Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/416

 388 A HISTORY OF ART IN CHAI.D.EA AND ASSYRIA. square of about 143 feet each way. Each of the three complete stages was twenty feet three inches high. Upon such data M. Thomas had no difficulty in restoring the whole building. Evidently the fourth story could not have been the original apex, as it would have been strange indeed, if, when all the rest of the Khorsabad palace had lost its upper w r orks, the sun-dried bricks of the Observatory alone had resisted the agents of destruction. Moreover the materials of the higher stories still exist in the 40,000 cubic yards of rubbish which cover the surrounding platform to an average depth of about ten feet. How many stages were there ? Struck by the importance of the number seven in Assyrian architecture, M. Thomas fixed riG. 185. -The Obserralorv restored. Klevaiion. upon that number. Even at Khorsabad itself the figure con- tinually crops up. The city walls had seven gates. One of the commonest of the ornamental motives found upon the external and internal walls of the Harem is the band of seven half columns illustrated on page 247. Herodotus tells us of the seven different colours used on the concentric walls of Ecbatana. Finally, in assigning seven stories to the building we get a total elevation of 140 feet, which corresponds so closely to the 143 feet of the base that we may take the two as identical, and account for the slight difference between them, amounting only to about remained the same. It never became very abrupt however, as supposing that the original number of stories was seven, the gradient would not be more than about one in fourteen close to the summit.