Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/181

 CONSTRUCTION. 159 Their interiors are filled in with fragments of broken pottery, which gave considerable support while they in no way hindered the passage of the water. These potsherds are even placed around the outsides of the tubes, so that the latter are nowhere in contact with the brick ; they have a certain amount of play, and with the tubes which they encase they form a series of shafts, like chimneys, measuring about four feet square. Every precaution was taken to carry off the water left by the storms. They were not contented with the small opening at the head of each tube. The whole of its dome-shaped top was pierced with small holes, that made it a kind of cullender. Either through this or through the interstices of the potsherd packing, all the moisture that escaped the central opening would find a safe passage to the level FIG. 49. Upper part of the drainage arrangements of a mound. of the ground, whence, no doubt, it would be carried off to the streams in conduits now hidden by the mass of debris round the foot of every mound. That these arrangements were well adapted to their purpose has been proved by the result. Thanks to the drains we have described, these sepulchral mounds have remained perfectly dry to the present day. Not only the coffins, with the objects in metal or terra-cotta they contained, but even the skeletons themselves have been preserved intact. A touch will reduce the latter to powder, but on the first opening of their coffins they look as if time had had no effect upon their substance. 1 By these details we may see how far the art of the constructor 1 TAYLOR, Notes on the Ruins of Mitgeyr (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society), vol. xv. pp. 268-269.