Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/127

 The City of the Pterians. Ill but the top is carefully dressed throughout. In many of the stones are circular holes or sockets, averaging from 40 to 45 c. in diameter, 3 to 4 in depth, and 25 to 33 apart. At first sight, these holes might be supposed to have been intended to receive metal pins or poles, for fixing drapery, except that they are too small and unevenly distributed to have been put to such uses. til l 1 1 V^ s Fig. 295.— Plan of Palace. Barth, /^a'se, p. 48. Curtains, beside their inadequacy against the rude climate of that alpine district, would have been superfluous, since there is no doubt that proper doors existed, as hinges about doorways every- where attest. Had these holes been designed as cramp-irons for joining stones one to the other, as in Greece, the accumulated rubbish left by the falling in of the superstructures would be found around the building, but nothing of the kind occurs. The only reasonable supposition is that, as at Nineveh, here also the