[265] See _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. ii. p. 120, fig. 95.

[266] LAYARD forgets to give the height of this base: he is content to tell

us that its greatest diameter is 2 feet 7 inches, and its smallest 11-1/2

inches. This latter measurement must have been taken at the junction with

the shaft (_Discoveries_, p. 590).

[267] George SMITH, _Assyrian Discoveries_, sixth edition, 8vo. 1876, p.

431.

[268] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. i. p. 349, at a little distance the explorer

found the bodies of two lions placed back to back, which seemed to have

formed a pedestal of the same kind. Their heads were wanting, and the whole

group had suffered so much from fire, that it was impossible either to

carry it off or to make a satisfactory drawing from it (_ibid._ p. 351).

[269] This suggestion seems inconsistent with the state of the ruin at the

spot where the discovery was made. Sir Henry Layard describes these

sphinxes as buried in charcoal, and so calcined by the fire that they fell

into minute fragments soon after exposure to the air. Anything carried on

their backs must have fallen at the time of the conflagration, and, if a

stone column, it would have been found under the charcoal.--ED.

[270] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii. plate 11.

[271] STRABO, xvi. 1, 5.

[272] Thomas has placed one of these porches in his restoration of Sargon's

palace at Khorsabad. It is supported by two columns, and serves to mark one

of the entrances to the harem. (PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii. plate 37 _bis_.)

[273] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. i. pp. 349, 350.

[274] Numerous examples are figured in COSTE and FLANDIN'S _Perse Moderne_,

plates 3, 7, 9, 26, 27, 54, &c. They cast a wide shadow in front of the

doorways, and sometimes run along the whole length of the facade. Some

little support to M. Perrot's theory is afforded by a circumstance on which

Layard dwells strongly in the passage referred to above, namely, that the

sphinxes were found buried over their heads in charcoal, which may very

well have been the remains of such a porch; its quantity seems too great

for those of a ceiling.--ED.

[275] This coincidence struck Professor Rawlinson, who compares one of

these Assyrian columns to a column in the porch of the Cathedral of Trent.

He reproduces them both in his _Five Great Monarchies_, vol. i. p. 313.

[276] See PERROT and GUILLAUME, _Exploration archeologique de la Galatie_,

vol. ii. pl. 57.

[277] _Discoveries_, p. 590.

[278] GEORGE SMITH, _Assyrian Discoveries_, p. 431.

[279] One curious example of this is figured in the work of M. CHIPIEZ,

_Histoire critique de l'Origine et de la Formation des Ordres grecs_, p.

20. See also LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 444, where a bas-relief from the

palace of Sennacherib is figured, upon which appears a coffer supported by

a foot in the shape of a column, which ends in a regular volute.

Sec. 5.--_The Arch._

In the preceding pages we have determined the _role_ played by the column

in Assyria, and have explained that in spite of the care and taste lavished

upon some of its details, it never rose above the rank of a secondary and

subordinate member. There is nothing, then, to surprise us in the fact that

the Assyrian architect never placed his arches or vaults upon columns or

piers; he seems never to have had a glimpse of the great possibilities such

a procedure involved, a procedure from which upon the very soil of the

East, his remote descendants were to evolve the architecture of the

Byzantine church and the Arab mosque. His archivolts and the pendentives of

his vaults always rest upon thick walls, and yet almost every variety of

the simple arch or tunnel-vault are to be found among the ruins of his

buildings.

* * * * *

[Illustration: FIG. 89.--Tomb-chamber at Mugheir; from Taylor.]

Like all the other forms of Assyrian architecture the arch was invented in

Chaldaea. The use of small sized materials must have led to its early

discovery in that country. But the only arches now standing occur in the

better preserved monuments of Assyria. On the other hand the tombs of Lower

Chaldaea furnish more than one example of that false, corbelled or off-set

vault, that we have already encountered in Egypt.[280] The chamber figured

below is taken from the necropolis of Mugheir, formerly "Ur of the

Chaldees." It is built of crude brick bound with mud. The vault is

supported by walls sloping upwards and outwards like those of a modern

tunnel (Fig. 89).[281]

Such a method of construction is only adapted to buildings of small

dimensions; it could not be used for chambers with wide roofs, or where any

great weight was to be upheld. The arches upon which, according to both

Strabo and Diodorus,[282] the hanging gardens of Babylon were supported,

must have been real centred arches. As to whether they were of pise, like

those of Khorsabad, the Greek writers tell us nothing. From what we know of

the habits of the Chaldaean builder we may conclude that they were true

arches with voussoirs either of bricks burnt in the kiln, or so well dried

that they were almost as hard and durable as those that had passed through

the fire. This conjecture is confirmed by the fact that the structures in

question lasted till the Macedonian conquest. Strabo and Diodorus speak of

the great temple of Bel as so ruinous that its original height could not be

guessed, even approximatively. It was otherwise with the hanging gardens.

Of these they give the measurements, on plan, of the platforms and piers,

together with their heights, and the heights of the arches. We should find

it difficult to explain the preciseness of these measurements and their

agreement one with another, unless we supposed that both writers had some

exact authority, such as one of the companions or historians of Alexander,

to refer to. The kings of Persia lived at Babylon for a part of the year.

These princes may well have been indifferent to the preservation of the

national fanes, they may even have hastened their destruction, as Xerxes is

said to have done, in order to punish and humiliate the rebellious

Babylonians. But in their own interest they would see that proper care was

taken of those hanging gardens by which their stay in the city would be

rendered more pleasant than it would otherwise have been, from whose lofty

platforms their watchful eyes could roam over the city and the adjoining

plain, and follow the course of the great river until it disappeared on the

south amid groves of waving palm. After the rise of Seleucia and Ctesiphon,

however, the gardens would rapidly hasten to decay, but they must have been

solidly built in the first instance to last as long as they did. The pise

vaults of the Ninevite palaces could never have stood so well. In spite of

the layers of lead and bitumen which, as Diodorus tells us, were spread

upon their terraces, the summer rains must in time have found their way

into their walls and set up a process of disintegration which could have

but one end. Real brick with good mortar could alone resist such

influences, and those, no doubt, were the materials used in the Babylonian

gardens. If their substructures should ever be found and laid open, we have

little doubt that arches as carefully built as those of the Assyrian ruins

will be brought to light.

The gateways of the town built by Sargon at the foot of his palace mound

were roofed with semicircular vaults.[283] In order to study their

construction more closely, M. Place demolished one of these arches piece by

piece, the one numbered three on his plan.[284] It was already condemned to

destruction by the necessity for carrying off its sculptures.

The total height from pavement to keystone, was twenty-four feet six

inches, from the centre of the keystone to the springing of the arch itself

was eight feet, the total width of the opening, measured at the feet of the

caryatides, was fourteen feet four inches.

The bricks had not been burnt in a kiln but they had been subjected to a

prolonged desiccation. The system of construction was as simple as

possible. The perpendicular side walls passed into the vault without any

preparation, and the arch when complete had no inward projection and no

structural ornament but the inner faces of the carefully placed voussoirs;

as all the bricks were of the same size and shape something more than their

slightly trapezoidal form was required to keep them in place, and a softer

clay was used to bind them together. With the addition of this rude cement

each brick became a long and narrow wedge and determined the curve of the

vault in which it was placed. Some idea of the appearance of this triple

arch may be formed from the illustration we have compiled from M. Thomas's

elevation of an alcove in one of the harem apartments at Khorsabad (Fig.

90). This vault is not in existence, but its component parts were found

among the ruins of Sargon's palace.[285]

[Illustration: FIG. 90.--Interior of a chamber in the harem of Sargon's

palace at Khorsabad; compiled from Place.]

There is one detail in the decoration of these doorways that should be

carefully noted. Wherever the architect makes use of a round-headed opening

he reinforces its outlines with a kind of semicircular frieze, to which

brilliant colours or bold reliefs would give no little decorative value.

In what M. Place calls _portes ornees_, this ornamental archivolt is of

enamelled bricks, in the subordinate entrances it is distinguished from the

rest of the wall merely by its salience. In neither case, however, does it

end in any kind of impost, it returns horizontally without the arch and

forms an ornament along a line corresponding to the spring of the vault

within. We give an example of this peculiarly Assyrian arrangement from one

of the gateways at Dour-Saryoukin (Fig. 91). Nothing like it is to be

found, so far as we know, among the buildings of any other ancient people.

[Illustration: FIG. 91.--Return round the angle of an archivolt in one of

the gates of Dour-Saryoukin; compiled from Place.]

From the point of view of the special study on which we are now busy, the

inhabited and visible part of an Assyrian building is less interesting than

those channels hidden in the substructures which acted as drains. These

channels existed in all the palaces. Layard encountered them at Nimroud

and Kouyundjik,[286] but it was at Khorsabad that they were found in the

best condition and most carefully studied.[287] We shall make use chiefly

of the observations of MM. Place and Thomas in our explanation of a curious

system of sewers that does, perhaps, more honour to the Ninevite builder

than any other part of his work. Every detail of their construction is full

of interest,--the general arrangement, the choice of materials and the

various methods of vaulting brought into play.

In nearly all the rooms there is an opening in the middle of the pavement

towards which the rest of the floor has a gentle slope. It is a round hole

cut through the centre of a square stone set among the bricks and leading

to a circular brick conduit. In the first specimen described by M. Place,

this descending pipe is five feet four inches deep, and rather more than

eleven inches in diameter. It leads into an almost horizontal conduit with

a similar section and of the same materials. This latter channel is gently

inclined through the whole of its length; it terminates in the main drain

of which the cut on the next page gives a section in perspective (Fig.

92).[288]

The floor of this sewer was formed of large limestone slabs overpassing the

inside width of the channel by several inches. By this means the internal

joints were reduced to a minimum, and a further precaution was taken by

placing the slabs in a bath of asphalte, which was also used to coat the

oblique channels and the foot of the vertical pipe. The low perpendicular

walls upon which the vault was to be placed were built upon the outer edge

of these wide slabs. They were of four-inch bricks, carefully laid.

The most remarkable thing about this drain is the construction of the

vault. The bricks composing it are trapezoidal in shape, two of their edges

being slightly rounded, the one concave, the other convex. The radius of

this curve varies with each brick, being governed by its destined place in

the vault. These bricks go therefore in pairs, and as there are four

courses of bricks on each side of the vault, four separate and different

moulds would be required, besides a fifth, for a brick of which we shall

presently have to speak. The four narrow sides of these bricks differ

sensibly one from another. The two curved faces being at different

distances from the centre, are of unequal lengths, while, as the lower

oblique edge is some inches below the upper in the curve, these two edges

have different directions. In their disinclination to use stone voussoirs,

the Assyrian builders here found themselves compelled to mould bricks of

very complicated form, and the way in which they accomplished their task

speaks volumes for their skill.

[Illustration: FIG. 92.--Drain at Khorsabad, with pointed arch. Section in

perspective.]

If we cast a glance at our Fig. 92 the first thing that strikes us is the

absence of a keystone to the vault. The two rows of voussoirs that are in

full view thrust against each other only by a single sharp edge; there is

no keystone between them. In the row immediately behind, however, there is

a stone (imperfectly seen in our illustration) that seems to play the part

of a key. Thus we find that only at each alternate vertical course was the

arch of burnt and moulded brick complete. The openings left at the summits

of the other courses must have been filled in in some way, and, in fact,

the line of voids which ran along the top of the extrados was filled in

with brick earth, beaten tight and forming the best of keys. So that the

vault was completed and consolidated by the same material as that used to

make its channel impervious to water.[289]

This vault has another strange singularity which at first is very

surprising. The whole structure has a sensible inclination in the direction

of its length, suggesting that some accident had happened to it in course

of erection. Such an explanation must be rejected, however, because at the

moment of discovery the whole arrangement was uninjured, and, moreover, the

filling of clay must have rendered any movement of the kind impossible. M.

Place's explanation seems the best. He thinks the slope was given merely to

facilitate the work of the bricklayers. The first course of voussoirs would

be sloped in this fashion, and would rest upon some mass of crude brick in

the centre of the building. The bricks of the second course would lean

against it, and their weight would be brought in to add cohesion and

solidity to the whole structure instead of being entirely occupied in

adding to the perpendicular thrust, while the ease with which they could be

placed without an internal support would be much increased. Assisted by

this simple expedient, two bricklayers with their labourers could build the

vault at a very rapid rate. We may believe that the notion of building in

this way would never have occurred to the Assyrian architects but for their

habit of dispensing with timber centres.

This slope had an effect upon the arrangement of the bricks which should be

noticed. In all other vaults, such as those of the city gates, the units

are laid upon their longest sides, and a vertical section shows their

shortest diameters. Here, on the other hand, the bricks stand on their

edges, and their largest surfaces are in contact, on each side, with the

next vertical course. If the full benefit of the natural cohesion between

one brick and another was to be obtained, this method of laying them was

absolutely necessary.

Internally, the drain we have been studying was four feet eight inches high

from the floor to the crown of the vault. Its width was three feet nine

inches, and its general slope very slight. It may be followed for a total

length of about 220 feet, after which falls of earth have carried away the

arch and the whole northern part of the esplanade, so that no trace of the

mouth by which it opened on the plain can be traced.

The other sewer described by M. Place may be more summarily dismissed. In

spite of their drawings and minute descriptions, explorers have not yet

succeeded in explaining the eccentricities of construction it presents. It

has two channels, one above the other, which are similar neither in slope

nor section. Moreover this double sewer is abruptly interrupted in the

middle of the artificial mound through which it runs. Must we believe that

it was never finished or used? We shall not attempt to answer this

question, but shall content ourselves with pointing to the similarities

between this tunnel and the last described. The same large stone slabs upon

a layer of bitumen, the same inclination of the body of the vault, the same

bricks formed in different moulds according to their place in the vault,

are found in each.

Our Fig. 93 shows the two channels and their position one above the other.

The pavement of the terrace, which consists of a double bed of large

bricks, rests upon the extrados of the upper channel. This vault is

semicircular; it has three voussoirs on each side, which, with the key,

make seven in each vertical course. But in consequence either of an error

in measurement or of a mistake in calculating the shrinking of the bricks,

there was a gap between the third voussoir on the right and the key. This

gap was filled in by the insertion of a stone cut into the shape of a

wedge. But for this fault--which, however, had no appreciable effect upon

its solidity--the vault would be perfect.[290] The narrow triangular

opening of the lower channel may be seen below it.

The semicircular vault gradually and insensibly changes into an elliptical

one. The side walls become lower, at each yard their height is diminished

by the thickness of a brick, and finally they disappear about the middle

of the total length. At the point shown in our Fig. 94 the arch has lost

its supports and rests directly upon the pavement of the channel. Its

ellipse is composed of eight voussoirs, four on each side, and a key with a

small wedge-shaped stone voussoir on each side of it. Between the two

points shown in our Figs. 93 and 94 the upper and lower sewers have become

one, the vaulted roof of the first and the paved floor of the second being

continued in a single tunnel. At the point where this tunnel comes to a

sudden end it is closed by a wall, through which two small openings are

pierced to serve as outlets for the sewer within (Fig. 94).

[Illustration: FIG. 93.--Sewer at Khorsabad, with semicircular vault;

compiled from Place.]

At different points on the Khorsabad mound, M. Place found other sewers,

some with depressed, some with basket-handle vaults, while, at Nimroud,

channels were discovered which were square in section and covered with

large slabs of limestone.[291] The Assyrian architects seem, however, to

have had a decided preference for the vault in such a situation. They

expected it to give greater solidity, and in that they were not mistaken.

The vaults of burnt brick, though set without cement, have remained

unshaken and close in their joints, and the sewers they inclose are the

only voids that have remained clear in the ruins of the buildings to which

they belong.

[Illustration: FIG. 94.--Sewer at Khorsabad, with elliptical vault;

compiled from Place.]

We may, perhaps, be accused of dwelling too minutely upon these Assyrian

vaults. We have done so because there is no question more interesting or

more novel in the whole history of architecture than the true origin of the

keyed vault and the different uses to which it has been put. Ottfried

Mueller looked upon the Etruscans as the inventors of the vault; he believed

that the Greek builders learnt the secret from the early inhabitants of

Italy,[292] and that the arches of the Roman _Cloaca Maxima_ built by the

Tuscan architects of the Tarquins, were the oldest that had come down to

us from antiquity. The archaeological discoveries of the last fifty years

have singularly falsified his opinion and given an age to the vault never

before suspected. Even in the days of the Ancient Empire the Egyptians seem

to have understood its principle; in any case the architects of Amenophis,

of Thothmes, of Rameses, made frequent and skilful use of it long before

the Ninevite palaces in which we have found it were erected.[293] But the

possession of stones of enormous size enabled the Egyptians to dispense to

a great extent with the arch, and we need not be surprised, therefore, that

they failed to give it anything like its full development. They kept it in

the background, and while using it when necessary in their tombs, in the

outbuildings of their temples, in their private dwellings and warehouses,

they never made it a conspicuous element of their architectural system.

They may well be admired for the majesty of their colonnades and the

magnificence of their hypostyle halls, but not for the construction of

their vaults, for the imitation of which, moreover, they gave little

opportunity.

In Chaldaea and Assyria the conditions were different. Supposing the

architecture of those two countries to be yet entire, should we find in it

vaults rivalling in age the arch in a tomb at Abydos which Mariette

attributes to the sixth dynasty?[294] Probably not. So far as we can judge,

Chaldaean civilization does not date from so remote a past as that of Egypt,

but it appears certain that the principles of the vault were discovered and

put in practice by the Chaldees long before the comparatively modern times

in which the segmental and pointed arches of Nineveh were erected. The

latter alone are preserved because they have been hidden during all these

centuries under the heaped-up ruins of the buildings to which they

belonged, while those of Chaldaea have been carried away piece by piece, and

their materials used again and again by the modern population of

Mesopotamia.

In spite, however, of the absence of such direct evidence, we may affirm

without fear that the Chaldaean architects soon discovered the principle of

the arch, and used it at least in its simplest and least complex forms. We

are led to these conclusions not only by their restriction to small units

of construction--a restriction which is sure, sooner or later, to lead to

the discovery in question--but also by induction from the monuments we have

just been studying. The arches under the hanging gardens of Babylon, the

vaults of the sewers and gateways, the domes that covered the great square

chambers in the Ninevite palaces--all these were derived, we may be sure,

from the ancient civilization. We cannot believe that such consummate skill

in the management of a difficult matter was arrived at in a day. The purely

empiric knowledge of statics it implies could only have been accumulated by

a long series of more or less happy experiments.

Thus only can we explain the ease with which the Assyrian builder

surmounted difficulties some of which would have puzzled a modern

architect, such as the pise vaults erected over spacious galleries without

any kind of centering, and the domes over square chambers, for which some

system of pendentives--that is, of arches or other intermediate forces--by

which the base of the cupola could be allied to the top of the supporting

wall, must have been contrived. The accurate calculation of forces between

the thrust of the vaults and the strength of the retaining walls, the

dexterity with which the curves employed are varied and carried insensibly

one into the other, the skill with which the artificial materials are

prepared for their appointed office, are also surprising. By careful

moulding and manipulation the Assyrian builder made his brick voussoirs as

well fitted for their work as the cut stone of our day. Each brick had its

own shape and size, so that it was assigned in advance a particular place

in the vault and its own part in assuring the final stability of the

building. In all this we cannot avoid seeing the results of a patient and

long-continued process of experiment and education carried on through many

centuries in all the workshops of Mesopotamia.

The art of building vaults with small units of construction was, then,

carried farther in Mesopotamia than in Egypt; it was there more frankly

developed; it was there forced with greater success to supply the place of

stone and timber. It was in fact more of an indigenous art in the valley of

the Tigris and Euphrates than anywhere else, more inspired by the permanent

and unchanging conditions of the country--in a word, more national.

In these days the historian sets himself with devotion to follow in all its

involutions the long chain of thought and effort by which man has been led

from his primitive barbarism to the well-being of modern civilization, and

to his domination--every day more complete and more intelligent--over the

minor forces of nature. It is the duty of criticism, as its methods

gradually perfect themselves, to add daily to its perspicacity and powers

of observation, and to lessen as much as possible the occasions, still so

numerous, when the thread of evidence breaks in its hands and the true

relations of facts to each other become obscured. Even yet we cannot say

for certain to which nation of the ancient world the invention of the arch

belongs. In those remote ages the principle may have been discovered more

than once or twice in different and distant countries whose inhabitants

were busied over the same task. We have no reason to believe that Chaldaea

learnt the secret from Egypt, or Etruria from the East. It is none the less

true, however, that the unknown architects of Babylon and Nineveh made full

use of it at an earlier date and in more intelligent fashion than any of

their rivals. To them must be given the credit of being the masters and

art-ancestors of the men who built the Pantheon and the Church of Saint

Sophia, Santa Maria del Fiore, and Saint Peter's in Rome, and more

especially of those great modern engineers to whom the principle of the

arch has been a chief element in their success.

NOTES:

[280] _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. ii. p. 82.

[281] This chamber is 7 feet long, 3 feet 7 inches wide, and 5 feet high.

TAYLOR, _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. xv. p. 272.

[282] STRABO, xvi. 1, 5. DIODORUS, ii. 10.

[283] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 170-182 and 256-259, vol. iii. plates

9-18.

[284] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii. plate 2.

[285] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 128.

[286] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. i. p. 134; vol. ii. pp. 79 and 261.

_Discoveries_, pp. 162-165.

[287] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 269-280 and plates 38 and 39.

[288] We have endeavoured to combine M. Thomas's longitudinal elevation,

vertical section, and transverse section (PLACE, _Ninive_, plate 38), in

our single cut.

[289] The same process was employed at Nimroud in a drain or water channel,

of which LAYARD gives a sketch (_Discoveries_, p. 164). In connection with

these vaults we must remember that a pointed arch has no key properly

speaking; the top stone is merely a joint. It looks as if the Assyrian

architect had a kind of instinctive appreciation of the fact.

[290] The slope, the height, and the width of this channel are not the same

throughout. In some places it is wide enough to allow two men to walk

abreast in it.

[291] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. i. p. 79.

[292] OTTFRIED MUeLLER, _Handbuch der Archaeologie der Kunst_, Sec. 107 and 168

(3rd edition).

[293] _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. i. p. 112, and vol. ii. chap. ii. Sec. 4.

[294] _Ibid._ vol. ii. fig. 44.

Sec. 6.--_Secondary Forms._

(_Doors, windows, steles, altars, obelisks, mouldings._)

We have been obliged to dwell at length on the arch and the column because

those two elements of construction are of the greatest importance to all

who wish to gain a true idea of Mesopotamian art and of its influence upon

neighbouring peoples and over subsequent developments of architecture. On

the other hand we shall have very little to say upon what, in speaking of

Egyptian art, we called _secondary forms_.[295]

We have already had occasion to speak of some of these, such as windows and

doors. We have explained how the nature of his materials and the heat of

the climate led the architect to practically suppress the former, while,

on the other hand, he gave extravagant dimensions to the latter. It was to

the door that the rooms had mainly to look for the light and air, with

which they could not entirely dispense. We have now to give a few details

as to the fashion in which these large openings were set in the walls that

enframed them. As for salient decorative members--or mouldings, to give

them their right name--their list is very short. We shall, however, find

them in some variety in a series of little monuments that deserve, perhaps,

more attention than they have yet received--we mean altars, steles, and

those objects to which the name of _obelisks_ has, with some inaccuracy,

been given. Some of these objects have no little grace of their own, and

serve to prove that what the Chaldaeans and Assyrians lacked was neither

taste nor invention, but the encouragement that the possession of a kindly

material would have given to their genius.

Doorways seem to have been generally crowned with a brick archivolt;

round-headed doors occur oftener than any others on the bas-reliefs, but

rectangular examples are not wanting (see Fig. 43). In the latter case the

lintel must have been of wood, metal, or stone. Naturally the bronze and

timber lintels have disappeared, while in but a single instance have the

explorers found one of stone, namely that discovered by George Smith at the

entrance to a hall in the palace of Sennacherib (Fig. 95). It consists of a

block of richly carved limestone. Its sculptures are now much worn, but

their motives and firm execution may still be admired. Two winged dragons,

with long necks folded like that of a swan, face each other, the narrow

space between them being occupied by a large two-handled vase. Above these

there is a band of carved foliage, the details of which are lost in the

shadow cast by a projecting cornice along the top of the lintel.[296] The

necklace round the throat of the right-hand dragon should be noticed.

It is surprising that stone lintels are so rare, especially as the

corresponding piece, if we may call it so, namely, the sill or threshold,

was generally of limestone or alabaster, at least in the more important and

more richly-decorated rooms.

[Illustration: FIG. 95.--Decorated lintel, 6 feel long and 10 inches high.

British Museum.]

The exploration of the Assyrian palaces has brought three systems of

flooring to light--beaten earth, brick pavements, and pavements of

limestone slabs.[297] In the palace of Sargon nearly every chamber, except

those of the harem, had a floor of beaten earth, like that in a modern

fellah's house. Even the halls in which the painted and sculptured

decoration was most sumptuous were no exceptions to this rule. There is

nothing in this, however, to surprise those who have lived in the East;

like the Turks, Arabs, and Persians of our own time, the Chaldaeans and

Assyrians were shod, except when fighting or hunting, with those

_babooshes_ or sandals that are so often figured in the bas-reliefs. These

must have been taken off, as they are to-day, before entering a temple, a

palace, or a harem. Moses was required to take off his shoes before

approaching the burning bush, because the place on which he stood was holy

ground. In the houses of their gods, in those of their kings and rich men,

the floor would be covered with those rich carpets and mats that from one

end of the East to the other conceal from sight the floors of white wood or

beaten earth. In summer the mats are fresh and grateful to the bare feet,

in the winter the carpets are soft and warm. The floors themselves are

hardly ever seen, so that we need feel no surprise at their being left

without ornament. So, too, was it in all probability in the palaces of

Sargon and of other kings, and in the sacred buildings.

Elsewhere, however, we find a pavement constructed with the most scrupulous

care, and consisting of three distinct parts,--two layers of large bricks

with a thick bed of sand interposed between them. The lower course of

bricks is set in a bed of bitumen which separates it from the earth and

prevents any dampness passing either up or down. This system of paving was

used in most of the harem chambers at Khorsabad as well as in the open

courts and upon the terraces. Lastly, in certain rooms of the seraglio and

harem, in a few of the courts, in the vestibules, before the gates of the

city, and in paths across wide open spaces, a limestone pavement has been

found. Wherever this pavement exists, the stones are of the same kind and

placed in the same manner. The limestone is exactly similar to that in the

retaining walls described on page 147. The stones are often more than three

feet square, and from two feet six inches to two feet ten inches thick.

Their shape is not that of a regular solid; it is more like a reversed

cone, the base forming the pavement and the narrow end being buried in the

ground. These stones are simply placed side by side without the use of

mortar or cement of any kind, but their weight and peculiar shape gave a

singular durability to the pavement for which they were used.

Most of the sills belong to this class. And in Assyria where doorways were

several yards deep and two or three wide, these sills were in reality the

pavements of passages or even chambers.[298]

The materials for these pavements were always different from those of the

floors on each side of them. In the entrances to the brick-paved courts

large stones were used; in the passages between rooms floored with beaten

earth bricks were introduced. The stone thresholds were mostly alabaster

like the sculptured slabs upon the chamber walls. As a rule they were of a

single piece, the great extent of surface, sometimes as much as ten or

eleven square yards, notwithstanding. In the entries flanked by the winged

bulls the sills were carved with inscriptions, which were comparatively

rare elsewhere. Sometimes we find a rich and elaborate ornamentation in

place of the wedges; it is made up of geometrical forms and conventional

foliage and flowers; the figures of men and animals are never introduced.

Such an arrangement was in better taste than the mosaic thresholds of the

Romans where men were shown in pictures destined to be trodden under foot.

The Assyrian carver doubtless took his designs from the carpets in the

adjoining chambers.

[Illustration: FIG. 96.--Sill of a door, from Khorsabad. Louvre. Length 40

inches. Drawn by Bourgoin.[299]]

A good idea of these designs may be formed from the slab figured below. The

centre is occupied by a number of interlacing circles, betraying no little

skill on the part of the ornamentist. The "knop and flower" border of

alternately closed and shut lotus flowers is separated from the centre by a

band of rosettes. The whole is distinguished by thought and a severe taste.

The indented corners, where the pivots of the doors were placed, and the

slot for the lower bolt of the door near the centre, should be noticed.

These details prove that in this instance the door was a double one. In

other cases the absence of the slot and the presence of only one pivot hole

show that single doors were also used.[300] The doors always opened

inwards, being folded back either against the sides of the entry itself or

against the walls of the chamber.

Many of these sills or thresholds show no sign of a pivot at either

corner, whence we may conclude that many of the openings were left without

doors, and could only have been closed by those suspended carpets or mats

of which such ready use is made in hot countries.

In very magnificent buildings metal thresholds sometimes replaced those of

stone or brick. In the British Museum there is a huge bronze sill that was

found in a ruined temple at Borsippa, by Mr. Rassam. Its extreme length is

sixty inches, its width twenty, and its thickness about three and a half

inches. It bears an inscription of Nebuchadnezzar the arrangement of which

proves that the sill when complete had double its present length, or about

ten feet. Its upper surface is decorated with large rosettes within square

borders. We need hardly say that it is a solid casting, and that its weight

is, therefore, by no means trifling. The workmen who put in place and those

who cast it must both have thoroughly understood what they were about. Even

now, we are told, the latter operation would be attended by some

difficulty.[301]

The founders who produced this casting could have no difficulty over the

other parts of the door-case, and we have no reason to doubt the statement

of Herodotus, who thus ends his account of how the walls of Babylon were

built: "The walls had a hundred gates, all of bronze; their jambs and

lintels were of the same material."[302]

These lintels and jambs must have been, like the Borsippa threshold, of

massive bronze, or they would soon have been crushed by the weight they had

to support. On the other hand, had doors themselves been entirely of that

metal it would have been very difficult if not impossible to swing them

upon their hinges, especially in the case of city gates like those just

referred to. It is probable, then, that they were of timber, covered and

concealed by plates of bronze. Herodotus indeed narrates what he saw, like

a truthful and intelligent witness, but he was not an archaeologist, and it

did not occur to him when he entered the famous city which formed the goal

of his travels, to feel the shining metal and find out how much of it was

solid and how much a mere armour for a softer substance behind.

From fragments found at Khorsabad, M. Place had already divined that the

Assyrians covered the planks of their doors with bronze plates, but all

doubts on the point have been removed by a recent discovery, which has

proved once for all that art profited in the end by what at first was

nothing more than a protection against weather and other causes of

deterioration. In 1878 Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, the fellow traveller of Sir

Henry Layard, found in the course of his excavations in Assyria for the

British Museum, some metallic bands covered with _repousse_ reliefs and

bearing the name of Shalmaneser III. (895-825). The site of this discovery

was Balawat, an artificial mound about fifteen miles to the east of

Mossoul.[303] As soon as these bands had been examined in London by

competent archaeologists, they were recognized as having belonged to the

leaves of a wooden door, which must have been nearly twenty-seven feet high

and about three inches thick. This latter dimension has been deduced from

the length of the nails used to keep the bands in place. At one end these

bands were bent with the hammer round the pivot to which each half of the

door was attached. These pivots, judging from the bronze feet into which

they were "stepped," were about twelve inches in diameter.

It is easy to see from their shape how these feet were fixed and how they

did their work (Fig. 97). The point of the cone was let into a hollow

socket prepared for it in a block cut from the hardest stone that could be

found. Such a material would resist friction better and take a higher

polish than brick, so that it was at once more durable and less holding.

Sockets of flint, basalt, trachyte, and other volcanic rocks have been

found in great numbers both in Assyria and Chaldaea.[304] Instances of the

use of brick in this situation are not wanting,[305] however, and now and

then the greenish marks left by the prolonged contact of metal have been

discovered in the hollows of these sockets.[306]

[Illustration: FIG. 97.--Bronze foot from the Balawat gates and its

socket.[307] British Museum.]

More than one method was in use for fixing the pivots of the doors and

enabling them to turn easily. Sir Henry Layard brought from Nimroud four

heavy bronze rings which must have been used to supplement these hollow

sockets.[308] In one way or another bronze occupied a very important place

in the door architecture of the Assyrians. In those cases where it neither

supplied the door-case nor ornamented its leaves, it was at least used to

fix the latter and to enable them to turn.

In Assyrian facades doors had much greater importance than in those

architectural styles in which walls are broken up by numerous openings.

Their great size, their rich and varied ornamentation, the important

figures in high relief with which the walls about them were adorned, the

solemn tints of bronze lighted up here and there by the glory of gold, the

lively colours of the enamelled bricks that formed their archivolts, and

finally the contrast between the bare and gleaming walls on either side and

their depths of shadow--all these combined to give accent to the doorways

and to afford that relief to the monotony of the walls of which they stood

in so great a need. For Assyrian mouldings are even poorer than those of

Egypt. The softness of crude brick, the brittle hardness of burnt brick,

are neither of them well disposed towards those delicate curves by which a

skilful architect contrives to break the sameness of a facade, and to give

the play of light and shadow which make up the beauty of a Greek or

Florentine cornice.

The only mouldings encountered in Assyria have been found on a few

buildings or parts of buildings in which stone was employed. We may quote

as an instance the retaining wall of the small, isolated structure

excavated by Botta towards the western angle of the Khorsabad mound, and by

him believed to be a temple.[309] The wall in question is built of a

hardish grey limestone, the blocks being laid alternately as stretchers and

headers. The wall is complete with plinth, die and cornice (Figs. 98 and

99). The latter is a true cornice, composed of a small torus or bead, a

scotia, and a fillet. The elements are the same as those of the Egyptian

cornice, except in the profile of the hollow member, which is here a

_scotia_ and in Egypt a _cavetto_, to speak the language of modern

architects. The Egyptian moulding is at once bolder and more simple, while

the vertical grooves cut upon its surface give it a rich and furnished

aspect that its Assyrian rival is without.[310]

We have another example of Assyrian mouldings on the winged sphinx found

by Layard at Nimroud (Fig. 85)--the sphinx, that is, that bore a column on

its back. In section this moulding may be compared to a large _scotia_

divided into two _cavettos_ by a _torus_. Its effect is not happy. The

Assyrians had too little experience in stone-cutting to enable them to

choose the most satisfactory proportions and profiles for mouldings.

We may also point to the entablatures upon the small pavilions reproduced

in our Figs. 41 and 42. They are greatly wanting in elegance; in one

especially--that shown in Fig. 42--the superstructure is very heavy in

proportion to the little temple itself and its columns.

[Illustration: FIGS. 98, 99.--Assyrian mouldings. Section and elevation;

from Botta.]

The only moulding, if we may call it so, borrowed by Assyria from Chaldaea,

and employed commonly in both countries, is a brick one. Loftus was the

first to point it out. He discovered it in the ruined building, doubtless

an ancient temple, in the neighbourhood of Warka, and called by the natives

_Wuswas_. This is his description:--"Upon the lower portion of the building

are groups of seven half-columns repeated seven times--the rudest perhaps

which were ever reared, but built of moulded semicircular bricks, and

securely bonded to the wall. The entire absence of cornice, capital, base

or diminution of shafts, so characteristic of other columnar architecture,

and the peculiar and original disposition of each group in rows like palm

logs, suggest the type from which they sprang."[311]

With his usual penetration, Loftus divines and explains the origin of these

forms. The idea must have been suggested, he thinks, by the palm trunks

that were used set closely together in timber constructions, or at regular

intervals in mud walls. In either case half of their thickness would be

visible externally, and would naturally provoke imitation from architects

in search of ornament for the bald faces of their clay structures.[312]

[Illustration: FIG. 100.--Facade of a ruined building at Warka; from

Loftus.]

As to the effect thus obtained, the rough sketch given by Loftus hardly

enables us to decide (see Fig. 100). From Assyria, however, come better

materials for a judgment. We there often find these perpendicular ribs,

generally in groups of seven, in buildings that have been carefully studied

and illustrated upon a sufficient scale. We give an example from one of the

harem gates at Khorsabad (Fig. 101), by which we may see at once that an

ornamental motive of no little value was afforded by these huge vertical

reeds with their play of alternate light and shadow, and the happy contrast

they set up between themselves and the brilliant hues of the painted walls

and enamelled bricks. The whole had a certain elegant richness that can

hardly be appreciated without the restoration, in every line and hue, of

the original composition.

Both at Warka and in the Khorsabad harem, these vertical ribs are

accompanied by another ornament which may, perhaps, have been in even more

frequent use. We mean those long perpendicular grooves, rectangular in

section, with which Assyrian and Chaldaean walls were seamed. In the harem

wall these grooves flank the group of vertical reeds right and left,

dividing each of the angle piers into two quasi-pilasters. At Warka they

appear in the higher part of the facade, above the groups of semi-columns.

They serve to mark out a series of panels, of which only the lower parts

have been preserved. The missing parts of the decoration may easily be

supplied by a little study of the Assyrian remains. The four sides of the

building at Khorsabad, called by M. Place the _Observatory_, are decorated

uniformly in this fashion. The general effect may be gathered from our

restoration of one angle. The architect was not content with decorating his

wall with these grooves alone; he divided it into alternate compartments,

the one salient, the next set back, and upon these compartments he ploughed

the long lines of his decoration. These changes of surface helped greatly

to produce the varied play of light and shadow upon which the architect

depended for relief to the bare masses of his walls. The most ordinary

workmen could be trusted to carry out a decoration that consisted merely in

repeating, at certain measured intervals, as simple a form as can be

imagined, and, in the language of art as in that of rhetoric, there is no

figure more effective in its proper place than repetition.

[Illustration: FIG. 101.--Decoration of one of the harem gates, at

Khorsabad; compiled from Place.]

The necessity for something to break the monotony of the brick

architecture was generally and permanently felt, and in those Parthian and

Sassanide periods in which, as we have said, the traditions of the old

Chaldaean school were continued, we find the panel replaced by wall arcades

in which the arches are divided from each other by tall pilasters. In

general principle and intention the two methods of decoration are

identical.

The Egyptian architect had recourse to the same motive, first, in the tombs

of the Ancient Empire for the decoration of the chamber walls in the

mastabas; secondly, for the relief of great brick surfaces. The resemblance

to the Mesopotamian work is sometimes very great.[313]

We have explained this form by one of the transpositions so frequent in the

history of architecture, namely, a conveyance of motives from carpentry to

brickwork and masonry.[314] In the former the openings left in the skeleton

are gradually filled in, and these additions, by the very nature of their

materials, most frequently take the form of panels. The grooves that define

the panels in brick or stone buildings represent the intervals left by the

carpenter between his planks and beams. They could also be obtained very

easily upon the smooth face of beams brought into close contact, either by

means of the gouge or some other instrument capable of cutting into the

wood. We may safely assert that in Chaldaea and Assyria, as in Egypt, it was

with carpentry that the motive in question originated.

On the other hand, if there be a form that results directly from the system

of construction on which it is used, that form is the crenellation with

which, apparently, every building in Mesopotamia was crowned.[315]

[Illustration: FIG. 102.--View of an angle of the observatory at Khorsabad;

compiled from Place.]

The Assyrian brickwork in which so many vast undertakings were carried out

consists of units all of one dimension, and bonded by the simple

alternation of their joints. Supposing a lower course to consist of two

entire bricks, the one above it would be one whole brick flanked on either

side by a half brick. An Assyrian wall or building consists of the infinite

repetition of this single figure. Each whole brick lies upon the joint

between two others, and every perpendicular wall, including parapet or

battlement, is raised upon this system.

[Illustration: FIG. 103.--Lateral facade of the palace at Firouz-Abad; from

Flandin and Coste.]

[Illustration: FIG. 104.--Battlements from an Assyrian palace.]

Far from being modified by the crenellations, this bond regulates their

form, dimensions, and distribution. The crenellations of the palace walls

consist of two rectangular masses, of unequal size, placed one upon the

other. The lower is two bricks'-length, or about thirty-two inches, wide,

and the thickness of three bricks, or about fourteen inches, high. The

upper mass equals the lower in height, while its width is the length of a

single brick, or sixteen inches. The total height of the battlement,

between twenty-eight and twenty-nine inches, is thus divided into two

masses, one of which is twice the size of the other (see Fig. 104). The

battlements are all the same, and between each pair is a void which is

nothing but the space a battlement upside down would occupy. Fill this

space with the necessary bricks, and a section of wall would be restored

identical in bond with that below the battlements, with the one exception

that the highest block of the battlement, being only one brick wide, is

formed by laying three whole bricks one upon the other.[316]

The crenellations we have been describing are those upon the retaining

walls of Sargon's palace at Khorsabad. Those of the _Observatory_ are

slightly different in that they are three stories high instead of two (Fig.

105). The lowest is three bricks wide, the second three, the topmost two.

They are each three bricks high. Why were these battlements given a height

beyond those of the royal palace? That question may be easily answered. The

crenellations of the observatory were destined for a much more lofty

situation than those of the palace. The base of the former monument rose

about 144 feet above the summit of the artificial hill upon which it was

placed; the total elevation was about 190 feet, a height at which ordinary

battlements, especially when for the most part they had nothing but the

face of the higher stories to be relieved against, would be practically

invisible.

[Illustration: FIG. 105.--Battlements from the Khorsabad _Observatory_.]

Whether composed of two or three stages this battlement was always

inscribed within an isosceles triangle; in fact, when a third story was

added, the height and the width at the base increased in the same

proportions. M. Place lays great stress upon this triangle. He makes it cut

the upper angles of each of the superimposed rectangles, as we have done in

our Figs. 104 and 105, and he points out how such a process gives an

outline similar to that of a palisade cut into points at its summit, a

precaution that is often taken to render the escalade of such an obstacle

more difficult, and M. Place is inclined to think that the idea of these

crenellations was suggested by those of a wooden palisade, a succession of

rectangles being substituted for a triangle in order to meet the special

conditions of the new material. To us, however, it hardly appears necessary

to go back to the details of wooden construction to account for these

forms. We find no sign of M. Place's spiked palisades in the bas-reliefs.

The inclosures of the Mesopotamian fields must have consisted of palm

trunks and strong reeds; planks were hardly to be cut from the trees of the

country. Moreover, the mason and bricklayer saw the forms of these

battlements repeated by their hand every instant. Whenever they began a

fresh course the first brick they placed upon the joint between two units

of the course below was the first step towards a battlement. The decoration

obtained by the use of these battlements was not a survival from a previous

form, it was a natural consequence from the fundamental principle of

Assyrian construction.

It has been thought that some of the buildings represented on the

bas-reliefs have triangular denticulation in place of the battlements

figured on the last page;[317] and there are, in fact, instances in the

reliefs of walls denticulated like a palisade (see Fig. 38), but these must

not, we think, be taken literally. In most cases the chisel has been at the

trouble to show the real shapes of the battlements (Fig. 42), but in some

instances, as in this, it has been content to suggest them by a series of

zig-zags. Here and there we may point out a picture in stone which forms a

transition between the two shapes, in Fig. 41 for example. Such an

abbreviation explains itself. It is, in fact, nothing more than an

imitation of the real appearance of the rectangular battlements when seen

from a distance.[318]

The architect was not content with the mere play of light and shade

afforded by these battlements. He gave them a slight salience over the

facade and a polychromatic decoration. About three feet below the base of

the crenellations the face of the wall was brought forward an inch or two,

so that the battlements themselves, and some eight or ten courses of bricks

below them, overhung the facade by that distance, forming a kind of

rudimentary cornice (see Fig. 106). In very elaborate buildings enamelled

bricks were inserted between the battlements and this cornice. These were

decorated with white rosettes of different sizes upon a blue ground. The

explorers of Khorsabad encountered numberless fragments of these bricks and

some whole ones in the heaps of rubbish at the foot of the external walls.

Their situation proved that they had come from the top of the walls, and on

the whole we may accept the restoration of M. Thomas, which we borrow from

the work of M. Place, as sufficiently justified (Fig. 106).[319]

This method of crowning a wall may seem poor when compared to the Greek

cornice, or even to that of Egypt, but in view of the materials with which

he had to work, it does honour to the architect. The long band of shadow

near the summit of the facade, the bands of brilliantly coloured ornament

above it, and the rich play of light and shade among the battlements, the

whole relieved against the brilliant blue of an Eastern sky, must have had

a fine effect. The uniformity from which it suffered was a defect common to

Mesopotamian architecture as a whole, and one inseparable from the absence

or comparative disuse of stone. But in the details we have been studying we

find yet another illustration of the skill with which these people

corrected, if we may so phrase it, the vices of matter, and by a frank use

of their materials and insistence upon those horizontal and perpendicular

lines which they were best fitted to give, evolved from it an architecture

that proved them to have possessed a real genius for art.

[Illustration: FIG. 106.--Battlements of Sargon's palace at Khorsabad;

compiled from Place.]

The Assyrians seem to have been so pleased with these crenellations that

they placed them upon such small things as steles and altars. In one of the

Kouyundjik reliefs (Fig. 42) there is a small object--a pavilion or altar,

its exact character is not very clearly shown--which is thus crowned.

Another example is to be found in a bas-relief from Khorsabad (Fig. 107).

[Illustration: FIG. 107.--Altar; from Rawlinson.]

We are thus brought to the subject of altars. These are sufficiently varied

in form. In the Kouyundjik bas-relief (Fig. 42) we find those shapes at the

four angles which were copied by the peoples of the Mediterranean, and led

to the expression, "the horns of the altar." In the Khorsabad relief (Fig.

107) the salience of these horns is less marked. On the other hand, the die

or dado below them is fluted. Another altar brought from Khorsabad to the

Louvre is quite different in shape (Fig. 108). It is triangular on plan.

Above a plinth with a gentle salience rises the altar itself, supported at

each angle by the paw of a lion. The table is circular, and decorated

round the edge with cuneiform characters.

[Illustration: FIG. 108.--Altar in the Louvre. Height 32 inches.[320]]

A third type is to be found in an altar from Nimroud, now in the British

Museum (Fig. 109); it dates from the reign of Rammanu-nirari, who appears

to have lived in the first half of the eighth century before our era.[321]

The rolls at each end of this altar are very curious and seem to be the

prototype of a form with which the Graeco-Roman sarcophagi have made us

familiar.

[Illustration: FIG. 109.--Altar in the British Museum. Height 22 inches,

length at base 22 inches.]

The various kinds of steles are also very interesting. The most remarkable

of all is one discovered at Khorsabad by M. Place (Fig. 100). The shaft is

composed of a series of perpendicular bands alternately flat and concave,

exactly similar to the flutes of the Ionic order. The summit is crowned by

a plume of palm leaves rising from a double scroll, like two consoles

placed horizontally and head to head. The grace and slenderness of this

stele are in strong contrast to the usually short and heavy forms affected

by the Assyrian architects, especially when they worked in stone. It is

difficult to say what its destination may have been. It was discovered

lying in the centre of an outer court surrounded by offices and other

subordinate buildings; it has neither figure nor inscription.[322] The base

was quite rough and shapeless, and must have been sunk into the soil of the

court, so that the flutes began at the level of the pavement. M. Place

suggests that it may have been a _milliarium_, from which all the roads of

the empire were measured. We do not know that there is a single fact to

support such an unnecessary guess.

The stele of which we have been speaking is unique, but of another

peculiarly Assyrian type there is no lack of examples, namely, of that to

which the name _obelisk_ has, with some want of discrimination, been

applied. The Assyrian monoliths so styled are much shorter in their

proportions than the lofty "needles" of Egypt, while their summits,

instead of ending in a sharp pyramidion, are "stepped" and crowned with a

narrow plateau. (Fig. 111.) These monoliths were never very imposing in

size, the tallest is hardly more than ten feet high.

[Illustration: FIG. 110.--Stele from Khorsabad. Plan and elevation; from

Place.]

[Illustration: FIG. 111.--The obelisk of Shalmaneser II. in the British

Museum.[323] Height 78 inches. Drawn by Bourgoin.]

Whatever name we choose to give to these objects, there can be no doubt as

to their purpose. They are commemorative monuments, upon which both writer

and sculptor have been employed to celebrate the glory of the sovereign. A

long inscription covers the base of the shaft, while the upper part of each

face is divided into five pictures, the narrow bands between them bearing

short legends descriptive of the scenes represented. It was, of course,

important that such figured panegyrics should be afforded the best possible

chance of immortality; and we find that most of these obelisks are composed

of the hardest rocks. Of the four examples in the British Museum, three are

of basalt and one only of limestone.

[Illustration: FIG. 112.--Rock-cut Stele from Kouyundjik. British Museum.]

Another type of stele in frequent employment was that with an arched top

and inclosing an image of the king. It is often represented on the

bas-reliefs[324] (Fig. 42), and not a few examples of it are in our

museums. When we come to speak of Assyrian sculpture we shall have to

reproduce some of them. We find a motive of the same kind, but more ornate

and complicated, in the bas-relief from Kouyundjik figured above (Fig.

112). A hunting scene is carved on a wall of rock at the top of a hill. A

lion attacks the king's chariot from behind; the king is about to pierce

his head with an arrow while the charioteer leans over the horses and seems

to moderate the determination with which they fly.[325] The sculpture is

surrounded by a frame arched at the top and inclosed by an architrave with

battlemented cornice. The whole forms a happily conceived little monument;

it is probable that it was originally accompanied by an explanatory

inscription.

This analysis of what we have called secondary forms has shown how great

was the loss of the Chaldaean architect and of his too docile Assyrian

pupil, in being deprived--by circumstances on the one hand and want of

inclination on the other--of such a material as stone. Without it they

could make use of none of those variations of plan and other contrivances

of the same kind by which the skilful architect suggests the internal

arrangement of his structures on their facades. For such purposes he had to

turn to those constituents of his art to which we shall devote our next

section.

NOTES:

[295] _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. ii. ch. ii.

[296] GEORGE SMITH, _Assyrian Discoveries_, pp. 146, 308, 429. This lintel

has been fixed over the south doorway into the Kouyundjik Gallery of the

British Museum. When examined in place, the running ornament in the hollow

of the cornice will be easily recognized--in spite of the mutilation of its

upper edge--as made up of a modified form of the palmette motive, which had

its origin in the fan-shaped head of the date palm. The eight plumes of

which the ornament consists are each formed of three large leaves or loops

and two small pendant ones, the latter affording a means of connecting each

plume with those next to it.--ED.

[297] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 295-302.

[298] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 302, 303.

[299] Two much better examples of this same work may be seen in the

Assyrian basement-room of the British Museum.--ED.

[300] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 314.

[301] We here quote the opinion of Mr. Ready, the well-known director of

the museum workshops. In April, 1882, he had examined this curious

monument, which is now placed in the public galleries close to the Balawat

gates.

[302] HERODOTUS, ii. 179: Pylai de enestasi perix tou teicheos hekaton,

chalkeai pasa kai stathmoi te kai huperthuma hosautos.

[303] An account of the discovery and a short description of the remains,

will be found in an article by Mr. Theo. G. PINCHES, published in the

_Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology_, and entitled: _The

Bronze Gates discovered by Mr. Rassam at Balawat_ (vol. vii. part i. pp.

83-118). The sculptured bronze from these gates is not all, however, in the

British Museum. Mr. Rassam's workmen succeeded in appropriating a certain

number in the course of the excavations, and thus M. Gustave Schlumberger

has become possessed of a few pieces, while others of much greater

importance have come into the hands of M. de Clercq. M. F. LENORMANT has

published in the _Gazette Archeologique_ (1878) a description of the pieces

belonging to M. Schlumberger, with two plates in heliogravure. We have

already referred to the great work which is now in course of publication by

the _Society of Biblical Archaeology_; it will put an exact reproduction of

this interesting monument in the hands of Assyriologists and those

interested in the history of art. We shall return to these gates when we

come to treat of sculpture.

[304] A number of sockets found by M. de Sarzec in the ruins of Tello are

now deposited in the Louvre. M. PLACE found some at Khorsabad (_Ninive_,

vol. i. p. 314), and Sir Henry LAYARD on the sites of the towns in Upper

Mesopotamia (_Discoveries_, p. 242). The British Museum has a considerable

number found in various places.

[305] In the same case as the Balawat gates there is a brick, which has

obviously been used for this purpose.

[306] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 314.

[307] In the British Museum there are some smaller bronze objects of the

same kind from the palace of Sennacherib. Others were found by M. PLACE in

the palace of Sargon (_Ninive_, plate 70, fig. 6), so that they must have

been in frequent use.

[308] LAYARD (_Discoveries_, p. 163) gives a sketch of one of these

objects. Its internal diameter is about five inches, and its weight 6 lbs.

3-3/4 oz. These rings are now in the British Museum.

[309] BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, vol. v. pp. 53-55.

[310] BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, plates 149 and 150. See also LAYARD,

_Discoveries_, p. 131, and FERGUSSON, _History of Architecture_, vol. i. p.

185 (2nd edition).

[311] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches_, p. 175.

[312] M. Place offers a similar explanation of the engaged columns that

were found in many parts of the palace at Khorsabad (_Ninive_, vol. ii. p.

50). He has brought together in a single plate all the examples of

pilasters and half columns that he encountered in that edifice. Similar

attempts to imitate the characteristic features of a log house are found in

many of the most ancient Egyptian tombs. See _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol.

ii. p. 62 and fig. 37.

[313] See, for instance, in _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. i. figs. 123, 124,

201, and in vol. ii. pp. 55-64, and figs. 35-37 and 139.

[314] _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. i. p. 117.

[315] We here give a resume of M. PLACE'S observations on this point. He

made a careful study of these crenellations. _Ninive_, vol. ii. pp. 53-57.

[316] See M. PLACE'S diagrams, _Ninive_, vol. ii. p. 54.

[317] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. ii. p. 53.

[318] M. Perrot dismisses the evidence of those who believe in a palisade

origin of the Assyrian battlements in what is, perhaps, rather too summary

a fashion. The fact is that the great majority of the crenellated buildings

in the reliefs have triangular battlements, while the theory that they are

merely a hasty way of representing the stepped crenellations is to some

extent discredited by their frequent occurrence side by side with the

latter on the same relief. The Balawat gates, for instance, contain some

nine or ten examples of the triangular, and four or five of the stepped,

shape. In the series of sculptured slabs representing the siege of a city

by Assurnazirpal (10 to 15 in the Kouyundjik gallery at the British

Museum), there are examples of both forms, and in more than one instance

the triangular battlements are decorated with lines and rosettes--similar

in principle to those shown above in fig. 106--that can hardly be

reconciled with the notion that their form is the result of haste on the

part of the artist. In the Assyrian Basement Room in the British Museum

there is an interesting bas-relief representing Assyrian soldiers busy with

the demolition of a fortified wall, probably of some city just taken. The

air is thick with the materials thrown down from its summit, among them a

great number of planks or beams, which seem to suggest that timber was

freely employed in the upper works of an Assyrian wall. If this was so, the

pointed battlements in the reliefs may very well represent those in which

timber was used, and the stepped ones their brick imitations. Both forms

were used as decorations in places where no real battlements could have

existed, as, for instance, on the tent of Sennacherib, in the well-known

bas-relief of the siege of Lachish (see fig. 56).--ED.

[319] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. ii. p. 85.

[320] There is an altar almost exactly similar to this in the British

Museum. It was found in front of the temple of the War God, Nimroud.--ED.

[321] Upon some other monuments brought from the same place by Mr. Hormuzd

Rassam, and also exhibited in the Nimroud central saloon, we may read by

the side of Rammanu-nirari's name that of his spouse Sammuramat, who seems

to have been associated with him in the government, and to have been the

recipient of particular honours. The name of this princess has caused some

to recognize in her the fabulous Semiramis of the Greek writers. In

consequence of facts that have escaped us she may well have furnished the

first idea for the romantic legends whose echo has come down to our times.

[322] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 96; vol. ii. pp. 71-73.

[323] Besides the obelisk of Shalmaneser II., which is in a marvellous

state of preservation, the British Museum possesses three other objects of

the same kind. Two of these were made for Assurnazirpal; the third, the

most ancient of all, dates from the time of Tiglath Pileser I.; unhappily

only fragments of it remain.

[324] See also BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, vol. i. plate 64. We here find

an instance of one of these arched steles erected before a fortress.

[325] ?--ED.

Sec. 7.--_Decoration._

Mesopotamia was no exception to the general rule that decoration is

governed by construction. To take only one example, and that from an art we

have already studied, the Egyptian temple was entirely of stone, and its

decoration formed a part of the very substance of what we may call the

flesh and blood of the edifice. The elements of that rich and brilliant

decoration are furnished by those mouldings which make up in vigour what

they lack in variety, by the slight relief or the hardly perceptible

intaglio of the shadowless figures cut by the sculptor in stone, and

covered by the painter with the liveliest colours. This sumptuous

decoration, covering every external and internal surface, may no more be

detached from it than the skin of an animal may be detached from its

muscles. The union is even more intimate in this case, the adherence more

complete. So long as the Egyptian walls remain standing, the blocks of

limestone, sandstone, or granite of which they are composed, can never be

entirely freed from the images, that is, from the expression of the

thoughts, cut upon them by the men of forty centuries ago.

In Assyria the case was different. There buildings were of brick, each unit

being in the vast majority of cases a repetition of its neighbour. In very

few instances were the bricks of special shapes, and the buildings in which

they were used could only be decorated by attached ornament, similar in

principle to the mats and hangings we spread over the floors and walls that

we wish to hide. This result they obtained in one of two ways; they either

cased their walls in stone, an expensive and laborious process, or they

covered them with a decoration of many colours.

As soon as stone came into use, it must have offered an irresistible

temptation to the chisel of the sculptor and the ornamentist; and so we

nearly always find it decorated with carvings. Sometimes, as in the lintel

and thresholds described above (Figs. 95 and 96), the motives are purely

ornamental. Elsewhere, in the gates of the Assyrian palaces, and in the

plinths of the walls that surround their courts and halls, we find both

figures in the round and in low relief. In a future chapter we shall

attempt to define the style of these works and to determine their merit.

For the present we must be content with pointing out the part played by

sculpture in the general system of decoration.

In Chaldaea sculpture must have played a very feeble part in the _ensemble_

of a building, stone was too costly in consequence of the distance it had

to be carried. From the ruins of Chaldaea no colossi, like those which

flanked the entrances of the Ninevite palaces, none of those long

inscriptions upon alabaster slabs which have been of such value for the

student of Assyrian history, have been brought. This latter material and

all the facilities it offered to the sculptor was apparently entirely

neglected by the Chaldaeans. In Lower Mesopotamia the hard volcanic rocks

were chiefly used. They were preferred, no doubt, for their durability, but

they were little fitted for the execution of figures of any size, and

especially was it impossible to think of using them for such historic

bas-reliefs as those upon which the Assyrians marshalled hundreds, or

rather thousands, of busy figures. Chaldaean doorways may, however, have

been sometimes flanked with lions and bulls,[326] we are indeed tempted to

assign to such a position one monument which has been described by

travellers, namely, the lion both Rich and Layard saw half buried in the

huge ruin at Babylon called the _Kasr_.[327] It is larger than life. It

stands upon a plinth, with its paws upon the figure of a struggling man.

There is a circular hole in its jaw bigger than a man's fist. The

workmanship is rough; so too, perhaps, is that of the basalt lion seen by

Loftus at Abou-Sharein. This latter is about fifty-four inches high and its

original place may very well have been before one of the doorways of the

building.[328]

Of all animal forms, that of the lion was the first to afford materials for

decorative composition of any value, and even after all the centuries that

have passed, the lion has not lost his vogue in the East. We might, if we

chose, multiply examples of this persistence, but we shall be content with

quoting one. In the centre of Asia Minor, at the village of Angora, in

which I passed three months of the year 1861, I encountered these lions at

every turn. A short distance off, in the village of Kalaba, there was a

fountain of Turkish construction in which a lion, quite similar in style to

those of Assyria, had been inserted.[329] In the court of a mosque there

was a lion in the round, a remarkable work by some Graeco-Roman

sculptor.[330] There and in other towns of Asia Minor, lions from the

Seljukian period are by no means rare, and even now they are made in

considerable numbers. After the labours of the day we sometimes passed the

evenings in the villas of the rich Greek merchants, which were nearly all

on the east of the town. Most of these houses were of recent construction,

and were filled with mirrors, fine carpets, and engravings. In front of the

house, and in the centre of a large paved and trellised court, there were

fountains, sometimes ornamented with considerable taste, in which, on great

occasions, a slender jet of water would give coolness to the air. The

angles of nearly every one of these fountains were marked with small white

marble lions, heavy and awkward in shape, but nevertheless considered at

Angora to be the last word of art. They are imported from Constantinople

together with the basins of the fountains.

In spite of all this, however, some doubts may be felt as to the

destination of the lions found among the Chaldaean ruins. The only monument

there discovered which seems to have certainly belonged to an

architectural decoration is one found by Sir Henry Layard in his too soon

interrupted explorations in the Kasr. It is a fragment of a limestone slab

from the casing of a facade (Fig. 113). The upper parts of two male figures

support a broken entablature beneath which the name of some divinity is

cut.[331]

The chief interest of this fragment lies in the further evidence it affords

of a close connection between the arts of Chaldaea and those of Babylon.

There is nothing either in the costume or features of these individuals

that may not be found in Assyria. The tiara with its plumes and rosettes,

the crimped hair and beard, the baton with its large hilt, are all common

to both countries, while the latter object is to be found on the rocks of

Bavian and as far north as the sculptures of Cappadocia.

[Illustration: FIG. 113.--Fragment from Babylon. British Museum. Height 11

inches, width 9 inches.]

A study of those reliefs in which nothing but purely ornamental motives are

treated, leads us to exactly the same conclusion. Take for instance the

great bronze threshold from Borsippa, of which we have already spoken; the

rosettes placed at intervals along its tread are identical with those

encountered in such numbers in Assyria.

In the extreme rarity of stone in his part of the world the Chaldaean

architect seems to have practically reserved it for isolated statues, for

votive bas-reliefs, for objects of an iconic or religious character, but

nevertheless, we have sufficient evidence to prove that such decorative

sculpture as found a place in the Chaldaean buildings, did not sensibly

differ from that to which Assyria has accustomed us.

From all that we have said as to the distribution of stone, it will be

understood that we must turn to Assyria to obtain a clear idea of the

measures by which buildings of crude brick were rendered more sightly by

ornament in the harder material. We can hardly imagine an Assyrian palace

without those series of bas-reliefs which now line the walls of our museums

much in the same fashion as they covered those of Sargon's and

Sennacherib's palaces, and yet it is unlikely that in the beginning the

Assyrian palaces had these carved walls. The casing of stone and alabaster

must have been originally employed for more utilitarian purposes--to hide

the grey and friable material within, to protect it from damage, and to

offer a surface to the eye which should at least be inoffensive. The upper

parts of the walls would be covered with a coat of stucco, which could be

renewed whenever necessary, but for the lower part, for all that was within

reach of the crowds that frequented the public halls of the seraglio, who

passed through its gates or those of the city itself, some more efficient

protection would be required. The constructor was thus led to encase the

lower parts of his walls in a cuirass of stone imposed upon their brick

cores. The slabs of which he made use for this purpose varied between three

and ten feet in height, and between six and fifteen in width. Their average

thickness was about eight inches.

The way in which these slabs were fixed is hardly worthy of such clever

builders, and, in fact, the Assyrians seem to have never succeeded in

mastering the difficulties inherent in the association of two heterogeneous

materials. The slabs were of gypsum or limestone, the wall of pise,

materials which are not to be easily combined. The Assyrians contented

themselves with simply placing the one against the other. No trace of any

tie is to be found. A "tooth" has been given to the inner faces of the

slabs by seaming them in every direction with the chisel, and, perhaps,

some plastic substance may at the last moment have been introduced between

them and the soft clay, but no trace of any other contrivance for keeping

the two materials together has been found. After the general mass of the

building--its clay walls and vaults--were complete, a different class of

workmen was brought in to line its chambers and complete their decoration.

The crude brick would by that time have become dry, and no longer in a

condition to adapt itself to the roughnesses of the alabaster slabs. The

liquid clay, like that of an earthenware "body," wets and softens the

surface of the brick while it enters into every hollow of the stone and so

allies the one with the other. We recommend this conjecture to those who

may undertake any future excavation in Assyria. It lies with them to

confirm or refute it.

However this may have been, the constructor made use of more than one

method of giving greater solidity to his walls as a whole. His slabs were

not only let into each other at the angles, in some chambers there were

squared angle pieces of a diameter great enough to allow them to sink more

deeply into the crude brick behind, and thus to offer steady points of

support in each corner. Finally the separate slabs were held together at

the top by leaden dovetails like the metal clamps used to attach coping

stones to each other.

Such precautions were rendered comparatively useless by the fact that the

whole work was faulty at the base. Halls and chambers had no solid

foundation or pavement, so that the heavy slabs of their decoration rested

upon a shifting soil, quite incapable of carrying them without flinching.

In many places they sank some inches into the ground, the soft earth behind

pushing them forward, and in their fall the row to which they belonged was

inevitably involved. The excavators have again and again found whole lines

of bas-reliefs that appeared to have fallen together. Such an accident is a

thing for posterity to rejoice over. Prone upon a soft and yielding soil

the works of the sculptor are better protected than when standing erect,

their upper parts clear, perhaps, of the ruin that covers their feet, and

exposed to the weather at least, and, too often, to the brutality of an

ignorant population.

Such defects are sufficient to prove that these slabs were never meant to

carry any great weight; far from affording a support to the wall behind,

they required one to help them in maintaining their own equilibrium. On the

other hand they protected it, as we have said above, from too rapid

deterioration.

At Khorsabad this stone casing is in very bad condition at many points, in

the halls and passages of the outbuildings and in the courtyards adjoining

the city gates for instance.[332] There the stones are only smoothed down,

and their obvious purpose is merely to protect the crude brick within. The

purely architectural origin of this system of casing is thus clearly shown.

But the presence of these slabs set upright against the wall offered a

temptation to the ambitious architect that he was not likely to resist. The

limestone and alabaster of which they were composed afforded both a kindly

surface for the chisel, and a certain guarantee of duration for the forms

it struck out. In every Assyrian palace we may see that the king, its

builder, had a double object in view, the glorification of the gods, and

the transmission to posterity of his own image and the memory of his reign.

To these ends the architect called in the sculptor, under whose hands the

rudely dressed slabs took the historic forms with which we are familiar.

Of all parts of the palace the doorways were most exposed to injury from

the shocks of traffic, and we find their more solid plinths surmounted by

higher and thicker slabs than are to be found elsewhere. These slabs are

carved with the images of protecting divinities. Huge winged and man-headed

bulls (Plate X)[333] or lions (Fig. 114), the speaking symbols of force and

thought, met the approaching visitor. Sometimes a lion, reproducing with

singular energy the features of the real beast, was substituted for the

human-headed variety (Plate VIII).[334]

These guardians of the gate always had the front part of their bodies

salient in some degree from the general line of the wall. The head and

breast, at least, were outside the arch. Right and left of the passage

were very thick slabs, also carved into the form of winged bulls in

profile, and accompanied by protecting genii. These latter divinities are

sometimes grave and noble in mien, obviously benevolent (Figs. 8 and 29),

sometimes hideous in face, and violent in gesture. In the latter case they

are meant to frighten the profane or the hostile away from the dwelling

they guard (Figs. 6 and 7). All these figures are in much higher relief

than the sculptures in the inner chambers.

[Illustration: FIG. 114.--Human-headed lion. Nimroud; from Layard.]

All this shows that the sculptor thoroughly understood how to make the best

of his opportunities when he was once called in to ornament those massive

door-frames and slabs which at first were no more than additional supports

for the building to which they were applied. He varied the shapes of these

blocks according to their destined sites, and increased their size so as

to give gigantic proportions to his man-headed bulls and lions. Some of the

winged bulls are from sixteen to seventeen feet high.[335] In spite of the

labour expended upon the carving and putting in place of these huge

figures, they are extremely numerous, hardly less so, indeed, than the

Osiride piers of Egypt.[336] In the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad,

twenty-six pairs have been counted; in that of Sennacherib at Kouyundjik,

there were ten upon a single facade.[337]

In those passages, halls, and courtyards, whose destination justified such

a luxury, the sculptor utilized the stone lining of the walls with equal

skill, but in a slightly different spirit. The figures on the facade had to

be seen from a great distance, and were exposed to the full light of the

Mesopotamian sun, so that their colossal proportions and the varied

boldness of their relief had an obvious justification. The sculptures in

the interior were smaller in scale and were strictly _bas-reliefs_. With

the shortening of the distance from which they could be examined, their

scale was made to conform more closely to the real stature of human beings.

In some very spacious halls a few of the figures are larger than life,

while in the narrowest galleries they become very small, the alabaster

slabs being divided into two stories or more (see Fig. 115).[338]

There is another singularity to be noticed _apropos_ of these sculptures.

The themes treated outside are very different from those inside the

palaces. The figures in the former position are religious and supernatural,

those in the interior historical and anecdotic. There is much variety in

the details of these narrative sculptures, but their main theme is always

the glorification, and, in a sense, the biography of the sovereign.

[Illustration: FIG. 115.--Bas-relief with several registers. Width 38

inches. Louvre. Drawn by Bourgoin.]

In the Egyptian temple the figures which form its _illumination_ are spread

indifferently over the whole surface of the walls. In a Greek temple, on

the other hand, sculpture was confined with rare exceptions to the upper

part of the building, to the pediments chiefly, and the frieze. The

Assyrian method was neither that of the Egyptians nor that of the Greeks.

At Nineveh, the sculptor did not, as in Egypt, sow his figures broadcast

over the whole length and breadth of the building, neither did he raise

them, as in Greece, above the heads of the crowd; he marshalled them upon

the lowest part of a wall, upon its plinth. Their feet touched the soil,

their eyes were on a level with those that looked at them; we might say

that they formed an endless procession round every hall and chamber. The

reasons for such an arrangement are to be sought for, not in any aesthetic

tendency of the Assyrian artist, but in the simple fact that only in the

stone cuirass, within which the lower parts of the brick walls were shut

up, could he find the kindly material for his chisel. Nowhere else in the

whole building could the stone, without which his art was powerless, be

introduced.

But as the lateral development of Assyrian buildings was great, so too was

the field offered to the Assyrian sculptor. It has been calculated that the

sculptured slabs found in the palace of Sargon would, if placed in a row,

cover a distance of nearly a mile and a half. Their superficies is equal to

about an acre and a half. By this it will be seen that sculpture played an

important part in the decoration of an Assyrian palace, but as it was

confined to the lower part of the walls, some other method had to be

invented for ornamenting those surfaces on which the chisel could not be

used. In Chaldaea, where there was so little stone, it was practically the

whole building that had to be thus contrived for. In both countries the

problem was solved in the same fashion--by the extensive use of enamelled

brick and painted stucco, and the elaboration of a rich, elegant, and

withal original system of polychromy.

Explorers are unanimous in the opinion that neither burnt nor sun-dried

brick was ever left without something to cover its nakedness. It was always

hidden and protected by a coat of stucco.[339] At Nineveh, according to M.

Place, this stucco was formed by an intimate mixture of burnt chalk with

plaster, by which a sort of white gum was made that adhered very tightly to

the clay wall.[340] Its peculiar consistence did not permit of its being

spread with a brush; a trowel or board must have been used. The thickness

of this cement was never more than one or two millimetres.[341] Its

cohesive force was so great that in spite of its thinness it acted as an

efficient protector. It has often been found in excellent condition, both

upon flat and curved surfaces, upon the walls of courtyards and chambers,

on the under sides of vaults, wherever in fact a stone casing did not

supply its place.

It would seem that some buildings had no outward ornament beyond the

brilliant whiteness of this stucco, the effect of which may be seen at the

present day in the whitewashed houses of the East. The glare of such a wall

was happily contrasted with the soft verdure that sometimes grew about it,

and the dark blue of the sky against which its summit was relieved. Such a

contrast gives importance and accent to the smallest building, as painters

who treat the landscapes of the South thoroughly understand.

We have reason to believe, however, that as a rule the white stucco served

as a background and support to other colours. No Chaldaean interiors have

come down to us, while the exteriors are in such bad preservation that we

can hardly form any true judgment of the colours and designs with which

they were once adorned. But in the case of Assyria we know pretty well how

the decorator understood his business, and it is probable that, like his

colleagues, the architect and the sculptor, he was content to perpetuate

the traditions of his Chaldaean masters.

In certain cases the decorator makes use of wide unbroken tints. This is

the simplest way of using colour. In the palace of Sargon, for instance,

wherever the sculptured slabs are absent we find a plinth painted black in

distemper. These plinths are from two to nearly four feet high, according

to the extent of the courts or chambers in which they occur. The object of

such a dado is clear; it was to protect the lower part of the wall, if not

against deliberate violence, at least against dirt. A white stucco in such

a position would soon have been disfigured by spots and various marks which

would be invisible on a black background. Moreover, the contrast between

the plinth and the white wall above it must have had a certain decorative

effect.[342]

This coloured dado is to be found even in places to which it seems quite

unsuited. At Khorsabad, for instance, it runs across the foot of those

semicircular pilasters we noticed in one of the harem chambers (Fig. 101).

These pilasters stand upon a plinth between three and four feet high, so

that any contact with the dirt of the floor need not have been feared. The

existence of the dado in such a position is to be accounted for by

supposing that the decorator considered it as the regular ornament for the

bottom of a wall. It is more difficult to understand why the alcoves

believed by MM. Place and Thomas to have been bedrooms were in each case

painted with this same band of black.[343]

The most curious example of the employment of unbroken tints to which we

can point, is in the case of M. Place's observatory. The stages of that

building were each about twenty feet high, and each was painted a colour of

its own; the first was white, the second black, the third red, the fourth

white. When the excavations were made, these tints were still easily

visible. The building seems originally to have had seven stages, and the

three upper ones must certainly have been coloured on the same principle as

those below them. In his restoration, Thomas makes the fifth vermilion, the

sixth a silver grey, while he gilds the seventh and last.[344] In this

choice and arrangement of tints there is nothing arbitrary. It is founded

on the description given by Herodotus of Ecbatana, the capital of the

Medes. "The Medes ... built the city now called Agbatana, the walls of

which are of great size and strength, rising in circles one within the

other. The plan of the place is, that each of the walls should out-top the

one beyond it by the battlements. The nature of the ground, which is a

gentle hill, favours this arrangement in some degree, but it was mainly

effected by art. The number of the circles is seven, the royal palace and

the treasuries standing within the last. The circuit of the outer wall is

very nearly the same with that of Athens. Of this wall the battlements are

white, of the next black, of the third scarlet, of the fourth blue, of the

fifth orange; all these are coloured with paint. The two last have their

battlements coated respectively with silver and gold."[345]

Between the series of colours found upon the ruin in question and the list

here given by Herodotus there is, so far as they go, an identity which

cannot be due to chance. The Medes and Persians invented nothing; their

whole art was no more than an eastern offshoot from that of Mesopotamia. It

was in Chaldaea that the number seven first received an exceptional and

quasi sacred character. Our week of seven days is a result from the early

worship of the five great planets and of the sun and moon. There were also

the seven colours of the rainbow. From such indications as these the early

architects of Assyria must have determined the number of stages to be given

to a religious building; they also regulated the order of the colours, each

one of which was consecrated by tradition to one of those great heavenly

bodies. We can easily understand how the silver white of the penultimate

stage was chosen to symbolize the moon, while the glory of the gold upon

the upper story recalled that of the noonday sun.

Thus must we figure the tower with seven stages which Nebuchadnezzar

boasted of having restored in more than its early magnificence. These

arrangements of coloured bands had a double value. Each tint had a symbolic

and traditional signification of its own, and the series formed by the

seven was, so to speak, a phrase in the national theology, an appeal to the

imagination, and a confession of piety. At the same time the chief

divisions of the monument were strongly marked, and the eye was attracted

to their number and significance, while the building as a whole was more

imposing and majestic than if its colour had been a uniform white from base

to summit. The colours must have been frequently renewed.

In the interior, where the temperature was not subject to violent changes,

where there was neither rain nor scorching sun, the architect made use of

painting in distemper to reinforce the decoration in his more luxurious

chambers. Unfortunately these frescoes are now represented by nothing but a

few fragments. In the course of the excavations numerous instances of their

use were encountered, but in almost every case exposure to the air was

rapidly destructive of their tints, and even of their substance. They

occurred chiefly in the rooms whose walls were lined in their lower parts

with sculptured slabs. By dint of infinite painstaking M. Place succeeded

in copying a few fragments of these paintings.[346] According to the

examples thus preserved for us, human figures were mingled with purely

ornamental motives such as plumes, fillets, and rosettes. The colours here

used were black, green, red, and yellow, to which may be added a fifth in

the white of the plaster ground upon which they were laid. Flesh tints were

expressed by leaving this white uncoloured.

[Illustration: FIG. 116.--Ornament painted upon plaster; from Layard.]

[Illustration: FIG. 117.--Ornament painted upon plaster; from Layard.]

Several fragments of these painted decorations have also been preserved by

Sir Henry Layard. The simplest of them all is a broad yellow band edged on

each side by a line of alternately red and blue chevrons separated from

each other by white lines. Down the centre of the yellow band there is a

row of blue and white rosettes (Fig. 116). Another example in which the

same colours are employed is at once more complex and more elegant (see

Fig. 117). Finally, in a third fragment, a slightly simplified version of

this latter motive serves as a lower border to a frieze upon which two

bulls face each other, their white bodies being divided from the yellow

ground by a thick black line. The battlements at the top are dark blue

(Fig. 118). An idea of the tints used in this decoration may be obtained

from Fig. 2 of our plate xiv.

[Illustration: FIG. 118.--Ornament painted upon plaster; from Layard.]

It was upon the upper parts of walls where they were beyond the reach of

accidental injury that these painted decorations were placed. M. Place had

reason to think that they were also used on the under-sides of vaults. In

rooms in which a richer and more permanent kind of ornament was

unnecessary, paint alone was used for decoration. In several chambers

cleared by George Smith at Nimroud, that explorer found horizontal bands of

colour, alternately red, green, and yellow, and where the stone casing of

the lower walls was not sculptured, these stripes were continued over its

surface.[347]

The artist to whom the execution of this work was intrusted must have

arranged so that his tints were in harmony with those placed by another

brush on many details of the sculptured slabs. We shall discuss the

question of polychromy in Assyrian sculpture at a future opportunity; at

present we are content with observing that the effect of the reliefs was

strengthened here and there by the use of colour.

The beard, the hair, and the eyebrows were tinted black; such things as the

fringes of robes, baldricks, flowers held in the hand, were coloured blue

and red. The gaiety thus given brought a room into harmony, and prevented

the cool grey of the alabaster slabs from presenting a disagreeable

contrast with the brilliant tones spread over the roofs and upper walls.

We might thus restore the interior of an Assyrian apartment and arrive at a

whole, some elements of which would be certainly authentic and others at

least very probable. The efforts hitherto made in this direction leave much

to be desired, and give many an opportunity to the fault-finding critic;

and that because their makers have failed to completely master the spirit

of Mesopotamian architecture as shown in its remaining fragments.[348]

It would be much less easy, it would in fact be foolhardy, to attempt the

restoration of a hall from a Babylonian palace. Our information is quite

insufficient for such a task. We may affirm, however, that where the

architect had no stone to speak of, the decorations must have had a

somewhat different character from those in which that invaluable material

was freely used. The general tendencies of both countries must have been

the same, but between Nineveh and Babylon, still more between the capital

of Assyria and the towns of Lower Chaldaea, there were differences of which

now and then we may succeed in catching a glance. Compelled to trust almost

entirely to clay, the artist of Chaldaea must have turned his attention to

colour as a decoration much more exclusively than his Assyrian rival.

His preoccupation with this one idea is betrayed very curiously in the

facade of one of those ruined buildings at Warka which Loftus has studied

and described.[349] We borrow his plan and elevation of the detail to which

we refer (Fig. 119).

[Illustration: FIG. 119.--Plan and elevation of part of a facade at Warka;

from Loftus.]