[25] Place, Ninive, vol. iii. plate 25, fig. 4.
[26] See the Book of Esther.
[27] This room corresponds to the apartment in the richer houses of Mossoul and Bagdad, that goes by the name of iwan or pichkaneh. It is a kind of summer hall, open on one side (Oppert, Expédition scientifique, vol. i. p. 90).
[28] A minute description of all these offices will be found in Place (Ninive, vol. iii. pp. 76–105).
[29] Place, Ninive, vol. i. pp. 99 and 274.
[30] Oppert, Les Inscriptions des Sargonides, p. 52.
[31] So far as I know, Place alone has given this problem a moment’s attention (Ninive, vol. i. p. 279), but nothing could be more improbable than the hypothesis by which he attempts to solve it. He suggests that one of the drains of which we have already spoken may have been a conduit or siphon in communication with some subterranean reservoir and provided with pumping apparatus at its summit. We have no evidence whatever that the principle of the suction-pump was known to the Assyrians.
[32] Strabo (xvi. i. 5) pretends that the hanging gardens of Babylon were watered by means of the screw of Archimedes (κοχλίας or κόχλος). If it be true that this invention was known to the Chaldæans, it may also have been used to raise water to the platforms of the Assyrian palaces. The discovery, however, is usually attributed to the Sicilian mathematician, and Strabo’s evidence is too isolated and too recent to allow us to accept it without question.
[33] Place, Ninive, vol. ii. p. 197.
[34] Loftus, Travels and Researches, chapter xvi. and especially page 179.