and even in the modern East the

_selamlik_, or public part of the house, is very differently arranged from

the rooms set apart for the women. The hunting and conquering kings of

Assyria lived much in public. They appeared too often at the head of their

armies or among the hounds for us to represent them--as the Greek tradition

represented Sardanapalus--shut up within blind walls in distant and almost

inaccessible chambers. We must guard ourselves against the mistake of

seeking analogies too close between the East of to-day and that of the

centuries before the Greek civilization.

The people who now inhabit those countries are in a state of languor and

decay. Life has retired from them; their days are numbered, and the few

they have yet to live are passed in a death-like trance. But it was not

always thus. The East of antiquity, the East in which man's intellect awoke

while it slumbered elsewhere, the East in which that civilization was born

and developed whose rich and varied creations we are engaged in studying,

was another place. Its inhabitants were strangely industrious and

inventive, their intellects were busied with every form of thought, and

their activity was expended upon every art of peace and war. We must not

delude ourselves into thinking that the Chaldaeans, who invented the first

methods of science, that the Assyrians, who carried their conquests as far

as the shores of the Mediterranean, that those Phoenicians who have been

happily called "the English of antiquity," had any great resemblance to the

Turks who now reign at Bagdad, Mossoul, and Beyrout.

But the climate has not changed, and from it we must demand the key to the

characteristic arrangements of Mesopotamian palaces. Even now most of the

buildings of Mossoul are only lighted from the door, which is hardly ever

shut. Some rooms have no direct means either of lighting or ventilation,

and these are the favourite retreats in summer. "I was enabled," says M.

Place, "to convince myself personally of this. In the consul's house there

were, on one side of the court, three rooms one within the other, of which

the first alone was lighted from without, and even this had a covered

gallery in front of it, by which the glare was tempered. In the dog-days,

when the mid-day sun rendered all work a punishment, the innermost of these

three rooms was the only habitable part of the house. The serdabs, or

subterranean chambers, are used under the same conditions. They are

inconvenient in some ways, but the narrowness of the openings, through

which light, and with it heat, can reach their depths, gives them

advantages not to be despised."[231]

The crude brick walls of ancient Assyria were far thicker than the rubble

and plaster ones of modern Mossoul, so that more light could be admitted to

the rooms without compromising their freshness. It seems to be proved that

in at least the majority of rooms at Khorsabad the architect provided other

means of lighting and ventilation besides the doorways, wide and high

though the latter were. He pierced the roof with numerous oblique and

vertical openings, he left square wells in the timber ceilings, and

circular eyes in the domes and vaults. If these were to fulfil their

purpose of admitting light and air into the principal rooms, the latter

must have had no upper stories to carry. At Mossoul, walls are much thinner

than at Nineveh, and interiors are simpler in arrangement and decoration.

The twenty or five-and-twenty feet of clay of the Assyrian walls would make

it impossible to give sufficient light through the doors alone to the

sculptures and paintings with which the rooms were adorned. We cannot doubt

that a top light was also required. The rooms of the palaces must,

therefore, have succeeded one another in one horizontal plan. Slight

differences of level between them were connected by short flights, usually

of five carefully-adjusted steps.[232] In spite of all its magnificence the

royal dwelling was no more than a huge ground floor.

With such methods of construction as those we have described, it would have

been very difficult to multiply stories. Neither vaults nor timber ceilings

could have carried the enormous masses of earth of which even their

partition-walls for the most part consisted, so that the architect would

have had no choice but to make his upper chambers identical in size with

those of his ground floors. This difficulty he was not, however, called

upon to face, because the necessity for providing his halls and corridors

with a top light, put an upper floor out of the question. No trace of such

a staircase as would have been required to give access to an upper story

has been discovered in any of the Assyrian ruins,[233] and yet some means

of ascent to the terraced roofs must have been provided, if not for the

inhabitants of the chambers below--who are likely, however, to have passed

the nights upon them in the hot season--at least for the workmen whose duty

it was to keep them in repair.

Some parts of the palace, on the other hand, may have been raised much

above the level of the rest. Sir Henry Layard found the remains of such

chambers in the palace of Assurnazirpal at Nimroud.[234] In the bas-relief

from Kouyundjik, reproduced in our Fig. 39, an open gallery may be noticed

at a great height above the soil. But neither this gallery nor the chambers

discovered at Nimroud form what we should call a "first-floor." Layard did

not conduct his excavations like an architect, and he fails to give us such

information as we have in the case of Khorsabad, but he tells us that the

chambers in question formed the upper part of a sort of tower projecting

from one angle of the facade. In the building represented on the Kouyundjik

relief, the gallery is also upheld by the main wall, and stands upon its

summit. From these observations we may conclude that when the Assyrian

architect wished to erect chambers that should have a command over the

buildings about them and over the surrounding country, he placed them, not

over his ground-floor, but upon solid and independent masses of bricks.

The staircase, then, could not have had the internal importance by which it

is distinguished in architectural systems that make use of several stories.

On the other hand, it must have played a very conspicuous part externally,

in front of the outer doors and the facades through which they were

pierced. Fortresses, palaces, temples, all the great buildings of Chaldaea

and Assyria, were built upon artificial mounds, upon a wide platform that

required an easy communication with the plain below. This could only be

obtained by long flights of steps or by gently inclined planes. Steps would

do for pedestrians, but horses, chariots, and beasts of burden generally

would require the last-named contrivance. All who have attempted

restorations have copied the arrangement of these stairs and sloping roads

from the ruins of Persepolis, where the steps, being cut in the rock

itself, are still to be traced. The brick slopes of Mesopotamia must have

commenced to disappear on the very day that their custodians first began to

neglect their repair.

Some confirmation, however, is to be found, even in the buildings

themselves, of the hypothesis suggested by their situations. At

Abou-Sharein, for instance, in Lower Chaldaea, the staircase figured on the

next page (Fig. 66) may be seen at the foot of the building excavated by

Mr. Taylor; it gave access to the upper terrace of what seems to have been

a temple.[235] Here the steps are no more than about twenty-six inches

wide, but this width must often have been greatly surpassed elsewhere.

Indeed, in the same building the first story was reached by a staircase

about seventy feet long and sixteen wide. The stone steps were twenty-two

inches long, thirteen broad, and one foot deep. They were fixed with great

care by means of bronze clasps. Unfortunately the explorer gives us neither

plan nor elevation of this monumental staircase.

[Illustration: FIG. 66.--Outside staircases in the ruins of Abou-Sharein.]

Layard believed that, in passing the Mesopotamian mounds, he could often

distinguish upon them traces of the flights of steps by which their summits

were reached.[236] On the eastern face of the palace of Sennacherib, he

says, the remains of the wide slopes by which the palace communicated with

the plain were quite visible to him.[237] One of these staircases is

figured in a bas-relief from Nimroud; it seems to rise to a line of

battlements that form, no doubt, the parapet to a flat terrace behind.[238]

Finally, in another relief, the sculptor shows two flights of steps bending

round one part of a mound and each coming to an end at a door into the

temple on its summit. The curve described by this ramp involved the use of

steps, which are given in M. Chipiez's _Restoration_ (Plate IV.). An

interesting series of reliefs, brought to England from Kouyundjik, proves

that in the palace interiors there were inclined galleries for the use of

the servants. The lower edges of the alabaster slabs are cut to the same

slope as that of the corridor upon whose walls they were fixed, and their

sculptures represent the daily traffic that passed and repassed within

those walls.[239] On the one hand, fourteen grooms are leading fourteen

horses down to the Tigris to be watered; on the other, servants are

mounting with provisions for the royal table in baskets on their

heads.[240]

The steps of basalt and gypsum, that afford communication between rooms of

different levels at Khorsabad, are planned and adjusted with great skill

and knowledge.[241] The workmen who built those steps took, we may be sure,

all the necessary precautions to prevent men and beasts from slipping on

the paved floors of the inclined galleries. These were constructed upon the

same plan as the ramps of M. Place's observatory, on which the pavement

consists of steps forty inches long, thirty-two inches wide, and less than

an inch high. Such steps as these give an inclination of about one in

thirty-four, and the ramp on which they were used may be more justly

compared to an inclined plane, like that of the Seville Giralda or the Mole

of Hadrian, than to a staircase. One might ascend or descend it on

horseback without any difficulty.[242]

By this example we may see that although the Assyrian builder had no

materials at his command equal to those employed by the Greek or Egyptian,

he knew how to make ingenious and skilful use of those he had.

We should be in a better position to appreciate these qualities of

invention and taste had time not entirely deprived us of that part of the

work of the Mesopotamian architects in which they were best served by their

materials. Assyria, like Egypt, practised construction "by assemblage" as

well as the two methods we have already noticed. She had a light form of

architecture in which wood and metal played the principal part. As might

have been expected, however, all that she achieved in that direction has

perished, and the only evidence upon which we can attempt a restoration is

that of the sculptured monuments, and they, unhappily, are much less

communicative in this respect than those of Egypt. In the paintings of the

Theban tombs the kiosks and pavilions of wood and metal are figured in all

the variety and vivacity derived from the brilliant colours with which they

were adorned. Nothing of the kind is to be found in Mesopotamia. Our only

documents are the uncoloured reliefs which, even in the matter of form, are

more reticent than we could have wished. But in spite of their

simplification these representations allow us to perceive clearly enough

the mingled elegance and richness that characterized the structures in

question.

[Illustration: FIG. 67.--Interior of the Royal Tent; from Layard.]

Thus in a bas-relief at Nimroud representing the interior of a fortress, a

central place is occupied by a small pavilion generally supposed to

represent the royal tent (Fig. 67).[243] The artist could not give a

complete representation of it, with all its divisions and the people it

contained. He shows only the apartment in which the high-bred horses that

drew the royal chariot were groomed and fed. Before the door of the

pavilion an eunuch receives a company of prisoners, their hands bound

behind them, and a soldier at their elbow. Higher up on the relief the

sculptor has figured the god with fish's scales whom we have already

encountered (see Fig. 9). To him, perhaps, the king attributed the capture

of the fortress that has just fallen into his hands.

It is not, however, with an explanation of the scene that we are at

present concerned; our business is with the structure of the pavilion

itself, with the slender columns and the rich capitals at their summits,

with the domed roof, made, no doubt, of several skins sewn together and

kept in place by metal weights. The capitals and the two wild goats perched

upon the shafts must have been of metal.

As for the tall and slender columns themselves, they were doubtless of

wood. The chevrons and vertical fillets with which they are decorated may

either have been carved in the wood or inlaid in metal.

[Illustration: FIG. 68.--Tabernacle; from the Balawat Gates.]

The pavilion we have just described was a civil edifice, the temporary

resting place of the sovereign. The same materials were employed in the

same spirit and with a similar arrangement in the erection of religious

tabernacles (see Fig. 68). The illustration on this page is taken from

those plates of beaten bronze which are known as the _Gates of Balawat_ and

form one of the most precious treasures in the Assyrian Galleries of the

British Museum.[244] They represent the victories and military expeditions

of Shalmaneser II. In the pavilion that we have abstracted from this long

series of reliefs may be recognized the field-chapel of the king. When that

cruel but pious conqueror wished to thank Assur for some great success, he

could cause a tabernacle like this to be raised in a few minutes even upon

the field of battle itself. It is composed of four light columns supporting

a canopy of leather which is kept in form by a fringe of heavy weights.

Rather above the middle of these columns two rings give an opportunity for

a knotted ornament that could also be very quickly arranged, and the

brilliant colours of the knots would add notably to the gay appearance of

the tabernacle. Under the canopy the king himself is shown standing in an

attitude of worship and pouring a libation on the portable altar. The

latter is a tripod, probably of bronze, and upon it appears a dish with

something in it which is too roughly drawn to be identified. On the right

stands a second and smaller tripod with a vessel containing the liquid

necessary for the rite.

The graphic processes of the Assyrian sculptor were so imperfect that at

first we have some difficulty in picturing to ourselves the originals of

these representations; in spite of the care devoted to many of their

details, the real constitution of these little buildings is not easily

grasped. In order to make it quite clear M. Chipiez has restored one of

them, using no materials in the restoration but those for which authority

is to be found in the bas-reliefs (Fig. 70).

M. Chipiez has placed his pavilion upon a salient bastion forming part of a

wide esplanade. Two staircases lead up to it, and the wall by which the

whole terrace is supported and inclosed is ornamented with those vertical

grooves which are such a common motive in Chaldaean architecture. In front

of the pavilion, on the balustrade of the staircase, and in the background

near a third flight of steps, four isolated columns may be seen, the two

former crowned with oval medallions, the two latter with cones. The meaning

of these standards--which are copied from the Balawat Gates[245]--is

uncertain. In the bas-reliefs in question they are placed before a stele

with a rounded top, which is shown at the top of our engraving. This stele

bears a figure of the monarch; another one like it is cut upon a cylinder

of green feldspar found by Layard close to the principal entrance to

Sennacherib's palace (see Fig. 69).[246]

Though practically absent from the great brick palaces, the column here

played an important and conspicuous part. It furnished elegant and richly

decorated supports for canopies of wool that softly rose and fell with the

passing breeze. Fair carpets were spread upon the ground beneath, others

were suspended to cross beams painted with lively colours, and swept the

earth with the long and feathered fringes sewn upon their borders.

[Illustration: FIG. 69.--The Seal of Sennacherib. Cylinder of green

feldspar in the British Museum.]

The difference was great between the massive buildings by which the

Mesopotamian plains were dominated, and these light, airy structures which

must have risen in great numbers in Chaldaea and Assyria, here on the banks

of canals and rivers or in the glades of shady parks, there on the broad

esplanades of a temple or in the courts of a royal palace. Between the

mountains of clay on the one hand and these graceful tabernacles with their

slender supports and gay coverings on the other, the contrast must have

been both charming and piquant. Nowhere else do we find the distinction

between the house and the tent so strongly marked. The latter must have

held, too, a much more important place in the national life than it did

either in Egypt or Greece. The monarch spent most of his time either in

hunting or fighting, and his court must have followed him to the field.

Moreover, when spring covers every meadow with deep herbage and brilliant

flowers, an irresistible desire comes over the inhabitants of such

countries as Mesopotamia to fly from cities and set up their dwellings amid

the scents and verdure of the fields. Again, when the summer heats have

dried up the plains and made the streets of a town unbearable, an exodus

takes place to the nearest mountains, and life is only to be prized when it

can be passed among the breezes from their valleys and the shadows of their

forest trees.

[Illustration: FIG. 70.--Type of open architecture in Assyria; composed by

Charles Chipiez.]

Even in our own day the inhabitants of these regions pass from the house to

the tent with an ease which seems strange to us. At certain seasons some of

the nomad tribes betake themselves within the walls of Bagdad and Mossoul

and there set up their long black tents of goats' hair.[247] Judging from

the bas-reliefs they did the same even in ancient Assyria; in some of these

a few tents may be seen sprinkled over a space inclosed by a line of walls

and towers.[248] Abraham and Lot slept in their tents even when they dwelt

within the walls of a city.[249] Lot had both his tent and a house at

Sodom.[250] Every year the inhabitants of Mossoul and the neighbouring

villages turn out in large numbers into the neighbouring country, and,

during April and May, re-taste for a time that pastoral life to which a

roof is unknown.

The centuries have been unable to affect such habits as these, because they

were suggested, enforced, and perpetuated by nature herself, by the climate

of Mesopotamia; and they have done much to create and develop that light

and elegant form of building which we may almost call the architecture of

the tent. In these days and in a country into whose remotest corners the

decadence has penetrated, the tent is hardly more than a mere shelter; here

and there, in the case of a few chiefs less completely ruined than the

rest, it still preserves a certain size and elegance, but as a rule all

that is demanded of it is to be sufficiently strong and thick to resist the

wind, the rain, and the sun. It was otherwise in the rich and civilized

society with which we are now concerned. Its arrangement and decoration

then called forth inventive powers and a refined taste of which we catch a

few glimpses in the bas-reliefs. It gave an opportunity for the employment

of forms and motives which could not be used at all, or used in a very

restricted fashion, in more solid structures, such as palaces and temples.

Of all these that which most closely results from the necessities of wooden

or metal construction is the column, and we therefore find that it is in

this tent-architecture that it takes on the characteristics that

distinguish it from the Egyptian column and give it an originality of its

own.

NOTES:

[164] The remains of stone walls are at least so rare in Lower Mesopotamia

that we may disregard their existence. In my researches I have only found

mention of a single example. At Abou-Sharein TAYLOR found a building in

which an upper story was supported by a mass of crude brick faced with

blocks of dressed sandstone. The stones of the lower courses were held

together by mortar, those of the upper ones by bitumen. We have no

information as to the "bond" or the size of stones used (_Journal of the

Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. xv. p. 408). The materials for this revetment

must have been quarried in one of those rocky hills--islands, perhaps,

formerly--with which Lower Chaldaea is sparsely studded. TAYLOR mentions one

seven miles west of Mugheir, in the desert that stretches away towards

Arabia from the right bank of the Euphrates (_Journal_, &c. vol. xv. p.

460).

[165] We shall here give a _resume_ of M. Place's observations (_Ninive et

l'Assyrie_, vol. i. pp. 31-34).

[166] PLACE, _Ninive_, &c. vol. i. p.

[167] _Ibid._ p. 33.

[168] In every country in which buildings have been surmounted by flat

roofs, this precaution has been taken--"When thou buildest a new house,

then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood

upon thine house, if any man fall from thence." (_Deuteronomy_ xxii. 8).

See also _Les Monuments en Chaldee, en Assyrie et a Babylon, d'apres les

recentes decouvertes archeologique, avec neuf planches lithographies_, 8vo,

by H. CAVANIOL, published in 1870 by Durand et Pedone-Lauriel. It contains

a very good _resume_, especially in the matter of architecture, of those

labours of French and English explorers to which we owe our knowledge of

Chaldaea and Assyria.

[169] PLACE, _Ninive et l'Assyrie_, vol i. p. 64.

[170] XENOPHON, _Anabasis_, iii. 4, 7-11. The identity of Larissa and

Mespila has been much discussed. Oppert thinks they were Resen and

Dour-Saryoukin; others that they were Calech and Nineveh. The question is

without importance to our inquiry. In any case the circumference of six

parasangs (about 20-1/2 miles) ascribed by the Greek writer to his Mespila

can by no means be made to fit Khorsabad.

[171] See the _History of Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. i. p. 113.

[172] BOTTA tells us how the courses of crude brick were distinguished one

from another at Khorsabad (_Monuments de Ninive_, vol. v. p. 57).

[173] Speaking of Hillah, GEORGE SMITH tells us (_Assyrian Discoveries_, p.

62):--"A little to the south rose the town of Hillah, built with the bricks

found in the old capital. The natives have established a regular trade in

these bricks for building purposes. A number of men are always engaged in

digging out the bricks from the ruins, while others convey them to the

banks of the Euphrates. There they are packed in rude boats, which float

them down to Hillah, and on being landed they are loaded on donkeys and

taken to any place where building is in progress. Every day when at Hillah

I used to see this work going on as it had gone on for centuries, Babylon

thus slowly disappearing without an effort being made to ascertain the

dimensions and buildings of the city, or to recover what remains of its

monuments. The northern portion of the wall, outside the Babil mound, is

the place where the work of destruction is now (1874) most actively going

on, and this in some places has totally disappeared."

[174] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, &c. p. 110.

[175] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. ii. p. 279. "The bricks had no mortar but the

mud from which they had been made," says BOTTA (_Monuments de Ninive_, vol.

v. p. 30).

[176] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, &c. p. 503.

[177] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, pp. 499 and 506.

[178] TAYLOR, _Notes on the Ruins of Mugheir_ (_Journal of the Royal

Asiatic Society_, vol. xv. p. 261). This mortar is still employed in the

country; it is called _kharour_.

[179] The most plentiful springs occur at Hit, on the middle Euphrates.

They are also found, however, farther north, as at Kaleh-Shergat, near the

Tigris. Over a wide stretch of country in that district the bitumen wells

up through every crack in the soil (LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. ii. p. 46). As

for the bituminous springs of Hammam-Ali, near Mossoul, see PLACE, _Ninive

et l'Assyrie_, vol. i. p. 236.

[180] _Genesis_ xi. 3.

[181] HERODOTUS, i. 179.

[182] _Warka, its Ruins and Remains_, by W. KENNETH LOFTUS, p. 9. (In the

_Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature_, second series, Part I.)

According to SIR HENRY RAWLINSON this introduction of layers of reeds or

rushes between the courses of brick continued in all this region at least

down to the Parthian epoch. Traces of it are to be found in the walls of

Seleucia and Ctesiphon (RAWLINSON'S _Herodotus_, vol. i. p. 300 note 1).

[183] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches_, i. p. 169. The abundance of bitumen

in the ruins of Mugheir is such that the modern name of the town has sprung

from it; the word means the _bituminous_ (TAYLOR, _Notes on the Ruins of

Mugheir_).

[184] PLACE, _Ninive et l'Assyrie_, vol. i. p. 236; LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol.

ii. p. 261.

[185] LOFTUS, _Warka, its Ruins_, &c. p. 10.

[186] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 29 and 248.

[187] TAYLOR, _Notes on Abou-Sharein and Tell-el-Lahm_ (_Journal of the

Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. xv. p. 408).

[188] BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, vol. v. p. 58.

[189] NIEBUHR (_Voyage en Arabie_, vol. ii. p. 235) noticed this, and his

observations have since been confirmed by many other visitors to the ruins

of Babylon. KER PORTER (vol. ii. p. 391) noticed them in the ruins of

Al-Heimar. See also TAYLOR on "_Mugheir_," &c. (_Journal_, &c. vol. xv. p.

261). At Birs-Nimroud these conduits are about nine inches high and between

five and six wide. They are well shown in the drawing given by FLANDIN and

COSTE of this ruin (_Perse ancienne et moderne_, pl. 221. cf. text 1, p.

181).

[190] TAYLOR, _Notes on the Ruins of Mugheir_ (_Journal of the Royal

Asiatic Society_), vol. xv. pp. 268-269.

[191] At Khorsabad the average height of the alabaster lining is about ten

feet; above that about three feet of brick wall remains.

[192] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. i. pp. 127 and 350; vol. ii. pp. 40 and 350.

As to the traces of fire at Khorsabad, see BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_,

vol. v. p. 54.

[193] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. ii. pp. 256-264.

[194] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches_, pp. 181-183.

[195] This accumulation has sometimes reached a height of about 24 feet.

PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 294.

[196] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 293-294.

[197] E. FLANDIN, _Voyage archeologique a Ninive. 1. L'Architecture

assyrienne. 2. La Sculpture assyrienne_ (_Revue des Deux-Mondes_, June 15

and July 1, 1845).

[198] For all that concerns this artist, one of the most skilful

draughtsmen of our time, see the biographical notice of M. de

Girardot:--_Felix Thomas, grand Prix de Rome Architecte, Peintre, Graveur,

Sculpteur_ (Nantes, 1875, 8vo.).

[199] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 249-269.

[200] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 254-255.

[201] _Ibid._ p. 246.

[202] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 264.

[203] _Ibid._ p. 265. RICH made similar observations at Bagdad. He noticed

that the masons could mount on the vault a few minutes after each course

was completed (_Narrative of a Journey to the Site of Babylon_).

[204] M. A. CHOISY, well known by his Essays on _L'Art de batir chez les

Romains_, shows that the same method was constantly used by the Byzantine

architects. See his _Note sur la Construction des Voutes sans cintrage

pendant la Periode byzantine_ (_Annales des Ponts et Chausees_, 1876,

second period, vol. xii.). See also Mr. FERGUSSON'S account of the erection

of a huge stone dome without centering of any kind, by an illiterate

Maltese builder, at Mousta, near Valetta (_Handbook of Architecture_,

Second Edition, vol. iv. p. 34).--ED.

[205] STRABO, xvi. i. 5, Hoi oikoi kamarotoi pantes dia ten axulian.

[206] For a description of these buildings see FLANDIN and COSTE, _Voyage

en Perse, Perse ancienne, Text_, pp. 24-27, and 41-43 (6 vols. folio, no

date. The voyage in question took place in 1841 and 1842).

[207] Brick played, at least, by far the most important part in their

construction. The domes and arcades were of well-burnt brick; the straight

walls were often built of broken stone, when it was to be had in the

neighbourhood. At Ctesiphon, on the other hand, the great building known as

the _Takht-i-Khosrou_ is entirely of brick.

[208] See M. AUGUSTE CHOISY'S _Note sur la Construction des Voutes_, &c. p.

14. This exact and penetrating critic shares our belief in these relations

between the Chaldaean east and Roman Asia.

[209] _Note sur la Construction des Voutes sans cintrage_, p. 12.

[210] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 266-267.

[211] As M. CHOISY remarks (_L'Art de batir chez les Romains_, p. 80), each

horizontal course, being in the form of a ring, would have no tendency to

collapse inwards, and a dome circular on plan would demand some means for

keeping its shape true rather than a resisting skeleton.

[212] _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 131.

[213] In both the examples here reproduced the sculptor has indicated the

cords by which the canvas walls were kept in place. We find almost the same

profile in a bas-relief at Khorsabad (BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, pl.

146), but there it is cut with less decision and there are no cords.

Between the two semi-domes the figure of a man rises above the wall to his

middle, suggesting the existence of a barbette within. Here the artist may

have been figuring a house rather than a tent.

[214] STRABO, xv. 3, 10.

[215] STRABO, xvi. 1, 5.

[216] Keramoi d' ou chrontai, says Strabo. These words, as Letronne

remarked _a propos_ of this passage, combine the ideas of a tiled roof and

of one with a ridge. The one notion must be taken with the other; hence we

may infer that the Babylonian houses were flat-roofed.

[217] STRABO, ii. 5, 11.

[218] See M. AMEDEE TARDIEU'S reflections upon Strabo's method of work, in

his _Geographie de Strabon_ (Hachette, 3 vols, 12mo.), vol. iii. p. 286,

note 2.

[219] As to this singular people and their religious beliefs, the

information contained in the two works of Sir H. LAYARD (_Nineveh_, vol. 1.

pp. 270-305, and _Discoveries_, pp. 40-92) will be read with interest.

Thanks to special circumstances Sir H. Layard was able to become more

intimately acquainted than any other traveller with this much-abused and

cruelly persecuted sect. He collected much valuable information upon

doctrines which, even after his relation, are not a little obscure and

confused. The Yezidis have a peculiar veneration for the evil principle, or

Satan; they also seem to worship the sun. Their religion is in fact a

conglomeration of various survivals from the different systems that have

successively obtained in that part of Asia. They themselves have no clear

idea of it as a whole. It would repay study by an archaeologist of

religions.

[220] BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, vol. v. p. 70.

[221] See above, page 118, note 1.

[222] Some rooms are as much as thirty feet wide. They would require joists

at least thirty-three feet long, a length that can hardly be admitted in

view of the very mediocre quality of the wood in common use.

[223] _Gailhabaud, Monuments anciens et modernes_, vol. i.; plate entitled

_Tombeaux superposes a Corneto_.

[224] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 309. In this passage M. Place affirms

that Mr. Layard discovered in a room of one of the Ninevite palaces,

several openings cut at less than four feet above the floor level. It is,

moreover, certain that these openings were included in the original plan of

the building, because the reliefs are interrupted so as to leave room for

the window without injury to the scenes sculptured upon them; but, adds M.

Place, this example is unique, one of those exceptions that help to confirm

a rule. We have in vain searched through the two works of Sir Henry Layard

for the statement alluded to by M. Place. The English explorer only once

mentions windows, and then he says: "Even in the rooms bounded by the outer

walls there is not the slightest trace of windows" (_Nineveh_, vol. ii. p.

260).

[225] BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, vol. v. p. 73.

[226] FLANDIN et COSTE, _Voyage en Perse; Perse ancienne_, plates 28 and

29; and, in the text, page 25. These openings occur in the great Sassanide

palace at Ctesiphon, the _Takht-i-Khosrou_ (_ibid._ pl. 216, and text, p.

175). Here the terra-cotta pipes are about eight inches in diameter.

According to these writers similar contrivances are still in use in Persia.

[227] In the cupola of the palace at Sarbistan (Fig. 54), a window may be

perceived in the upper part of the vertical wall, between the pendentives

of the dome. Such openings may well have been pierced under Assyrian domes.

From many of the illustrations we have given, it will be seen that the

Ninevite architects had no objection to windows, provided they could be

placed in the upper part of the wall. It is of windows like ours, pierced

at a foot or two above the ground, that no examples have been found.

[228] PLACE. _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 312-314.

[229] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 313.

[230] _Ibid._ p. 310

[231] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 311.

[232] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 307.

[233] See BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, vol. v. p. 53; _Place_, _Ninive_,

vol. i. pp. 306, 307.

[234] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. ii. p. 15.

[235] TAYLOR, _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. xv. p. 409.

[236] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 260.

[237] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, pp. 645-6.

[238] LAYARD, _Monuments_, &c., first series, plate 19. This relief is

reproduced in PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii. plate 40, fig. 6.

[239] British Museum; Kouyundjik Gallery, Nos. 34-43. See also LAYARD'S

_Monuments_, plates 8 and 9.--ED.

[240] A second inclined gallery of the same kind was found by LAYARD in

another of the Kouyundjik palaces (_Discoveries_, p. 650).

[241] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 306, 307.

[242] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 140.

[243] As to the great size sometimes reached by the tents of the Arab

chiefs, and the means employed to divide them into several apartments, see

LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 313, and the sketch on page 321.

[244] There is a photographic reproduction of these interesting reliefs in

the fine publication undertaken by the Society of Biblical Archaeology. This

work, which is not yet (1883) complete, is entitled _The Bronze Ornaments

of the Gates of Balawat_, _Shalmaneser_ II. 859-825, edited, with an

introduction, by Samuel BIRCH, with descriptions and translations by

Theophilus G. PINCHES, folio, London. The three first parts are before us.

The motive reproduced above belongs to the plate marked F, 5.

[245] They are to be found on the sheet provisionally numbered B, 1, in the

publication above referred to.

[246] This cylinder, which is now in the British Museum, was perhaps the

actual signet of the king.

[247] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. ii. p. 272.

[248] LAYARD, _Monuments of Nineveh_, first series, plate 77; second

series, plates 24 and 36.

[249] _Genesis_, xiii. 12.

[250] _Genesis_, xix.

Sec. 4.--_The Column._

As Chaldaea, speaking broadly, made no use of stone in its buildings, the

stone column or shaft was unknown to its architects; at least not a single

fragment of such a thing has been found among the ruins. Here and there

cylindrical piers built up of small units seem to have been employed. These

are sometimes of specially moulded bricks,[251] sometimes of sandstone

fragments supported by a coat of masonry. Time has separated the stones of

the latter, and it is now only represented by fragments whose shape betrays

their original destination. Taylor, indeed, found one of these piers still

in place during his excavations at Abou-Sharein, but his sketch and

description are so confused that it is quite useless to reproduce

them.[252]

On the other hand, Chaldaea preceded Assyria in the art of raising airy

structures mainly composed of wood and metal, and by them she was led to

the use of slender supports and a decoration in which grace and elegance

were the most conspicuous features. We have a proof of this in a curious

monument recently acquired by the British Museum. It comes from Abou-Abba,

about sixteen miles south-west of Bagdad, and is in a marvellous state of

preservation. Abou-Abba has been recognized as the site of the ancient

Sippara, one of the oldest of Chaldaean towns. Its sanctuaries, in which the

sun-god, Samas, was chiefly adored, always maintained a great importance.

The monument in question is a tablet of very close-grained grey stone

11-1/3 inches long 6 inches high and, in the centre, about 3 inches thick.

Its thickness increases from top to bottom. The edge is grooved. High up

on the obverse there is a bas-relief, beneath this commences a long

inscription which is finished on the reverse.[253] Shorter inscriptions are

engraved on the field of the relief itself. The whole work--figures,

inscriptions, and outer mouldings--is executed with the utmost care. The

laborious solicitude with which the smallest details are carried out is to

be explained by the destination of this little plaque, namely, the temple

in the centre of Sippara in which a triad consisting of Sin, Samas, and

Istar was the object of worship.[254]

The relief itself--which we reproduce from a cast kindly presented to us by

Dr. Birch--occupies rather less than half of the obverse (Fig. 71). It

represents a king called Nabou-Abla-Idin, who reigned about 900, doing

homage to the sun-god.[255] We shall return to this scene and its

composition when the time arrives for treating Chaldaean sculpture. At

present we only wish to speak of the pavilion under which the deity is

enthroned upon a chair supported by two beings half man and half bull.

This kind of tabernacle is bounded, above and at the back of the god, by a

wall of which there is nothing to show the exact nature. Its graceful,

sinuous line, however, seems to exclude the idea, sufficiently improbable

in itself, of a brick vault. It may possibly have been of wood, though it

would not be easy to obtain this elegant curve even in that material.

But such forms as this are given with the greatest ease in metal, and we

are ready to believe that what the artist here meant to represent was a

metal frame, which could at need be hidden under a canopy of leather or

wool, like those we have already encountered in the Assyrian bas-reliefs

(Figs. 67 and 68). The artist has in fact made use of a graphic process

common enough with the Egyptians.[256] He has given us a lateral elevation

of the tabernacle with the god in profile within it, because his skill was

unequal to the task of showing him full front and seated between the two

columns of the facade.

The single column thus left visible has been represented with great skill

and care; the sculptor seems to have taken pleasure in dwelling upon its

smallest details. Slender as it is, it must have been of wood. The markings

upon it suggest the trunk of a palm, but we may be permitted to doubt

whether it was allowed to remain in its natural uncovered state. Even in

the climate of Chaldaea a dead tree trunk exposed to the air would have no

great durability. Sooner or later the sun, the rain, the changes of

temperature, would give a good account of it, and besides, a piece of rough

wood could hardly be made to harmonize with the luxury that must assuredly

have been lavished by the people of Sippara upon the sanctuary of their

greatest divinity.

It is probable, therefore, that the wood was overlaid with plates of gilded

bronze, fastened on with nails.

This hypothesis is confirmed by one of M. Place's discoveries at

Khorsabad.[257] There, in front of the Harem, he found several large

fragments of a round cedar-wood beam almost as thick as a man's body. It

was cased in a bronze sheath, very much oxydized and resembling the scales

of a fish in arrangement (Fig. 72). The metal was attached to the wood by a

large number of bronze nails. Comparing these remains with certain

bas-reliefs in which different kinds of trees appear (Fig. 27) we can

easily see that the Ninevite sculptors meant to represent the peculiar

roughnesses of palm bark. Their usual methods are modified a little by the

requirements of the material and the size of the beam upon which it was

used. Each scale was about 4-1/2 inches high, and according to the

calculations of M. Place, the whole mast must have been from

five-and-thirty to forty feet high. Working for spectators on a lower level

and at some distance, the smith thought well to make his details as regular

and strongly marked as he could; to each scale or leaf he gave a raised

edge to mark its contour and distinguish it from the rest. The general

effect was thus obtained by deliberate exaggeration of the relief and by a

conventionality that was justified by the conditions of the problem to be

solved.

[Illustration: FIG. 71.--Homage to _Samas_ or _Shamas_. Tablet from

Sippara. Actual size. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

At a little distance from this broken beam M. Place found a leaf of gold

which is now in the Louvre; it presents the same ovoid forms as the bronze

sheathing, and, moreover, the numerous nail holes show that it was meant to

fulfil the same purpose as the bronze plates. The place in which it was

found, its dimensions and form, all combine to prove that it was laid upon

the bronze as we should lay gold leaf. It bears an inscription in cuneiform

characters.

[Illustration: FIG. 72.--Sheath of a cedar-wood mast, bronze.]

We are inclined to take these plates for models in restoring the columns of

the Sippara tabernacle. There is nothing in the richness of this double

covering of bronze and gold to cause surprise, as the inscription which

covers part of the face and the whole of the back of the tablet is nothing

but a long enumeration of the gifts made to the shrine of Samas by the

reigning king and his predecessors.

This column has both capital and base. The former cannot have been of

stone; a heavy block of basalt or even of limestone would be quite out of

place in such a situation. As for the base it is hardly more than a

repetition of the capital, and must have been of the same material; and

that material was metal, the only substance that, when bent by the hand or

beaten by the hammer, takes almost of its own motion those graceful curves

that we call _volutes_.

We believe then in a bronze capital gilded. Under the volutes three rings,

or _astragali_, may be seen. By their means the capital was allied to the

shaft. The former consisted of two volutes between which appeared a

vertical point resembling one of the angles of a triangle. The base is the

same except that it has no point, and that the rings are in contact with

the ground instead of with the shaft. These volutes may also be perceived

on the table in front of the tabernacle, where they support the large disk

by which the sun-god is symbolized.

[Illustration: FIG. 73.--Interior of a house supported by wooden pillars;

from the gates of Balawat. British Museum.]

Before quitting this tablet we may point to another difference between the

column of Sippara and the shafts of the same material and proportions that

we have encountered in the Assyrian bas-reliefs (Figs. 67, 68, and 69). In

the latter the column rises above the canopy, which is attached to its

shaft by brackets or nails. At Sippara the canopy rests upon the capital

itself. The same arrangement may be found in Assyrian representations of

these light structures; it will suffice to give one example taken from the

gates of Balawat (Fig. 73). Here, too, the proportions of the columns prove

them to have been of wood. They do not rise above the entablature. The

architrave rests upon them, and, as in Greece and Egypt, its immediate

weight is borne by abaci.

At present our aim is to prove that Assyria derived from Chaldaea the first

idea of those tall and slender columns, the shafts of which were of wood

sheathed in metal, and the capitals of the latter material. The graceful

and original forms of Chaldaean art would have prepared the way for a

columnar architecture in stone, had that material been forthcoming.

Babylon, however, saw no such architecture. Her plastic genius never came

under the influence that would have led her to import stone from abroad;

and the grace and variety of the orders remained unknown to her builders.

Like Egypt, Chaldaea gave lessons but received none. The forms of her art

are to be explained by the inborn characteristics of her people and the

natural conditions among which they found themselves placed.

In Assyria these conditions were rather different. The stone column was

used there, but used in a timid and hesitating fashion. It never reached

the freedom and independence that would have characterized it had it arisen

naturally from the demands of construction.[258]

[Illustration: FIG. 74.--Assyrian capital, in perspective; compiled from

Place.]

We only possess one column, or rather one fragment of a column, from

Assyria, and that was found by M. Place at Khorsabad (Fig. 74). It is a

block of carefully worked and carved limestone about forty inches high, and

including both the capital and the upper part of the shaft in its single

piece.

Such a combination could not long exist in architectonic systems in which

the stone column played its true part. It is a survival from the use of

wood. Another characteristic feature is the complete absence both from this

fragment and from the columns in the sculptured reliefs of vertical lines

or divisions of any kind, no trace of a fluted or polygonal shaft has been

found.[259]

In writing the history of the Egyptian column we explained how the natural

desire for as much light as possible led the architects of Beni-Hassan to

transform the square pier, first into an octagonal prism, secondly into one

with sixteen sides.[260] And to this progressive elaboration of the

polyhedric shaft the flutes seemed to us to owe their origin. On the other

hand, with tall and slender supports such as those afforded by palm trunks

no necessity for reduction and for the shaving of angles would arise, and

those flutes whose peculiar section is owing to the desire for a happy play

of light and shadow, would never have been thought of. If we imitate a

natural timber shaft in stone we have a smooth cylindrical column like that

seen in Fig. 74.

Again, the shafts of the columns in the bas-reliefs, appear slender in

comparison with those of Egypt, or with the doric shafts of the oldest

Greek temples (see Fig. 41 and 42). In the fragmentary column from

Khorsabad (Fig. 74) we have only a small part of the shaft but if we may

judge from the feeble salience of the capital, its proportions must have

been slender rather than heavy and massive.

Wherever the stone column has been used in buildings of mediocre size, the

architect seems to have been driven by some optical necessity to make his

angle columns more thickset than the other supports. Thus it was in

Assyria, in the little temple at Kouyundjik (Fig. 42), where the outer

columns are sensibly thicker than those between them; at Khorsabad (Fig.

41) the same result was obtained by rather different means. The edifice

represented in this bas-relief bears no little similarity to certain

Egyptian temples and to the Greek temple _in antis_.[261] The strength of

these angular piers contrasts happily with the elegance of the columns

between them. The latter are widely spaced, and, as in some Egyptian

buildings, the architrave is but a horizontal continuation of the corner

piers.

If we analyse the column and examine its three parts separately we shall be

led to similar conclusions. The stone column no doubt bore the architrave

upon its capital wherever it was used, and both in Chaldaea and Assyria we

find the same arrangement in those light structures which we have classed

as belonging to the architecture of the tent (Figs. 70 and 72). The origin

of the forms employed in stone buildings is most clearly shewn by the

frequent occurrence of the volute, a curvilinear element suggested by the

use and peculiar properties of metal.

[Illustration: FIG. 75.--Capital; from a small temple.]

We find these volutes everywhere, upon shafts of stone and wood

indifferently. We are tempted to think, when we examine the details of our

Fig. 67, that the first idea of them was taken from the horns of the ibex

or the wild goat. The column on the right of this cut bears a fir cone

between its volutes, those on the left have small tablets on which are

perched the very animals whose heads are armed with these horns.

However this may be, the form in question, like all others borrowed from

nature by man, was soon modified and developed by art. The curve was

prolonged and turned in upon itself. In one of the capitals of the little

temple represented at Kouyundjik (Fig. 42), two pairs of these horns may be

recognized one above the other (Fig. 75), but nowhere else do we find such

an arrangement. Whether the column be of wood, as in the Sippara tablet

(Fig. 71), or of stone, as in those buildings in which the weight and

solidity of the entablature points decisively to that material (Figs. 41

and 42), we find a volute in universal use that differs but slightly in its

general physiognomy from the familiar ornament of the Ionic capital.

[Illustration: FIG. 76.--View of a palace; from Layard.]

Let us revert for a moment to the country house or palace of which we gave

a general view in Fig. 39. We shall there find on the highest part of the

building an open loggia supported by small columns many times repeated. We

reproduce this part of the relief on a larger scale (Fig. 76), so that its

details may be more clearly seen. A very slight familiarity with the

graphic processes of the Assyrians is sufficient to inform the reader that

the kind of trellis work with which the bed of the relief is covered is

significant of a mountainous country. The palace rises on the banks of a

river, which is indicated by the sinuous lines in the right lower corner.

The buildings themselves--which are dominated here and there by the round

tops of trees, planted, we may suppose, in the inner courts--stand upon

mounds at various heights above the plain. The lowest of these look like

isolated structures, such as the advanced works of a fortress. Next comes a

line of towers, and then the artificial hill crowned by the palace properly

speaking. The facade of the latter is flanked by tall and salient towers,

across whose summits runs the open gallery to which we have referred.[262]

This is supported by numerous columns which must by their general

arrangement and spacing, have been of wood. The gallery consisted, in all

probability, of a platform upheld by trunks of trees, either squared or

left in the rough and surmounted by capitals sheathed in beaten bronze.

The volute is here quite simple in shape; elsewhere we find it doubled, as

it were, so that four volutes occur between the astragali and the abacus

(Figs. 42 and 77).[263] In other examples, again, it is elongated upwards

until it takes a shape differing but little from the acanthus leaves of the

Corinthian capital (Fig. 78).[264]

This volute is found all over Assyria and Chaldaea. It decorates the angles

of the small temple represented on the stone known as Lord Aberdeen's Black

Stone (Fig. 79). It occurs also on many of the ivories, but these, perhaps,

are for the most part Phoenician. But in any case the Assyrians made

constant use of it in the decoration of their furniture. In an ivory

plaque, of which the British Museum possesses several examples, we find a

man standing and grasping a lotus stem in his left hand (Fig. 80). This

stem rests upon a support which bears a strong resemblance to the Sippara

capital (Fig. 71); it has two volutes separated by a sharp point. The

fondness of the Assyrians for these particular curves is also betrayed in

that religious and symbolic device which has been sometimes called the

_Tree of Life_. Some day, perhaps, the exact significance of this emblem

may be explained, we are content to point out the variety and happy

arrangement of the sinuous lines which surround and enframe the richly

decorated pilaster that acts as its stem. We gave one specimen of this tree

in Fig. 8; we now give another (Fig. 81). The astragali, the ibex horns

and the volutes, may all be easily recognized here.

[Illustration: FIG. 77.--Capital; from a small temple.]

[Illustration: FIG. 78.--Capital.]

[Illustration: FIG. 79.--Chaldaean tabernacle.]

[Illustration: FIG. 80.--Ivory plaque found at Nimroud. Actual size.

British Museum.]

The only stone capital that has come down to us has, indeed, no volutes

(Fig. 74) but it is characterized by the same taste for flowing lines and

rounded forms. Its general section is that of a cyma reversa surmounted by

a flattened torus, and its appearance that of a vase decorated with

curvilinear and geometrical tracery. There is both originality and beauty

in the contours of the profile and the arrangement of the tracery; the

section as a whole is not unlike that of the inverted bell-shaped capitals

at Karnak.[265]

[Illustration: FIG. 81.--_The Tree of Life_; from Layard.]

This type must have been in frequent use, as we find it repeated in four

bases found still in place in front of the palace of Sennacherib by Sir

Henry Layard. They were of limestone and rested upon plinths and a pavement

of the same material (Fig. 82).[266] In these the design of the ornament is

a little more complicated than the festoon on the Khorsabad capital, but

the principle is the same and both objects belong to one narrow class.

We again encounter this same base with its opposing curves in a curious

monument discovered at Kouyundjik by Mr. George Smith.[267] This is a small

and carefully executed model, in yellowstone, of a winged human-headed

bull, supporting on his back a vase or base similar in design to that

figured above. This little object must have served as a model for the

carvers engaged upon the palace walls. We shall not here stop to examine

the attributes and ornaments of the bull, they are well shown in our Figs.

83 and 84, and their types are known by many other examples. Our aim is to

show that we have rightly described the uses to which it was put. These

might have remained obscure but for the discovery, in the south-western

palace at Nimroud, of a pair of winged sphinxes, calcined by fire but still

in their places between two huge lions at one of the doors. Before their

contours disappeared--and they rapidly crumbled away upon contact with the

air--Layard had time to make a drawing of the one that had suffered least

(Fig. 85). In his description he says that between the two wings was a sort

of plateau, "intended to carry the base of a column."[268]

[Illustration: FIG. 82.--Ornamented base, in limestone.]

Surprised at not finding any trace of the column itself, he gives out

another conjecture: that these sphinxes were altars upon which offerings

to the gods, or presents to the king were placed. This hypothesis

encounters many objections. We may easily account for the disappearance of

the column by supposing it to have been of wood. If it was stone, it may

have been carried off for use as a roller by the inhabitants of the

neighbouring villages, before that part of the building to which it

belonged was so completely engulfed and hidden by the ruins as it

afterwards became.[269] Moreover we can point to a certain number of

Assyrian altars, and their shapes are very different from this.

[Illustration: FIG. 83.--Model of a base, side view. Actual size.]

[Illustration: FIG. 84.--The same, seen from in front.]

Finally, all our doubts are removed by a bas-relief from the palace of

Assurbanipal, which is now in the British Museum (Fig. 86). The upper part

of this carved picture is destroyed, but enough remains to show that it

reproduced the facade of some richly decorated building. Four columns

supported on the backs of so many lions, and two flat pilasters upheld in

the same fashion by winged griffins, may readily be distinguished. That

these griffins are not repeated on the left of the relief, is due perhaps

to the haste or laziness of the sculptor. He may have thought he had done

enough when he had shown once for all how these pedestals were composed.

However this may have been, the lions in this relief play exactly the same

_role_ as that attributed by us to the little model found by George Smith,

and to the winged sphinx discovered by Sir Henry Layard before one of the

doors at Nimroud. A base in the form of a vase or cushion is inserted

between the back of the animal and the bottom of the shaft. In the

pilaster--if we may believe that the artist took no liberties with

fact--the junction is direct without the interposition of any ornamental

motive.

[Illustration: FIG. 85.--Winged Sphinx carrying the base of a column; from

Layard.]

[Illustration: FIG. 86.--Facade of an Assyrian building; from a bas-relief

in the British Museum. Height 10 inches.]

In what M. Place calls the state doorways (_portes ornees_) of Khorsabad,

the arches spring from the backs of the great mitred bulls that guard the

entrance.[270] But, whether the columns rose from the backs of animals real

or fantastic, they always seem to have had a base. Almost the only instance

of its absence is in the open gallery in Fig. 76, and there, perhaps, they

are hidden by a balustrade. Everywhere else we find a more or less

ornamental member interposed between the shaft and the ground. At Khorsabad

(Fig. 41) it is a simple torus (Fig. 87), at Kouyundjik (Fig. 42) it is a

kind of cushion (Fig. 88), which we find represented in not a few of the

bas-reliefs. The curves bear a distant resemblance to the volutes of a

capital; above this base appears a ring or astragal, the origin of which

may be easily guessed. The original timber column, the newly felled tree

that was set up to support the roof of a tent or a house, must have been

placed upon a block of stone or wood, to which it was joined, in some

degree, by hollowing out the latter and setting the foot of the timber beam

in the hollow, and then hiding the junction by those reed bands that, as

travellers tell us, were still used for the same purpose in the last years

of Babylon.[271] In time a ring of metal would take the place of the reeds,

and when stone columns came to be used, a feature which was at first a

necessity, or, at least, a useful expedient and a guarantee of duration and

solidity, came at last to be simply an ornament.

[Illustration: FIGS. 87, 88.--Bases of columns; from the bas-reliefs.]

* * * * *

We have now studied the Assyrian column as a whole and in detail. Most of

its features seem to us to be survivals from the methods and processes of

what we have called the architecture of the tent. The stone column had no

place in those structures of crude brick of which the real national

architecture of Mesopotamia consisted; it was not at home there; the

surrounding conditions were unfavourable to its development. And yet, in

time, it did, as we have seen, put in a rare appearance, at least in the

case of that one of the two sister nations by which a sufficient supply of

stone could be obtained, but even then it filled an ornamental and

auxiliary rather than a vital function. Its remains are only to be found by

patient search, and even in the bas-reliefs its representations are few and

far between. By making diligent use of these two channels of information

archaeology has succeeded in demonstrating the existence of the Assyrian

column and describing its forms, but at the same time it has been compelled

to recognize how narrow was its use, especially in the great structures on

which Mesopotamian builders lavished all the resources of their art. In

those it was employed mainly for the decoration of outbuildings, and it

will be well to inquire how it acquitted itself of such a task.

* * * * *

The column seems to have been introduced in those gateways to which the

Assyrian architect attached so much importance.[272] Read carefully Sir

Henry Layard's description of his discovery of two sphinxes upon one of the

facades of the south-western palace at Kouyundjik (Fig. 83); he gives no

plan of the passage where he found them, but his narrative[273] suggests

the existence of some kind of porch in front of the large opening. It must

have been upheld by a pair of columns on the backs of the two sphinxes, and

may have consisted of one of those wooden canopies which are so common in

the modern architecture of the East.[274]

We are inclined to recognize a pent house of this kind, but of more

complicated construction in the Kouyundjik bas-relief figured above (Fig.

83). No door is shown, but that, perhaps, is due to the sculptor's

inability to suggest a void, or the two central perpendicular lines may

have been joined by a horizontal one on the upper part of the relief, which

is lost, and thus a doorway indicated; it would then have a couple of

pilasters and a couple of columns on each flank.

In classic architecture we find nothing that can be compared with this

curious notion of placing columns and pilasters on the backs of real or

imaginary animals, on a lion, a winged bull, or a sphinx. In the modern

East, however, it is still done. The throne of the Shah, at Teheran, is

supported by columns which, in their turn, stand on the backs of lions.

Singularly enough the same idea found favour with European architects in

the middle ages, who often made use of it in the porches of their Christian

cathedrals.[275] Hence, the old formula often found in judicial documents,

_sedente inter leones_,--sitting between the lions--which, was used of

episcopal judgments delivered in the church porch. In Italy, in buildings

of the Lombardic style, these lions are to be found in great numbers and in

this same situation. At Modena there is one in the south porch of the

cathedral that strongly reminded me by its style and handling of the

figures now existing in Cappadocia, of the lion at Euiuk, for example; in

both instances it is extended on the ground with its fore paws laid upon

some beast it has caught.[276] We could hardly name a motive more dear to

Oriental art than this. Between the predilections of the modern East and

those of Assyria and Chaldaea there are many such analogies. We shall not

try to explain them; we shall be content with pointing them out as they

present themselves.

Various facts observed by Sir Henry Layard and the late George Smith, show

that the column was often employed to form covered alleys stretching from a

door to the edge of the platform, doubtless to the landings on which the

stepped or inclined approaches to the palace came to an end. Sir Henry

Layard[277] found four bases of limestone (Fig. 82) on the north side of

Sennacherib's palace. They were in couples, one couple close to the palace

wall, the other in a line with it but some eight-and-twenty yards farther

from the building. In each pair the distance from centre to centre was 9

feet 3 inches. With such a width the covered way may very well have been

roofed with wood, a hypothesis which is supported by the discovery, at the

same point, of the remains of crude brick walls. The columns would mark in

all likelihood the two extremities of the passage. As for the other

conjecture thrown out by the explorer, it seems to us to be much less

probable. He asks whether these bases may not have been the pedestals of

statues. Many Assyrian statues have been found together with their

pedestals, and these are always simple in the extreme and without any kind

of ornament. Moreover, the statues themselves were made rather to be set up

against a wall than to pass an independent existence in an open courtyard.

Moreover, George Smith saw two of these bases in place at one of the

entrances to the palace of Assurbanipal. Unfortunately he gives no drawing

and his description is wanting in clearness, but he seems to have noticed

the traces left by a cylindrical shaft on the upper surface of one base;

his expression, "a flat circle to receive the column," evidently means that

the latter was sunk into the substance of the base.[278] Here, no doubt was

the end of a gallery, like that in front of Sennacherib's palace.

There must in all probability have been other remains of these columns

besides those noticed by the English explorer, but at Khorsabad alone were

the excavations superintended by a professional architect, there alone were

they watched by the trained eye of a man capable of giving its true meaning

and value to every detail of a ruinous building. At Nimroud, at Kouyundjik,

at Nebbi-Younas, many interesting traces of ancient arrangements may have

been obliterated in the course of the excavations without those who stood

by having the least suspicion of their significance.

We might perhaps, if it were worth while, come upon further representations

of columns on engraved stones, on ivories, and bronzes,[279] but upon such

small objects forms are indicated in a very summary fashion, and, besides,

they would be nothing more than curtailed repetitions of motives shown in

more detail and upon a larger scale elsewhere. Our readers may fairly

judge, from the examples we have placed before them, of the appearance of

those columns of wood and metal, which the Chaldaeans used in the light and

graceful tabernacles figured for us on the relief from Sippara, and of the

more durable stone supports of the Assyrians. Long habit and an excessive

respect for tradition, hindered the latter from turning the column to its

fullest use. They stopped half way. They employed the feature with such

timidity that we can point to nothing that can be called an Assyrian order.

They produced nothing to compare with the rich and varied colonnades that

we admired in the hypostyle halls of Egypt. And yet we cannot say that they

showed any lack of originality or invention in their choice of decorations

for the bases and capitals of their columns. Their favourite motive seems

to have been the volute, to which, however, they gave an endless variety.

They used it, no doubt, in many ways that now escape us, and by applying it

now to this purpose and now to that, and sometimes with the happiest

results, they accumulated an amount of experience as to the value of those

graceful curves which was of great value to their successors. Who those

successors were and how they carried to perfection a form which had its

origin on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, will be shown in the

course of our history.

NOTES:

[251] See above, p. 118, note 1.

[252] TAYLOR, _Notes on Abou-Sharein, and Tell-el-Lahm_, (_Journal of the

Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. xv. p. 404).--ED.

[253] This inscription is published in full in the _Cuneiform Inscriptions

of Western Asia_, vol. v. part ii.

[254] The names of these three deities are furnished by the inscription

which runs beneath the canopy of the pavilion (see Fig. 71).

[255] The disk upon the table is enough by itself to betray the identity of

the god, but as if to render assurance doubly sure, the artist has taken

the trouble to cut on the bed of the relief under the three small figures,

an inscription which has been thus translated by MM. OPPERT and MENANT:

"Image of the Sun, the Great Lord, who dwells in the temple of Bit-para, in

the city of Sippara."

[256] See our _History of Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. ii. chap. 1, Sec. 1.

[257] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 120-122, and vol. iii. plate 73.

[258] In this connection Sir H. LAYARD makes an observation to which the

attention of the artist should be drawn. Whenever pictures of _Belshazzar's

Feast_ and the _Last Night of Babylon_ are painted massive Egyptian pillars

are introduced: nothing could be more contrary to the facts (_Discoveries_,

p. 581).

[259] M. PLACE, indeed, encountered an octagonal column on the mound of

Karamles, but the general character of the objects found in that excavation

led him to conclude positively that the column in question was a relic from

the Parthian or Sassanide epoch (_Ninive_, vol. ii. pp. 169, 170).

[260] _History of Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. ii. p. 95.

[261] _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 397, fig. 230; and vol. ii. p. 105, fig. 84.

[262] The profiles of the capitals in this gallery led Sir H. LAYARD to

speak of "small pillars with capitals in the form of the Ionic volute"

(_Discoveries_, p. 119) (?).

[263] A similar arrangement of volutes may be found on the rough columns

engraved upon one of the ivory plaques found at Nimroud (LAYARD,

_Monuments_, &c., first series, plate 88, fig. 3).

[264] We reproduce this capital from RAWLINSON'S _Five Great Monarchies_

(vol. i. p. 333); but we should have liked to be able to refer either to

the relief in which it occurs, or to the original design which must have

been made in the case of those slabs which had to be left at Nineveh. We

have succeeded in finding neither the relief nor the drawing, so that we

cannot guarantee the fidelity of the image.