Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/255

 THE ARCH. 233 At different points on the Khorsabad mound, M. Place found other sewers, some with depressed, some with basket-handle vaults, while, at Nimroud, channels were discovered which were square in section and covered with large slabs of lime- stone. 1 The Assyrian architects seem, however, to have had a decided preference for the vault in such a situation. They expected it to give greater solidity, and in that they were not mistaken. The vaults of burnt brick, though set without cement, have remained unshaken and close in their joints, and the sewers they inclose are the only voids that have remained clear in the ruins of the buildings to which they belong. FIG. 94. Sewer at Khorsabad, with elliptical vault ; compiled from Hace. We may, perhaps, be accused of dwelling too minutely upon these Assyrian vaults. We have done so because there is no question more interesting or more novel in the whole history of architecture than the true origin of the keyed vault and the different uses to which it has been put. Ottfried Miiller looked upon the Etruscans as the inventors of the vault ; he believed that the Greek builders learnt the secret from the early inhabitants of Italy, 2 and that the arches of the Roman Cloaca Maxima built by the Tuscan architects of the Tarquins, were the oldest that 1 LA YARD, Nineveh, vol. i. p. 79. 2 OTTFRIED MULLF.R, Handbuch aer Archaologie der Kunst, 107 and 168 (3rd edition). II II