Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/402

 37 ART IN CIIAI.D.KA AND ASSYRIA. CHALDEAN TEMPLE (Hate III. and Figs. 177, 178, and 179). As in the last model, there are seven stages, each stage being square on plan, but the difference consists in the use of two ramps leading from base to summit. Each of these keeps to its own side o & f the building, only approaching the other on the front and back facades at the fourth, fifth, and sixth stages (see Plate In order that the building as a whole should have a symmetrical and monumental appearance, it was necessary that all its seven stages with the exception of the first, to which a rather different r^ was assined should be of equal height. But their length IP 1JI I I ' . 1^ jljjll

I j FIGS. 177 179. Transverse section, plan, and bon/.ontal section of a square, double-ramped Chaldean Temple. and width differed in proportion to their height in the building. The continual shortening of the distance within which the incline had to be packed, would, if we suppose each ramp confined to one side of the tower, have required the slope to become steeper with each story. Such a want of parallelism would have been very ugly, and there was but one means of avoiding it, and that was to continue the ramps nearly to the centre of the front at the fourth and sixth stages, and to the centre of the posterior facade at the fifth. The advantages of such an arrangement are obvious. Banished mostly to the flanks the double ramp left four stages