Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/214

 192 A HISTORY OF ART ix CHALD.EA AND ASSYRIA. edges of the alabaster slabs are cut to the same slope as that of the corridor upon whose walls they were fixed, and their sculptures represent the daily traffic that passed and repassed within those w-alls. 1 On the one hand, fourteen grooms are leading fourteen horses clown to the Tigris to be watered ; on the other, servants are mounting with provisions for the royal table in baskets on their heads.' 2 The steps of basalt and gypsum, that afford communication between rooms of different levels at Khorsabad, are planned and adjusted with great skill and knowledge. 3 The workmen who built those steps took, we may be sure, all the necessary precautions to prevent men and beasts from slipping on the paved floors of the inclined galleries. These were constructed upon the same plan as the ramps of M. Place's observatory, on which the pave- ment consists of steps forty inches long, thirty-two inches wide, and less than an inch high. Such steps as these give an inclination of about one in thirty-four, and the ramp on which they were used may be more justly compared to an inclined plane, like that of the Seville Giralda or the Mole of Hadrian, than to a staircase. One might ascend or descend it on horseback without any difficulty. 4 By this example we may see that although the Assyrian builder had no materials at his command equal to those employed by the Greek or Egyptian, he knew how to make ingenious and skilful use of those he had. We should be in a better position to appreciate these qualities of invention and taste had time not entirely deprived us of that part of the work of the Mesopotamian architects in which they were best served by their materials. Assyria, like Egypt, prac- tised construction " by assemblage " as well as the two methods we have already noticed. She had a light form of architecture in which wood and metal played the principal part. As might have been expected, however, all that. she achieved in that direction has perished, and the only evidence upon which we can attempt a restoration is that of the sculptured monuments, and they, unhappily, are much less communicative in this respect than 1 British Museum ; Kouyuncljik Gallery, Xos. 34 43. See also LAYARD'S Monuments, plates 8 and 9. ED. 2 A second inclined gallery of the same kind was found by LAYARD in another of the Kouyuncljik palaces (Discoveries, p. 650), 3 PLACE, Ninirc, vol. i. pp. 306, 307. 4 PLACE, Ninire, vol. i. p. 140.