[161] The town represented on the sculptured slab here reproduced is not Assyrian but Phœnician; it affords data, however, which may be legitimately used in the restoration of the upper part of an Assyrian palace. We can hardly believe that the Mesopotamian artists, in illustrating the wars of the Assyrian kings, copied servilely the real features of the conquered towns. They had no sketches by "special artists" to guide their chisels. They were told that a successful campaign had been fought in the marshes of the lower Euphrates, or in some country covered with forests of date trees, and these they had no difficulty in representing because they had examples before their eyes; so too, when buildings were in question, we may fairly conclude that they borrowed their motives from the architecture with which they were familiar.
[162] See the History of Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 77-84.
[163] Layard, Discoveries, p. 112; Geo. Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, p. 341.
As might have been expected nothing that can be called a structure of dressed stone has been discovered in Chaldæa;[164] in Assyria alone have some examples been found. Of these the most interesting, and the most carefully studied and described are the walls of Sargon's palace at Khorsabad.
Even there stone was only employed to case the walls in which the mound was inclosed—a cuirass of large blocks carefully dressed and fixed seemed to give solidity to the mass, and at the same time we know by the arrangement of the blocks that the outward appearance of the wall was by no means lost sight of. All those of a single course were of one height but of different depths and widths, and the arrangement followed a regular order like that shown in Fig. 46. Their external face was carefully dressed.[165]
| Fig. 44.—Plan of angle, Khorsabad; from Place. | Fig. 45.—Section of wall through AB in Fig. 44; from Place. |
The courses consist, on plan, of "stretchers" and "headers." We borrow from Place the plan of an angle ([Fig. 44]), a section ([Fig. 45]), and an elevation ([Fig. 46]). Courses are always horizontal and joints properly bound. The freestone blocks at the foot of the wall are very large. The stretchers are six feet eight inches thick, the same wide, and nine feet long. They weigh about twenty-three tons. It is astonishing to find the Assyrians, who were very rapid builders, choosing such heavy and unmanageable materials.
The supporting wall became gradually thinner towards the top, each course being slightly set back from the one below it on the inner face (see [Fig. 45]). This arrangement is general with these retaining-walls. The average diminution is from seven to ten feet at the base, to from three to six at the top.