Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/397

 ATTEMPTS TO RESTORE THE PRINCIPAL TYPES. 373 triple row of crenellations we have given to this sanctuary or chapel was suggested by the altars and obelisks (Fig. 107 and in). Here, as at Nineveh, these battlements must have been the one universal finish to the walls. The use to which we have put them is quite in harmony with the spirit of Mesopotamia!! architecture, but there is no direct evidence of their presence in these buildings. In this particular our restoration is conjectural. A glance at our longitudinal section (Fig. 169) will show that we have left the main body of this great mass of sun-dried brick absolutely solid. It was in vain that, at Mugheir, trenches and shafts were cut through the flanks of the ruin, not a sign of any apartment or void of the most elementary kind was found. 1 This Mugheir temple rises hardly more than fifty feet above the level of the plain. The restoration by M. Chipiez, for which it furnished the elements, shows a height of 135 feet ; judging from the proportions of its remains the building can hardly have been higher than that. But it is certain that many temples reached a far greater height, otherwise their size could not have made any great impression upon travellers who had seen the Egyptian pyramids. Even now the Birs-Nimroud, which has been undergoing for so many centuries a continual process of diminution, rises no less than 235 feet above the surrounding country, 2 and Strabo, the only Greek author who says anything precise as to the height of the greatest of the Babylonian monu- ments, writes thus : " This monument, which was, they say, overthrown by Xerxes, was a square pyramid of burnt brick, one stade (606 J feet) high, and one stade in diameter." 3 The arrangement by which such a height could be most easily reached would be the superposition of square masses one upon another, each mass being centrally placed on the upper surface of the one below it. The weight would be more equally divided and the risks of settlement more slight than in any other system. Of this type M. Chipiez has restored two varieties. We shall first describe the simpler of the two, which we may call the 1 LOFTUS, Travels, p. 130. It was the same with the Observatory at Khorsabad. 2 LAYARD, Discoveries, p. 495. 3 Tha authorities made use of by Strabo for his description of Babylon, all lived in the time of Alexander and his successors; no one of them could have seen the temple intact and measured its height. Founded upon tradition or upon the inspection of the remains, the figure given by the geographer can only be approximate. I should think it is probably an exaggeration.