Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/174

 154 A HISTURV OF ART IN CHAI.D.LA AND ASSYRIA. are not always of crude brick. They are sometimes made by inclosing a large space by four brick walls, and filling it with earth and the various dc ! bris left by previous buildings. 1 Our remarks upon construction must be understood as applying to the buildings themselves, and not to the artificial hills upon which they stood. The Assyrians seem never to have used anything analogous to our mortar or cement in fixing their materials. On the com- paratively rare occasions when they employed stone they were content with dressing their blocks with great care and putting them in absolute juxtaposition with one another. When they used crude brick, sufficient adherence was insured by the moisture left IMG. 48. Temple at Mugheir ; from Loftus. in the clay, and by its natural properties. Even when they used burnt or well dried bricks they took no great care to give them a cohesion that would last, ordinary clay mixed with water and a little straw, was their only cement. 2 Even in our own day the masons and bricklayers of Mossoul and Bagdad are content with the same simple materials, and their structures have no great solidity in consequence. In Chaldsea, at least in certain times and at certain places, construction was more careful. In the ruin known as Tfafo'/, a ruin 1 LA YARD, Discoveries, &c. p. no. 2 LAYARD, Ninei'eh, vol. ii. p. 279. "The bricks had no mortar but the mud from which they had been made," says BOTTA (Monuments de Ninire, vol. v. p. 30).