Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/52

 34 A History of Art in Ciiald.ea and Assyria. facade, where the ornaments belong to the same class as those of Wuswas — semi-columns mixed with grooves i n which the elevation of a stepped battlement is reproduced horizontally. In none of the ruins of habitations found in this district by the English explorers, were the chambers other than rectangular. Taylor cleared a few halls in two buildings at Mugheir (Fig. 10) and Abou-Sharein (Figs. 11 and 12) respectively. Both of these stood on artificial mounds, and it is difficult to believe that they were private dwellings. The walls of several rooms at Mugheir seemed to have been decorated with glazed bricks ; at Abou- Sharein there was nothing but roughly painted stucco. In one chamber the figure of a man with a bird on his fist might yet be distinguished. Fig. 10. — Plan of chambers Fig. ii. — Plan of chambers at at Mugheir ; from Taylor. Abou-Sharein ; from Taylor. Fig. 12.— Plan of chambers at Abou-Sharein; from Taylor. It is in Babylon that we ought to have found the masterpieces of this architecture, in that capital of Nebuchadnezzar where the Chaldaean genius, just before it finally lost its autonomy, made the supreme effort that resulted in the buildings attributed by the travelled Greeks to their famous Semiramis. We have no reason to disbelieve Ctesias when he says that there were two palaces in Babylon, one on the left and another on the right bank of the Euphrates. " Semiramis," says Diodorus, following his usual guide, " built a double residence for herself, close to the river and on both sides of the bridge, whence she might at one and the same time enjoy the view over the whole city, and, so to speak, keep the keys of the most important parts of the capital in her own power. As the Euphrates runs southward through Babylon, one of these palaces faced the rising, the other the
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