[395] Layard, Discoveries, p. 281.
[396] Prisse d'Avennes, Histoire de l'Art égyptien d'après les Monuments (2 vols folio): see the plates entitled Couronnements et Frises fleuronnés.
§ 8.—On the Orientation of Buildings and Foundation Ceremonies.
The inhabitants of Mesopotamia were so much impressed by celestial phenomena, and believed so firmly in the influence of the stars over human destiny, that they were sure to establish some connection between those heavenly bodies and the arrangement of their edifices. All the buildings of Chaldæa and Assyria are orientated; the principle is everywhere observed, but it is not always understood in the same fashion.
Fig. 143.—Plan of a temple at Mugheir; from Loftus.
Mesopotamian buildings were always rectangular and often square on plan, and it is sometimes the angles and sometimes the centres of each face that are directed to the four cardinal points. It will easily be understood that the former system was generally preferred. The façades were of such extent that their direction to a certain point of the horizon was not evident, while salient angles, on the other hand, had all the precision of an astronomical calculation; and this the earliest architects of the Chaldees thoroughly understood. Some of the buildings examined by Loftus and Taylor on the lower Euphrates may have been restored, more or less, by Nebuchadnezzar and his successors, but it is generally acknowledged that the lower and less easily injured parts of most of these buildings date from the very beginnings of that civilization, and were constructed by the princes of the early empire. Now both at Warka and at Mugheir one corner of a building is always turned towards the true north.[397] An instance of this may be given in the little building at Mugheir in which the lower parts of a temple have been recognized ([Fig. 143]). The same arrangement is to be found in the palace excavated by M. de Sarzec at Tello.[398]
