Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/182

 160 A HISTORY OF ART IN CIIALD/KA AND ASSYRIA. was pushed in the early centuries of the Chaldean monarchy. They excite a strong desire in us to discover the internal arrange- ments of his buildings, the method by which access was given or forbidden to those chambers of the Babylonian temples and houses whose magnificence has been celebrated by every writer that saw them before their ruin. Unhappily nothing has come down to us of the monuments of Chalda^a, and especially of those of Babylon, but their basements and the central masses of the staged towers. The Assyrian palaces are indeed in a better state of preservation, but even in their case we ask many questions to which no certain answer is forthcoming. 5 The great difficulty in all our researches and attempts at restoration, is caused by the complete absence of any satisfactory evidence as to the nature of the roofs that covered rooms, either small or large. In most cases the walls are only standing to a height of from ten to fifteen feet ; l in no instance has a wall with its summit still in place been discovered. The cut on the opposite page (Fig. 50) gives a fair idea of what a Ninevite building looks like after the excavators have finished their work. It is a view in perspective of one of the gates of Sargon's city : the walls are eighty-eight feet thick, to which the buttresses add another ten feet ; their average height is from about twenty- five to thirty feet, high enough to allow the archway by which the city was entered to remain intact. This is quite an exception. In no part of the palace is there anything to correspond to this happy find of M. Place any evidence by which we can decide the forms of Assyrian doorways. The walls are always from about twelve to twenty-eight feet in thickness (see Fig. 46.) Rooms are rect- angular, sometimes square, but more often so long as to be galleries rather than rooms in the ordinary sense of the word. The way in which these rooms were covered in has been much discussed. Sir Henry Layard believes only in flat roofs, similar to those of modern houses in Mossoul and the neighbouring villages. He tells us that he never came upon the slightest trace of a vault, while in almost every room that he excavated he found wood ashes and carbonized timber. 2 He is convinced that the destruction 1 At Khorsabad the average height of the alabaster lining is about ten feet ; above that about three feet of brick wall remains. 2 LAYARD, JVineve/i, vol. i. pp. 127 and 350; vol. ii. pp. 40 and 350. As to the traces of fire at Khorsabad, see BOTTA, Monument de Ninire, vol. v. p. 54.