Chapter II (4)

[191] At Khorsabad the average height of the alabaster lining is about ten feet; above that about three feet of brick wall remains.

[192] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. i. pp. 127 and 350; vol. ii. pp. 40 and 350. As to the traces of fire at Khorsabad, see BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, vol. v. p. 54.

[193] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. ii. pp. 256-264.

[194] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches_, pp. 181-183.

[195] This accumulation has sometimes reached a height of about 24 feet. PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 294.

[196] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 293-294.

[197] E. FLANDIN, _Voyage archeologique a Ninive. 1. L'Architecture assyrienne. 2. La Sculpture assyrienne_ (_Revue des Deux-Mondes_, June 15 and July 1, 1845).

[198] For all that concerns this artist, one of the most skilful draughtsmen of our time, see the biographical notice of M. de Girardot:--_Felix Thomas, grand Prix de Rome Architecte, Peintre, Graveur, Sculpteur_ (Nantes, 1875, 8vo.).

[199] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 249-269.

[200] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 254-255.

[201] _Ibid._ p. 246.

[202] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 264.

[203] _Ibid._ p. 265. RICH made similar observations at Bagdad. He noticed that the masons could mount on the vault a few minutes after each course was completed (_Narrative of a Journey to the Site of Babylon_).

[204] M. A. CHOISY, well known by his Essays on _L'Art de batir chez les Romains_, shows that the same method was constantly used by the Byzantine architects. See his _Note sur la Construction des Voutes sans cintrage pendant la Periode byzantine_ (_Annales des Ponts et Chausees_, 1876, second period, vol. xii.). See also Mr. FERGUSSON'S account of the erection of a huge stone dome without centering of any kind, by an illiterate Maltese builder, at Mousta, near Valetta (_Handbook of Architecture_, Second Edition, vol. iv. p. 34).--ED.

[205] STRABO, xvi. i. 5, Hoi oikoi kamarotoi pantes dia ten axulian.

[206] For a description of these buildings see FLANDIN and COSTE, _Voyage en Perse, Perse ancienne, Text_, pp. 24-27, and 41-43 (6 vols. folio, no date. The voyage in question took place in 1841 and 1842).

[207] Brick played, at least, by far the most important part in their construction. The domes and arcades were of well-burnt brick; the straight walls were often built of broken stone, when it was to be had in the neighbourhood. At Ctesiphon, on the other hand, the great building known as the _Takht-i-Khosrou_ is entirely of brick.

[208] See M. AUGUSTE CHOISY'S _Note sur la Construction des Voutes_, &c. p. 14. This exact and penetrating critic shares our belief in these relations between the Chaldaean east and Roman Asia.

[209] _Note sur la Construction des Voutes sans cintrage_, p. 12.

[210] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 266-267.

[211] As M. CHOISY remarks (_L'Art de batir chez les Romains_, p. 80), each horizontal course, being in the form of a ring, would have no tendency to collapse inwards, and a dome circular on plan would demand some means for keeping its shape true rather than a resisting skeleton.

[212] _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 131.

[213] In both the examples here reproduced the sculptor has indicated the cords by which the canvas walls were kept in place. We find almost the same profile in a bas-relief at Khorsabad (BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, pl. 146), but there it is cut with less decision and there are no cords. Between the two semi-domes the figure of a man rises above the wall to his middle, suggesting the existence of a barbette within. Here the artist may have been figuring a house rather than a tent.

[214] STRABO, xv. 3, 10.

[215] STRABO, xvi. 1, 5.

[216] Keramoi d' ou chrontai, says Strabo. These words, as Letronne remarked _a propos_ of this passage, combine the ideas of a tiled roof and of one with a ridge. The one notion must be taken with the other; hence we may infer that the Babylonian houses were flat-roofed.

[217] STRABO, ii. 5, 11.

[218] See M. AMEDEE TARDIEU'S reflections upon Strabo's method of work, in his _Geographie de Strabon_ (Hachette, 3 vols, 12mo.), vol. iii. p. 286, note 2.

[219] As to this singular people and their religious beliefs, the information contained in the two works of Sir H. LAYARD (_Nineveh_, vol. 1. pp. 270-305, and _Discoveries_, pp. 40-92) will be read with interest. Thanks to special circumstances Sir H. Layard was able to become more intimately acquainted than any other traveller with this much-abused and cruelly persecuted sect. He collected much valuable information upon doctrines which, even after his relation, are not a little obscure and confused. The Yezidis have a peculiar veneration for the evil principle, or Satan; they also seem to worship the sun. Their religion is in fact a conglomeration of various survivals from the different systems that have successively obtained in that part of Asia. They themselves have no clear idea of it as a whole. It would repay study by an archaeologist of religions.

[220] BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, vol. v. p. 70.

[221] See above, page 118, note 1.

[222] Some rooms are as much as thirty feet wide. They would require joists at least thirty-three feet long, a length that can hardly be admitted in view of the very mediocre quality of the wood in common use.

[223] _Gailhabaud, Monuments anciens et modernes_, vol. i.; plate entitled _Tombeaux superposes a Corneto_.

[224] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 309. In this passage M. Place affirms that Mr. Layard discovered in a room of one of the Ninevite palaces, several openings cut at less than four feet above the floor level. It is, moreover, certain that these openings were included in the original plan of the building, because the reliefs are interrupted so as to leave room for the window without injury to the scenes sculptured upon them; but, adds M. Place, this example is unique, one of those exceptions that help to confirm a rule. We have in vain searched through the two works of Sir Henry Layard for the statement alluded to by M. Place. The English explorer only once mentions windows, and then he says: "Even in the rooms bounded by the outer walls there is not the slightest trace of windows" (_Nineveh_, vol. ii. p. 260).

[225] BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, vol. v. p. 73.

[226] FLANDIN et COSTE, _Voyage en Perse; Perse ancienne_, plates 28 and 29; and, in the text, page 25. These openings occur in the great Sassanide palace at Ctesiphon, the _Takht-i-Khosrou_ (_ibid._ pl. 216, and text, p. 175). Here the terra-cotta pipes are about eight inches in diameter. According to these writers similar contrivances are still in use in Persia.

[227] In the cupola of the palace at Sarbistan (Fig. 54), a window may be perceived in the upper part of the vertical wall, between the pendentives of the dome. Such openings may well have been pierced under Assyrian domes. From many of the illustrations we have given, it will be seen that the Ninevite architects had no objection to windows, provided they could be placed in the upper part of the wall. It is of windows like ours, pierced at a foot or two above the ground, that no examples have been found.

[228] PLACE. _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 312-314.

[229] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 313.

[230] _Ibid._ p. 310

[231] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 311.

[232] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 307.

[233] See BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, vol. v. p. 53; _Place_, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 306, 307.

[234] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. ii. p. 15.

[235] TAYLOR, _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. xv. p. 409.

[236] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 260.

[237] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, pp. 645-6.

[238] LAYARD, _Monuments_, &c., first series, plate 19. This relief is reproduced in PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii. plate 40, fig. 6.

[239] British Museum; Kouyundjik Gallery, Nos. 34-43. See also LAYARD'S _Monuments_, plates 8 and 9.--ED.

[240] A second inclined gallery of the same kind was found by LAYARD in another of the Kouyundjik palaces (_Discoveries_, p. 650).

[241] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 306, 307.

[242] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 140.

[243] As to the great size sometimes reached by the tents of the Arab chiefs, and the means employed to divide them into several apartments, see LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 313, and the sketch on page 321.

[244] There is a photographic reproduction of these interesting reliefs in the fine publication undertaken by the Society of Biblical Archaeology. This work, which is not yet (1883) complete, is entitled _The Bronze Ornaments of the Gates of Balawat_, _Shalmaneser_ II. 859-825, edited, with an introduction, by Samuel BIRCH, with descriptions and translations by Theophilus G. PINCHES, folio, London. The three first parts are before us. The motive reproduced above belongs to the plate marked F, 5.

[245] They are to be found on the sheet provisionally numbered B, 1, in the publication above referred to.

[246] This cylinder, which is now in the British Museum, was perhaps the actual signet of the king.

[247] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. ii. p. 272.

[248] LAYARD, _Monuments of Nineveh_, first series, plate 77; second series, plates 24 and 36.

[249] _Genesis_, xiii. 12.

[250] _Genesis_, xix.

Sec. 4.--_The Column._

As Chaldaea, speaking broadly, made no use of stone in its buildings, the stone column or shaft was unknown to its architects; at least not a single fragment of such a thing has been found among the ruins. Here and there cylindrical piers built up of small units seem to have been employed. These are sometimes of specially moulded bricks,[251] sometimes of sandstone fragments supported by a coat of masonry. Time has separated the stones of the latter, and it is now only represented by fragments whose shape betrays their original destination. Taylor, indeed, found one of these piers still in place during his excavations at Abou-Sharein, but his sketch and description are so confused that it is quite useless to reproduce them.[252]

On the other hand, Chaldaea preceded Assyria in the art of raising airy structures mainly composed of wood and metal, and by them she was led to the use of slender supports and a decoration in which grace and elegance were the most conspicuous features. We have a proof of this in a curious monument recently acquired by the British Museum. It comes from Abou-Abba, about sixteen miles south-west of Bagdad, and is in a marvellous state of preservation. Abou-Abba has been recognized as the site of the ancient Sippara, one of the oldest of Chaldaean towns. Its sanctuaries, in which the sun-god, Samas, was chiefly adored, always maintained a great importance.

The monument in question is a tablet of very close-grained grey stone 11-1/3 inches long 6 inches high and, in the centre, about 3 inches thick. Its thickness increases from top to bottom. The edge is grooved. High up on the obverse there is a bas-relief, beneath this commences a long inscription which is finished on the reverse.[253] Shorter inscriptions are engraved on the field of the relief itself. The whole work--figures, inscriptions, and outer mouldings--is executed with the utmost care. The laborious solicitude with which the smallest details are carried out is to be explained by the destination of this little plaque, namely, the temple in the centre of Sippara in which a triad consisting of Sin, Samas, and Istar was the object of worship.[254]

The relief itself--which we reproduce from a cast kindly presented to us by Dr. Birch--occupies rather less than half of the obverse (Fig. 71). It represents a king called Nabou-Abla-Idin, who reigned about 900, doing homage to the sun-god.[255] We shall return to this scene and its composition when the time arrives for treating Chaldaean sculpture. At present we only wish to speak of the pavilion under which the deity is enthroned upon a chair supported by two beings half man and half bull.

This kind of tabernacle is bounded, above and at the back of the god, by a wall of which there is nothing to show the exact nature. Its graceful, sinuous line, however, seems to exclude the idea, sufficiently improbable in itself, of a brick vault. It may possibly have been of wood, though it would not be easy to obtain this elegant curve even in that material.

But such forms as this are given with the greatest ease in metal, and we are ready to believe that what the artist here meant to represent was a metal frame, which could at need be hidden under a canopy of leather or wool, like those we have already encountered in the Assyrian bas-reliefs (Figs. 67 and 68). The artist has in fact made use of a graphic process common enough with the Egyptians.[256] He has given us a lateral elevation of the tabernacle with the god in profile within it, because his skill was unequal to the task of showing him full front and seated between the two columns of the facade.

The single column thus left visible has been represented with great skill and care; the sculptor seems to have taken pleasure in dwelling upon its smallest details. Slender as it is, it must have been of wood. The markings upon it suggest the trunk of a palm, but we may be permitted to doubt whether it was allowed to remain in its natural uncovered state. Even in the climate of Chaldaea a dead tree trunk exposed to the air would have no great durability. Sooner or later the sun, the rain, the changes of temperature, would give a good account of it, and besides, a piece of rough wood could hardly be made to harmonize with the luxury that must assuredly have been lavished by the people of Sippara upon the sanctuary of their greatest divinity.

It is probable, therefore, that the wood was overlaid with plates of gilded bronze, fastened on with nails.

This hypothesis is confirmed by one of M. Place's discoveries at Khorsabad.[257] There, in front of the Harem, he found several large fragments of a round cedar-wood beam almost as thick as a man's body. It was cased in a bronze sheath, very much oxydized and resembling the scales of a fish in arrangement (Fig. 72). The metal was attached to the wood by a large number of bronze nails. Comparing these remains with certain bas-reliefs in which different kinds of trees appear (Fig. 27) we can easily see that the Ninevite sculptors meant to represent the peculiar roughnesses of palm bark. Their usual methods are modified a little by the requirements of the material and the size of the beam upon which it was used. Each scale was about 4-1/2 inches high, and according to the calculations of M. Place, the whole mast must have been from five-and-thirty to forty feet high. Working for spectators on a lower level and at some distance, the smith thought well to make his details as regular and strongly marked as he could; to each scale or leaf he gave a raised edge to mark its contour and distinguish it from the rest. The general effect was thus obtained by deliberate exaggeration of the relief and by a conventionality that was justified by the conditions of the problem to be solved.

At a little distance from this broken beam M. Place found a leaf of gold which is now in the Louvre; it presents the same ovoid forms as the bronze sheathing, and, moreover, the numerous nail holes show that it was meant to fulfil the same purpose as the bronze plates. The place in which it was found, its dimensions and form, all combine to prove that it was laid upon the bronze as we should lay gold leaf. It bears an inscription in cuneiform characters.

We are inclined to take these plates for models in restoring the columns of the Sippara tabernacle. There is nothing in the richness of this double covering of bronze and gold to cause surprise, as the inscription which covers part of the face and the whole of the back of the tablet is nothing but a long enumeration of the gifts made to the shrine of Samas by the reigning king and his predecessors.

This column has both capital and base. The former cannot have been of stone; a heavy block of basalt or even of limestone would be quite out of place in such a situation. As for the base it is hardly more than a repetition of the capital, and must have been of the same material; and that material was metal, the only substance that, when bent by the hand or beaten by the hammer, takes almost of its own motion those graceful curves that we call _volutes_.

We believe then in a bronze capital gilded. Under the volutes three rings, or _astragali_, may be seen. By their means the capital was allied to the shaft. The former consisted of two volutes between which appeared a vertical point resembling one of the angles of a triangle. The base is the same except that it has no point, and that the rings are in contact with the ground instead of with the shaft. These volutes may also be perceived on the table in front of the tabernacle, where they support the large disk by which the sun-god is symbolized.

Before quitting this tablet we may point to another difference between the column of Sippara and the shafts of the same material and proportions that we have encountered in the Assyrian bas-reliefs (Figs. 67, 68, and 69). In the latter the column rises above the canopy, which is attached to its shaft by brackets or nails. At Sippara the canopy rests upon the capital itself. The same arrangement may be found in Assyrian representations of these light structures; it will suffice to give one example taken from the gates of Balawat (Fig. 73). Here, too, the proportions of the columns prove them to have been of wood. They do not rise above the entablature. The architrave rests upon them, and, as in Greece and Egypt, its immediate weight is borne by abaci.

At present our aim is to prove that Assyria derived from Chaldaea the first idea of those tall and slender columns, the shafts of which were of wood sheathed in metal, and the capitals of the latter material. The graceful and original forms of Chaldaean art would have prepared the way for a columnar architecture in stone, had that material been forthcoming. Babylon, however, saw no such architecture. Her plastic genius never came under the influence that would have led her to import stone from abroad; and the grace and variety of the orders remained unknown to her builders. Like Egypt, Chaldaea gave lessons but received none. The forms of her art are to be explained by the inborn characteristics of her people and the natural conditions among which they found themselves placed.

In Assyria these conditions were rather different. The stone column was used there, but used in a timid and hesitating fashion. It never reached the freedom and independence that would have characterized it had it arisen naturally from the demands of construction.[258]

We only possess one column, or rather one fragment of a column, from Assyria, and that was found by M. Place at Khorsabad (Fig. 74). It is a block of carefully worked and carved limestone about forty inches high, and including both the capital and the upper part of the shaft in its single piece.

Such a combination could not long exist in architectonic systems in which the stone column played its true part. It is a survival from the use of wood. Another characteristic feature is the complete absence both from this fragment and from the columns in the sculptured reliefs of vertical lines or divisions of any kind, no trace of a fluted or polygonal shaft has been found.[259]

In writing the history of the Egyptian column we explained how the natural desire for as much light as possible led the architects of Beni-Hassan to transform the square pier, first into an octagonal prism, secondly into one with sixteen sides.[260] And to this progressive elaboration of the polyhedric shaft the flutes seemed to us to owe their origin. On the other hand, with tall and slender supports such as those afforded by palm trunks no necessity for reduction and for the shaving of angles would arise, and those flutes whose peculiar section is owing to the desire for a happy play of light and shadow, would never have been thought of. If we imitate a natural timber shaft in stone we have a smooth cylindrical column like that seen in Fig. 74.

Again, the shafts of the columns in the bas-reliefs, appear slender in comparison with those of Egypt, or with the doric shafts of the oldest Greek temples (see Fig. 41 and 42). In the fragmentary column from Khorsabad (Fig. 74) we have only a small part of the shaft but if we may judge from the feeble salience of the capital, its proportions must have been slender rather than heavy and massive.

Wherever the stone column has been used in buildings of mediocre size, the architect seems to have been driven by some optical necessity to make his angle columns more thickset than the other supports. Thus it was in Assyria, in the little temple at Kouyundjik (Fig. 42), where the outer columns are sensibly thicker than those between them; at Khorsabad (Fig. 41) the same result was obtained by rather different means. The edifice represented in this bas-relief bears no little similarity to certain Egyptian temples and to the Greek temple _in antis_.[261] The strength of these angular piers contrasts happily with the elegance of the columns between them. The latter are widely spaced, and, as in some Egyptian buildings, the architrave is but a horizontal continuation of the corner piers.

If we analyse the column and examine its three parts separately we shall be led to similar conclusions. The stone column no doubt bore the architrave upon its capital wherever it was used, and both in Chaldaea and Assyria we find the same arrangement in those light structures which we have classed as belonging to the architecture of the tent (Figs. 70 and 72). The origin of the forms employed in stone buildings is most clearly shewn by the frequent occurrence of the volute, a curvilinear element suggested by the use and peculiar properties of metal.

We find these volutes everywhere, upon shafts of stone and wood indifferently. We are tempted to think, when we examine the details of our Fig. 67, that the first idea of them was taken from the horns of the ibex or the wild goat. The column on the right of this cut bears a fir cone between its volutes, those on the left have small tablets on which are perched the very animals whose heads are armed with these horns.

However this may be, the form in question, like all others borrowed from nature by man, was soon modified and developed by art. The curve was prolonged and turned in upon itself. In one of the capitals of the little temple represented at Kouyundjik (Fig. 42), two pairs of these horns may be recognized one above the other (Fig. 75), but nowhere else do we find such an arrangement. Whether the column be of wood, as in the Sippara tablet (Fig. 71), or of stone, as in those buildings in which the weight and solidity of the entablature points decisively to that material (Figs. 41 and 42), we find a volute in universal use that differs but slightly in its general physiognomy from the familiar ornament of the Ionic capital.

Let us revert for a moment to the country house or palace of which we gave a general view in Fig. 39. We shall there find on the highest part of the building an open loggia supported by small columns many times repeated. We reproduce this part of the relief on a larger scale (Fig. 76), so that its details may be more clearly seen. A very slight familiarity with the graphic processes of the Assyrians is sufficient to inform the reader that the kind of trellis work with which the bed of the relief is covered is significant of a mountainous country. The palace rises on the banks of a river, which is indicated by the sinuous lines in the right lower corner. The buildings themselves--which are dominated here and there by the round tops of trees, planted, we may suppose, in the inner courts--stand upon mounds at various heights above the plain. The lowest of these look like isolated structures, such as the advanced works of a fortress. Next comes a line of towers, and then the artificial hill crowned by the palace properly speaking. The facade of the latter is flanked by tall and salient towers, across whose summits runs the open gallery to which we have referred.[262] This is supported by numerous columns which must by their general arrangement and spacing, have been of wood. The gallery consisted, in all probability, of a platform upheld by trunks of trees, either squared or left in the rough and surmounted by capitals sheathed in beaten bronze.

The volute is here quite simple in shape; elsewhere we find it doubled, as it were, so that four volutes occur between the astragali and the abacus (Figs. 42 and 77).[263] In other examples, again, it is elongated upwards until it takes a shape differing but little from the acanthus leaves of the Corinthian capital (Fig. 78).[264]

This volute is found all over Assyria and Chaldaea. It decorates the angles of the small temple represented on the stone known as Lord Aberdeen's Black Stone (Fig. 79). It occurs also on many of the ivories, but these, perhaps, are for the most part Phoenician. But in any case the Assyrians made constant use of it in the decoration of their furniture. In an ivory plaque, of which the British Museum possesses several examples, we find a man standing and grasping a lotus stem in his left hand (Fig. 80). This stem rests upon a support which bears a strong resemblance to the Sippara capital (Fig. 71); it has two volutes separated by a sharp point. The fondness of the Assyrians for these particular curves is also betrayed in that religious and symbolic device which has been sometimes called the _Tree of Life_. Some day, perhaps, the exact significance of this emblem may be explained, we are content to point out the variety and happy arrangement of the sinuous lines which surround and enframe the richly decorated pilaster that acts as its stem. We gave one specimen of this tree in Fig. 8; we now give another (Fig. 81). The astragali, the ibex horns and the volutes, may all be easily recognized here.

The only stone capital that has come down to us has, indeed, no volutes (Fig. 74) but it is characterized by the same taste for flowing lines and rounded forms. Its general section is that of a cyma reversa surmounted by a flattened torus, and its appearance that of a vase decorated with curvilinear and geometrical tracery. There is both originality and beauty in the contours of the profile and the arrangement of the tracery; the section as a whole is not unlike that of the inverted bell-shaped capitals at Karnak.[265]

This type must have been in frequent use, as we find it repeated in four bases found still in place in front of the palace of Sennacherib by Sir Henry Layard. They were of limestone and rested upon plinths and a pavement of the same material (Fig. 82).[266] In these the design of the ornament is a little more complicated than the festoon on the Khorsabad capital, but the principle is the same and both objects belong to one narrow class.

We again encounter this same base with its opposing curves in a curious monument discovered at Kouyundjik by Mr. George Smith.[267] This is a small and carefully executed model, in yellowstone, of a winged human-headed bull, supporting on his back a vase or base similar in design to that figured above. This little object must have served as a model for the carvers engaged upon the palace walls. We shall not here stop to examine the attributes and ornaments of the bull, they are well shown in our Figs. 83 and 84, and their types are known by many other examples. Our aim is to show that we have rightly described the uses to which it was put. These might have remained obscure but for the discovery, in the south-western palace at Nimroud, of a pair of winged sphinxes, calcined by fire but still in their places between two huge lions at one of the doors. Before their contours disappeared--and they rapidly crumbled away upon contact with the air--Layard had time to make a drawing of the one that had suffered least (Fig. 85). In his description he says that between the two wings was a sort of plateau, "intended to carry the base of a column."[268]

Surprised at not finding any trace of the column itself, he gives out another conjecture: that these sphinxes were altars upon which offerings to the gods, or presents to the king were placed. This hypothesis encounters many objections. We may easily account for the disappearance of the column by supposing it to have been of wood. If it was stone, it may have been carried off for use as a roller by the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages, before that part of the building to which it belonged was so completely engulfed and hidden by the ruins as it afterwards became.[269] Moreover we can point to a certain number of Assyrian altars, and their shapes are very different from this.

Finally, all our doubts are removed by a bas-relief from the palace of Assurbanipal, which is now in the British Museum (Fig. 86). The upper part of this carved picture is destroyed, but enough remains to show that it reproduced the facade of some richly decorated building. Four columns supported on the backs of so many lions, and two flat pilasters upheld in the same fashion by winged griffins, may readily be distinguished. That these griffins are not repeated on the left of the relief, is due perhaps to the haste or laziness of the sculptor. He may have thought he had done enough when he had shown once for all how these pedestals were composed. However this may have been, the lions in this relief play exactly the same _role_ as that attributed by us to the little model found by George Smith, and to the winged sphinx discovered by Sir Henry Layard before one of the doors at Nimroud. A base in the form of a vase or cushion is inserted between the back of the animal and the bottom of the shaft. In the pilaster--if we may believe that the artist took no liberties with fact--the junction is direct without the interposition of any ornamental motive.

In what M. Place calls the state doorways (_portes ornees_) of Khorsabad, the arches spring from the backs of the great mitred bulls that guard the entrance.[270] But, whether the columns rose from the backs of animals real or fantastic, they always seem to have had a base. Almost the only instance of its absence is in the open gallery in Fig. 76, and there, perhaps, they are hidden by a balustrade. Everywhere else we find a more or less ornamental member interposed between the shaft and the ground. At Khorsabad (Fig. 41) it is a simple torus (Fig. 87), at Kouyundjik (Fig. 42) it is a kind of cushion (Fig. 88), which we find represented in not a few of the bas-reliefs. The curves bear a distant resemblance to the volutes of a capital; above this base appears a ring or astragal, the origin of which may be easily guessed. The original timber column, the newly felled tree that was set up to support the roof of a tent or a house, must have been placed upon a block of stone or wood, to which it was joined, in some degree, by hollowing out the latter and setting the foot of the timber beam in the hollow, and then hiding the junction by those reed bands that, as travellers tell us, were still used for the same purpose in the last years of Babylon.[271] In time a ring of metal would take the place of the reeds, and when stone columns came to be used, a feature which was at first a necessity, or, at least, a useful expedient and a guarantee of duration and solidity, came at last to be simply an ornament.

* * * * *

We have now studied the Assyrian column as a whole and in detail. Most of its features seem to us to be survivals from the methods and processes of what we have called the architecture of the tent. The stone column had no place in those structures of crude brick of which the real national architecture of Mesopotamia consisted; it was not at home there; the surrounding conditions were unfavourable to its development. And yet, in time, it did, as we have seen, put in a rare appearance, at least in the case of that one of the two sister nations by which a sufficient supply of stone could be obtained, but even then it filled an ornamental and auxiliary rather than a vital function. Its remains are only to be found by patient search, and even in the bas-reliefs its representations are few and far between. By making diligent use of these two channels of information archaeology has succeeded in demonstrating the existence of the Assyrian column and describing its forms, but at the same time it has been compelled to recognize how narrow was its use, especially in the great structures on which Mesopotamian builders lavished all the resources of their art. In those it was employed mainly for the decoration of outbuildings, and it will be well to inquire how it acquitted itself of such a task.

* * * * *

The column seems to have been introduced in those gateways to which the Assyrian architect attached so much importance.[272] Read carefully Sir Henry Layard's description of his discovery of two sphinxes upon one of the facades of the south-western palace at Kouyundjik (Fig. 83); he gives no plan of the passage where he found them, but his narrative[273] suggests the existence of some kind of porch in front of the large opening. It must have been upheld by a pair of columns on the backs of the two sphinxes, and may have consisted of one of those wooden canopies which are so common in the modern architecture of the East.[274]

We are inclined to recognize a pent house of this kind, but of more complicated construction in the Kouyundjik bas-relief figured above (Fig. 83). No door is shown, but that, perhaps, is due to the sculptor's inability to suggest a void, or the two central perpendicular lines may have been joined by a horizontal one on the upper part of the relief, which is lost, and thus a doorway indicated; it would then have a couple of pilasters and a couple of columns on each flank.

In classic architecture we find nothing that can be compared with this curious notion of placing columns and pilasters on the backs of real or imaginary animals, on a lion, a winged bull, or a sphinx. In the modern East, however, it is still done. The throne of the Shah, at Teheran, is supported by columns which, in their turn, stand on the backs of lions. Singularly enough the same idea found favour with European architects in the middle ages, who often made use of it in the porches of their Christian cathedrals.[275] Hence, the old formula often found in judicial documents, _sedente inter leones_,--sitting between the lions--which, was used of episcopal judgments delivered in the church porch. In Italy, in buildings of the Lombardic style, these lions are to be found in great numbers and in this same situation. At Modena there is one in the south porch of the cathedral that strongly reminded me by its style and handling of the figures now existing in Cappadocia, of the lion at Euiuk, for example; in both instances it is extended on the ground with its fore paws laid upon some beast it has caught.[276] We could hardly name a motive more dear to Oriental art than this. Between the predilections of the modern East and those of Assyria and Chaldaea there are many such analogies. We shall not try to explain them; we shall be content with pointing them out as they present themselves.

Various facts observed by Sir Henry Layard and the late George Smith, show that the column was often employed to form covered alleys stretching from a door to the edge of the platform, doubtless to the landings on which the stepped or inclined approaches to the palace came to an end. Sir Henry Layard[277] found four bases of limestone (Fig. 82) on the north side of Sennacherib's palace. They were in couples, one couple close to the palace wall, the other in a line with it but some eight-and-twenty yards farther from the building. In each pair the distance from centre to centre was 9 feet 3 inches. With such a width the covered way may very well have been roofed with wood, a hypothesis which is supported by the discovery, at the same point, of the remains of crude brick walls. The columns would mark in all likelihood the two extremities of the passage. As for the other conjecture thrown out by the explorer, it seems to us to be much less probable. He asks whether these bases may not have been the pedestals of statues. Many Assyrian statues have been found together with their pedestals, and these are always simple in the extreme and without any kind of ornament. Moreover, the statues themselves were made rather to be set up against a wall than to pass an independent existence in an open courtyard.

Moreover, George Smith saw two of these bases in place at one of the entrances to the palace of Assurbanipal. Unfortunately he gives no drawing and his description is wanting in clearness, but he seems to have noticed the traces left by a cylindrical shaft on the upper surface of one base; his expression, "a flat circle to receive the column," evidently means that the latter was sunk into the substance of the base.[278] Here, no doubt was the end of a gallery, like that in front of Sennacherib's palace.

There must in all probability have been other remains of these columns besides those noticed by the English explorer, but at Khorsabad alone were the excavations superintended by a professional architect, there alone were they watched by the trained eye of a man capable of giving its true meaning and value to every detail of a ruinous building. At Nimroud, at Kouyundjik, at Nebbi-Younas, many interesting traces of ancient arrangements may have been obliterated in the course of the excavations without those who stood by having the least suspicion of their significance.

We might perhaps, if it were worth while, come upon further representations of columns on engraved stones, on ivories, and bronzes,[279] but upon such small objects forms are indicated in a very summary fashion, and, besides, they would be nothing more than curtailed repetitions of motives shown in more detail and upon a larger scale elsewhere. Our readers may fairly judge, from the examples we have placed before them, of the appearance of those columns of wood and metal, which the Chaldaeans used in the light and graceful tabernacles figured for us on the relief from Sippara, and of the more durable stone supports of the Assyrians. Long habit and an excessive respect for tradition, hindered the latter from turning the column to its fullest use. They stopped half way. They employed the feature with such timidity that we can point to nothing that can be called an Assyrian order. They produced nothing to compare with the rich and varied colonnades that we admired in the hypostyle halls of Egypt. And yet we cannot say that they showed any lack of originality or invention in their choice of decorations for the bases and capitals of their columns. Their favourite motive seems to have been the volute, to which, however, they gave an endless variety. They used it, no doubt, in many ways that now escape us, and by applying it now to this purpose and now to that, and sometimes with the happiest results, they accumulated an amount of experience as to the value of those graceful curves which was of great value to their successors. Who those successors were and how they carried to perfection a form which had its origin on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, will be shown in the course of our history.

NOTES:

[251] See above, p. 118, note 1.

[252] TAYLOR, _Notes on Abou-Sharein, and Tell-el-Lahm_, (_Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. xv. p. 404).--ED.

[253] This inscription is published in full in the _Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia_, vol. v. part ii.

[254] The names of these three deities are furnished by the inscription which runs beneath the canopy of the pavilion (see Fig. 71).

[255] The disk upon the table is enough by itself to betray the identity of the god, but as if to render assurance doubly sure, the artist has taken the trouble to cut on the bed of the relief under the three small figures, an inscription which has been thus translated by MM. OPPERT and MENANT: "Image of the Sun, the Great Lord, who dwells in the temple of Bit-para, in the city of Sippara."

[256] See our _History of Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. ii. chap. 1, Sec. 1.

[257] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 120-122, and vol. iii. plate 73.

[258] In this connection Sir H. LAYARD makes an observation to which the attention of the artist should be drawn. Whenever pictures of _Belshazzar's Feast_ and the _Last Night of Babylon_ are painted massive Egyptian pillars are introduced: nothing could be more contrary to the facts (_Discoveries_, p. 581).

[259] M. PLACE, indeed, encountered an octagonal column on the mound of Karamles, but the general character of the objects found in that excavation led him to conclude positively that the column in question was a relic from the Parthian or Sassanide epoch (_Ninive_, vol. ii. pp. 169, 170).

[260] _History of Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. ii. p. 95.

[261] _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 397, fig. 230; and vol. ii. p. 105, fig. 84.

[262] The profiles of the capitals in this gallery led Sir H. LAYARD to speak of "small pillars with capitals in the form of the Ionic volute" (_Discoveries_, p. 119) (?).

[263] A similar arrangement of volutes may be found on the rough columns engraved upon one of the ivory plaques found at Nimroud (LAYARD, _Monuments_, &c., first series, plate 88, fig. 3).

[264] We reproduce this capital from RAWLINSON'S _Five Great Monarchies_ (vol. i. p. 333); but we should have liked to be able to refer either to the relief in which it occurs, or to the original design which must have been made in the case of those slabs which had to be left at Nineveh. We have succeeded in finding neither the relief nor the drawing, so that we cannot guarantee the fidelity of the image.

[265] See _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. ii. p. 120, fig. 95.

[266] LAYARD forgets to give the height of this base: he is content to tell us that its greatest diameter is 2 feet 7 inches, and its smallest 11-1/2 inches. This latter measurement must have been taken at the junction with the shaft (_Discoveries_, p. 590).

[267] George SMITH, _Assyrian Discoveries_, sixth edition, 8vo. 1876, p. 431.

[268] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. i. p. 349, at a little distance the explorer found the bodies of two lions placed back to back, which seemed to have formed a pedestal of the same kind. Their heads were wanting, and the whole group had suffered so much from fire, that it was impossible either to carry it off or to make a satisfactory drawing from it (_ibid._ p. 351).

[269] This suggestion seems inconsistent with the state of the ruin at the spot where the discovery was made. Sir Henry Layard describes these sphinxes as buried in charcoal, and so calcined by the fire that they fell into minute fragments soon after exposure to the air. Anything carried on their backs must have fallen at the time of the conflagration, and, if a stone column, it would have been found under the charcoal.--ED.

[270] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii. plate 11.

[271] STRABO, xvi. 1, 5.

[272] Thomas has placed one of these porches in his restoration of Sargon's palace at Khorsabad. It is supported by two columns, and serves to mark one of the entrances to the harem. (PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii. plate 37 _bis_.)

[273] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. i. pp. 349, 350.

[274] Numerous examples are figured in COSTE and FLANDIN'S _Perse Moderne_, plates 3, 7, 9, 26, 27, 54, &c. They cast a wide shadow in front of the doorways, and sometimes run along the whole length of the facade. Some little support to M. Perrot's theory is afforded by a circumstance on which Layard dwells strongly in the passage referred to above, namely, that the sphinxes were found buried over their heads in charcoal, which may very well have been the remains of such a porch; its quantity seems too great for those of a ceiling.--ED.

[275] This coincidence struck Professor Rawlinson, who compares one of these Assyrian columns to a column in the porch of the Cathedral of Trent. He reproduces them both in his _Five Great Monarchies_, vol. i. p. 313.

[276] See PERROT and GUILLAUME, _Exploration archeologique de la Galatie_, vol. ii. pl. 57.

[277] _Discoveries_, p. 590.

[278] GEORGE SMITH, _Assyrian Discoveries_, p. 431.

[279] One curious example of this is figured in the work of M. CHIPIEZ, _Histoire critique de l'Origine et de la Formation des Ordres grecs_, p. 20. See also LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 444, where a bas-relief from the palace of Sennacherib is figured, upon which appears a coffer supported by a foot in the shape of a column, which ends in a regular volute.

Sec. 5.--_The Arch._

In the preceding pages we have determined the _role_ played by the column in Assyria, and have explained that in spite of the care and taste lavished upon some of its details, it never rose above the rank of a secondary and subordinate member. There is nothing, then, to surprise us in the fact that the Assyrian architect never placed his arches or vaults upon columns or piers; he seems never to have had a glimpse of the great possibilities such a procedure involved, a procedure from which upon the very soil of the East, his remote descendants were to evolve the architecture of the Byzantine church and the Arab mosque. His archivolts and the pendentives of his vaults always rest upon thick walls, and yet almost every variety of the simple arch or tunnel-vault are to be found among the ruins of his buildings.

* * * * *

Like all the other forms of Assyrian architecture the arch was invented in Chaldaea. The use of small sized materials must have led to its early discovery in that country. But the only arches now standing occur in the better preserved monuments of Assyria. On the other hand the tombs of Lower Chaldaea furnish more than one example of that false, corbelled or off-set vault, that we have already encountered in Egypt.[280] The chamber figured below is taken from the necropolis of Mugheir, formerly "Ur of the Chaldees." It is built of crude brick bound with mud. The vault is supported by walls sloping upwards and outwards like those of a modern tunnel (Fig. 89).[281]

Such a method of construction is only adapted to buildings of small dimensions; it could not be used for chambers with wide roofs, or where any great weight was to be upheld. The arches upon which, according to both Strabo and Diodorus,[282] the hanging gardens of Babylon were supported, must have been real centred arches. As to whether they were of pise, like those of Khorsabad, the Greek writers tell us nothing. From what we know of the habits of the Chaldaean builder we may conclude that they were true arches with voussoirs either of bricks burnt in the kiln, or so well dried that they were almost as hard and durable as those that had passed through the fire. This conjecture is confirmed by the fact that the structures in question lasted till the Macedonian conquest. Strabo and Diodorus speak of the great temple of Bel as so ruinous that its original height could not be guessed, even approximatively. It was otherwise with the hanging gardens. Of these they give the measurements, on plan, of the platforms and piers, together with their heights, and the heights of the arches. We should find it difficult to explain the preciseness of these measurements and their agreement one with another, unless we supposed that both writers had some exact authority, such as one of the companions or historians of Alexander, to refer to. The kings of Persia lived at Babylon for a part of the year. These princes may well have been indifferent to the preservation of the national fanes, they may even have hastened their destruction, as Xerxes is said to have done, in order to punish and humiliate the rebellious Babylonians. But in their own interest they would see that proper care was taken of those hanging gardens by which their stay in the city would be rendered more pleasant than it would otherwise have been, from whose lofty platforms their watchful eyes could roam over the city and the adjoining plain, and follow the course of the great river until it disappeared on the south amid groves of waving palm. After the rise of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, however, the gardens would rapidly hasten to decay, but they must have been solidly built in the first instance to last as long as they did. The pise vaults of the Ninevite palaces could never have stood so well. In spite of the layers of lead and bitumen which, as Diodorus tells us, were spread upon their terraces, the summer rains must in time have found their way into their walls and set up a process of disintegration which could have but one end. Real brick with good mortar could alone resist such influences, and those, no doubt, were the materials used in the Babylonian gardens. If their substructures should ever be found and laid open, we have little doubt that arches as carefully built as those of the Assyrian ruins will be brought to light.

The gateways of the town built by Sargon at the foot of his palace mound were roofed with semicircular vaults.[283] In order to study their construction more closely, M. Place demolished one of these arches piece by piece, the one numbered three on his plan.[284] It was already condemned to destruction by the necessity for carrying off its sculptures.

The total height from pavement to keystone, was twenty-four feet six inches, from the centre of the keystone to the springing of the arch itself was eight feet, the total width of the opening, measured at the feet of the caryatides, was fourteen feet four inches.

The bricks had not been burnt in a kiln but they had been subjected to a prolonged desiccation. The system of construction was as simple as possible. The perpendicular side walls passed into the vault without any preparation, and the arch when complete had no inward projection and no structural ornament but the inner faces of the carefully placed voussoirs; as all the bricks were of the same size and shape something more than their slightly trapezoidal form was required to keep them in place, and a softer clay was used to bind them together. With the addition of this rude cement each brick became a long and narrow wedge and determined the curve of the vault in which it was placed. Some idea of the appearance of this triple arch may be formed from the illustration we have compiled from M. Thomas's elevation of an alcove in one of the harem apartments at Khorsabad (Fig. 90). This vault is not in existence, but its component parts were found among the ruins of Sargon's palace.[285]