Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/414

 386 A HISTORY or ART IN CHALD.EA AND ASSYRIA. Calah (Nimroud), or Nineveh (Kouyundjik), we need not now inquire, but his short description of a staged tower is of great interest : " Near this town," he says, " there was a stone pyramid two plethra (about 203 feet) high ; each side of its base was one plethron in length." : The tower cleared by Layard at Nimroud is perhaps the very one seen by Xenophon. 2 The Greek soldier speaks of a stone pyramid while the Nimroud tower is of brick, but the whole of its substructure is cased with the finer material to a height of nearly twenty-four feet, which is quite enough to account for Xenophon's statement. As for his dimensions, they should not be taken too literally. In their rapid and anxious march the Greek commanders had no time to wield the plumb-line or the measuring-chain ; they must have trusted mainly to their eyes in arriving at a notion of the true size of the buildings by which their attention was attracted. The tower at Nimroud must have been about 150 feet square, measured along its plinth ; the present height of the mound is 141 feet, and nothing above the first stage now exists. As Layard remarks, one or two stories more must be taken into the account, and they would easily make up an original elevation of from 200 to 240 feet, or about that of the Larissa tower. Xenophon made use of the word pyramid be- cause his language furnished him with no term more accurate. Like the true pyramid, the staged tower diminished gradually from base to summit, and there can be no doubt as to the real character of the building seen by the Greeks, as may be gathered from their leader's statement, that the " barbarians from the neighbouring villages took refuge upon it in great numbers." Such buildings as the pyramids of Egypt and Ethiopia could have afforded no refuge of the kind. A few could stand upon their summits, supposing them to have lost their capstones, but it would require the wide ramps and terraces of the staged tower to afford a foothold for the population of several villages. 3 Nothing but the first two stages, or rather the plinth and the first stage, now remain at Nimroud of what must have been the 1 XENOPHON, Anabasis, III, 4, 9. 2 LAYARD, Discoveries, pp. 126-128, and map 2. 3 At Kaleh Shergat, where the site of an important, but as yet un-identified Assyrian city has been recognized, there is a conical mound, recalling in its general aspect the Nimroud tower, which must contain all that is left, of a zigguratt; but no deep excavations have yet been made in it (LAYARD, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 61).