[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 11½ 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 façade. 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.