The first difficulty which presented itself here was one of those regarded as most fatal to the vaulting theory, namely, the width of the chambers. Where flat timber roofs prevail in the East, their span seems never to exceed twenty-five feet. The ordinary chambers in the Assyrian palaces might, undoubtedly, therefore, have been roofed in this way, by a series of horizontal beans laid across them from side to side, with the ends resting upon the tops of the side walls. But the great halls seemed too wide to have borne such a roofing without supports. Accordingly, M. Botts suggested that in the greater apartments a single or a double row of pillars ran down the middle, reaching to the roof and sustaining it. His theory was afterwards warmly embraced by Mr. Fergusson, who endeavored to point out the exact position of the pillars in the three great halls of Sargon at Khorsabad. It seems, however, a strong and almost a fatal objection to this theory, that no bases of pillars have been found within the apartments, nor any marks on the brick floors of such bases or of the pressure of the pillars. M. Botta states that he made a careful search for bases, or for marks of pillars, on the pavement of the north-east hall (No. VIII.) at Khorsabad, but that he entirely failed to discover any. This negative evidence is the more noticeable as stone pillar-bases have been found in wide doorways, where they would have been less necessary than in the chambers, as pillars in doorways could have had but little weight to sustain.
M. Botta and Mr. Fergusson, who both suppose that in an Assyrian palace the entire edifice was roofed in, and only the courts left open to the sky, suggest two very different modes by which the buildings may have been lighted. M. Botta brings light in from the roof by means of wooden louvres, such as are still employed for the purpose in Armenia and parts of India, whereof he gives the representation which is reproduced. [PLATE XLVII., Fig. 7.] Mr. Fergusson introduces light from the sides, by supposing that the roof did not rest directly on the walls, but on rows of wooden pillars placed along the edge of the walls both internally towards the apartments and externally towards the outer air. The only ground for this supposition, which is of a very startling character, seems to be the occurrence in a single bas-relief, representing a city in Armenia, of what is regarded as a similar arrangement. But it must be noted that the lower portion of the building, represented opposite, bears no resemblance at all to the same part of an Assyrian palace, since in it perpendicular lines prevail, whereas, in the Assyrian palaces, the lower hues were almost wholly horizontal; and that it is not even Certain that the upper portion, where the pillars occur, is an arrangement for admitting light, since it may be merely an ornamentation.
The difficulties attaching to every theory of roofing and lighting which places the whole of an Assyrian palace under covert, has led some to suggest that the system actually adopted in the larger apartments was that hypoethral one which is generally believed to have prevailed in the Greek temples, and which was undoubtedly followed in the ordinary Roman house. Mr. Layard was the first to post forward the view that the larger halls, at any rate, were uncovered, a projecting ledge, sufficiently wide to afford shelter and shade, being carried round the four sides of the apartment while the centre remained open to the sky. The objections taken to this view are—first, that far too much heat and light would thereby have been admitted into the palace; secondly, that in the rainy season far too much rain would have come in for comfort; and, thirdly, that the pavement of the halls, being mere sun-dried brick, would, under such circumstances, have been turned into mud. If these objections are not removed, they would be, at any rate, greatly lessened by supposing the roofing to have extended to two-thirds or three-fourths of the apartment, and the opening to have been comparatively narrow. We may also suppose that on very bright and on very rainy days carpets or other awnings were stretched across the opening, which furnished a tolerable defence against the weather.
On the whole, our choice seems to lie—so far as the great halls are concerned—between this theory of the mode in which they were roofed and lighted, and a supposition from which archaeologists have hitherto shrunk, namely, that they were actually spanned from side to side by beams. If we remember that the Assyrians did not content themselves with the woods produced in their own country, but habitually cut timber in the forests of distant regions, as, for instance, of Amanus, Hermon, and Lebanon, which they conveyed to Nineveh, we shall perhaps not think it impassible that they may have been able to accomplish the feat of roofing in this simple fashion even chambers of thirteen or fourteen yards in width. Mr. Layard observes that rooms of almost equal width with the Assyrian halls are to this day covered in with beams laid horizontally from side to side in many parts of Mesopotamia, although the only timber used is that furnished by the indigenous palms and poplars. May not more have been accomplished in this way by the Assyrain architects, who had at their disposal the lofty firs and cedars of the above mentioned regions?
If the halls were roofed in this way, they may have been lighted by louvres; or the upper portion of the walls, which is now destroyed, may have been pierced by windows, which are of frequent occurrence, and seem generally to be some-what high placed, in the representations of buildings upon the sculptures. [PLATE XLVII Fig. 3.]
It might have been expected that the difficulties with respect to Assyrian roofing and lighting which have necessitated this long discussion, would have received illustration, or even solution, from the forms of buildings which occur so frequently on the bas-reliefs. But this is not found to be the actual result. The forms are rarely Assyrian, since they occur commonly in the sculptures which represent the foreign campaigns of the kings; and they have the appearance of being to a great extent conventional, being nearly the same, whatever country is the object of attack. In the few cases where there is ground for regarding the building as native and not foreign, it is never palatial, but belongs either to sacred or to domestic architecture. Thus the monumental representations of Assyrian buildings which have come down to us, throw little or no light on the construction of their palaces. As, however, they have an interest of their own, and will serve to illustrate in some degree the domestic and sacred architecture of the people, some of the most remarkable of them will be here introduced.
