Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/412

 384 A HISTORY OF ART IN CIIALD.KA AND ASSYRIA. iheir order from north to south, Babil, JU-Kasr (or Mudjelibeh] and Tcll-Ainran, on the left bank ; on the right bank the most conspicuous of them all, the Birs-Nimroud^ Most of those who have studied the topography of Babylon are disposed to see in the Kasr and in Tell-Amran the remains of a vast palace, or rather of several palaces, built by different kings, and those of the famous hanging gardens ; while in Babil (Plate I. and Fig. 37) and the Birs Nimroud (Fig. 168) they agree to recognize all that is left of the two chief religious buildings of Babylon. Babil would be the oldest of them all the Bit-Saggatu or " temple ot the foundations of the earth " which stood in the very centre of the royal city and was admired and described by Herodotus. The Birs-Nimroud would correspond to the no less celebrated temple of Borsippa, the JUl- Zida, the " temple of the planets and of the seven spheres." At Babil no explorations have thrown the least light upon the disposition of the building. Jn the whole of its huge mass, which rises to a height of some 130 feet above the plain, no trace of the separate cubes or of their dimensions is to be found. All the restorations that have been made are purely imaginary. At Birs- Nimroud the excavations of Sir Henry Rawlinson in 1854 were by no means fruitless but, unhappily, we are without any detailed account of their results. So far as we have been told, it would appear that the existence of at least six of the seven stages had been ascertained and the monument, which, according to Sir Henry Rawlinson's measurements, is now 153 feet high, can have lost but little of its original height. We can hardly believe however, that the violence of man and the storms of so many centuries have done so little damage. 2 It seems to be more clearly proved that, in shape, the temple belonged to the class we have described under the head of THE RECTANGULAR CIIALD.KAX TEMPLF. The axis of 1 The clearest and most precise information upon the topography of Babylon is to be found in Professor RAWLINSON'S essay on that subject in the second volume of his translation of HERODOTUS (p. 570, in the third edition). - In making his calculations, Professor RAWLINSON has certainly forgotten to take into account the pier or section of wall that still stands upright upon the surface of the mound (OPPERT, Expedition scientifique, vol. i. pp. 260, et se/j.}. It is clearly shown in our figure Sir Henry LAYARD leaves us in no doubt on this score : "The Birs-Nimroud rises to a height of 198 feet, and has on its summit a compact mass of brickwork thirty-seven feet high by twenty-eight broad, the whole being thus 235 feet in perpendicular height," Discoveries, p. 495. LAYARD says, however, that the dimensions here given were taken from RICH, as he had no time to take measurements during his hurried visit. ED. " Discoveries, p. 495.