Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/167

 CONSTRUCTION. 147 the most interesting, and the most carefully studied and described are the walls of Sargon's palace at Khorsabad. Even there stone was only employed to case the walls in which the mound was inclosed a cuirass of large blocks care- fully dressed and fixed seemed to give solidity to the mass, and at the same time we know by the arrangement of the blocks that the outward appearance of the wall was by no means lost sight of. All those of a single course were of one height but of different depths and widths, and the arrangement followed a regular order like that shown in Fig. 46. Their external face was carefully dressed. 1 The courses consist, on plan, of "stretchers" and "headers." We borrow from Place the plan of an angle (Fig. 44), a section FIG. 44. Plan of angle, Khorsabad ; from Place. FIG. 45. Section of wall through AB in Fig. 44 ; from Place. (Fig. 45), and an elevation (Fig. 46). Courses are always horizontal and joints properly bound. The freestone blocks at the foot of the wall are very large. The stretchers are six feet eight inches thick, the same wide, and nine feet long. They weigh about twenty-three tons. It is astonishing to find the Assyrians, who were very rapid builders, choosing such heavy and unmanageable materials. The supporting wall became gradually thinner towards the top, each course being slightly set back from the one below it on the inner face (see Fig. 45). This arrangement is general with 1 We shall here give a resume of M. PLACE'S observations (Ninive et I'Assyrie, vol. i. pp. 3I-34)-