The sudden arrest of the work—one stone west of the entrance gate has been just laid down beside the place prepared for it, many stones have the sculpture incomplete, or merely indicated, we saw slabs upon which tentative sketches of horses had been made—might be accounted for by the fact that, in 623, the Emperor Heraclius, "the Roman eagle swooping magnificently in her dying throes," compelled Chosroes, after only, at the utmost, fourteen years of power in Syria, to recall his troops from Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, and though, for four years, the strife was fierce between Persian and Roman, the latter ultimately triumphed, and Chosroes died miserably in a dungeon. Barely ten years later the Romans were banished by the Saracens.
The learned Professor Brünnow has made the suggestion that this building originated with the Ghassanides, the Beni Jafn, who migrated from Yemen in the first Christian century and, having been made, by the Romans, wardens of the marches of the Empire, developed later into an important dynasty; submitting even to the civilising influences of Christianity, for, in 180, Amir I. founded a monastery in Haurân. Brünnow observed the same vandyke pattern, which, however, is in itself a somewhat elementary design, upon a water jar in Jaulan, a district considerably north of Mshatta, but where, he observes, the Ghassanides were at home. Although the jar was modern it was conceivably copied from an ancient design, as was, undoubtedly, another standing beside it. Moreover, he found a pattern of double vandykes—that is, of squares joined at the corners, upon a frieze in the same district. Other archæologists object that certain details cannot be older than Justinian, when Arabian kings held no sway near the Jordan, others doubt whether the Arabian kings ever extended their power into this unquestionably Roman province. To the mere layman it seems so probable that a row of vandykes was the first thing that Adam drew with a stick upon the sand, that he fails to find in it anything distinctive enough to form the basis of a historical or architectural theory.
The entrance, with its magnificent façade, is to the south, the sculpture, extending over 156 feet in the centre of the face, is broken by a gateway, and rises to the height of 18 feet. Behind this is a quadrangle, 170 yards square, at each angle a round bastion, and five others, semicircular, between them. On the south front alone there are six, the central gateway being flanked by two, boldly octagonal, and magnificently sculptured. The interior is best described as being divided into three portions, by parallel lines running north and south, the side ones about 46, the centre about 66, yards in width. The centre one has been divided into three sections; that nearest the gate, which is portioned into many chambers, was probably intended for a guard house; the second may have been an open space, with a fountain, and the third or northernmost was the palace itself. This consists of brick walls, resting on three courses of stone, the bricks, of somewhat curious form, resembling, it is said, those of no known building, except a ruined palace north-east of Damascus, described by Tyrwhitt Drake and Sir Richard Burton. They are like Roman tiles, but larger and thinner, 3 inches thick and about 18 inches square. The palace is divided into twenty-four rooms, the entrance hall being about 50 feet square, four others being perhaps two-thirds of that size. The entrance is through a wide doorway, with massive pilasters and elaborate capitals, with ornamentation, possibly, of Persian or Egyptian—certainly not of Greek—design. Architects have perplexed themselves over the problem, still unsolved, as to how the palace was lighted, as there is not a single window from without, and within only a few small round openings over the doors. Bliss, of Beirut, the distinguished American archæologist, conjectures that the large halls were unroofed, and that the smaller rooms opened upon them, a plan quite consistent with the Oriental conception of a house, originally derived from tents opening into a central space, and developing, first into rooms opening into a court, and, later, into the modern house, in which all rooms on both floors open into a leewan, or central apartment.
Naturally, all these observations were made later, for it was our privilege to remain for some nights within the palace walls, where, amid kind and hospitable friends, and in comfortable tents, bearing the familiar initials T. I. W. (Thames Iron Works), relics of the abandoned English railway, we found leisure to rest and to dream. Some of us found the spell of fairyland so strong that little else than dream seemed possible. Never, perhaps, so loud as here, did we "hear the East a-calling,"
"something which possessed
The darkness of the world, delight,
Life, anguish, death, immortal love
Ceasing not, mingled, unrepressed
Apart from space, withholding time,
But flattering the golden prime