Fig. 33.—Pavement from Khoyunjik.
Great difference of opinion exists as to the manner in which the various apartments of the palace were lighted. M. Place suggests that the rooms were all vaulted on the inside, and the spandrels filled in with earth afterwards to form perfectly flat roofs, and he gives a restoration of the building on such an arrangement; but if he is correct, it is impossible to see how any light at all can have penetrated into the interior of many of the apartments, and as these apartments are decorated with a profusion of paintings it is very difficult to believe that artificial light alone was used in them. M. Place thinks, however, that in some cylindrical terra-cotta vessels which he found he has hit upon a species of skylight which passed completely through the vault over the rooms, and thus admitted the light from above. This, however, can hardly be considered as settled yet. Mr. Fergusson, on the other hand, suggests that the thick main walls were carried to a height of about 18 or 19 ft., and that above this were two rows of dwarf columns, one on the inner and the other on the outer edge of the wall, these columns supporting a flat terrace roof, and the walls thus forming galleries all round the apartments. Then to cover the space occupied by the apartments themselves it is necessary to assume the existence of rows of columns, the capitals of which were at the same level as those of the dwarf columns on the walls. Where one apartment is surrounded on all sides by others, the roof over it may have been carried up to a higher level, forming a sort of clerestory. This theory no doubt accounts for many things which are very hard to explain otherwise, and derives very strong support from the analogy of Persepolis, where slender stone columns exist. Such columns of cedar wood would add enormously to the magnificence and grandeur of the building; and if, as seems likely, most of these Assyrian palaces were destroyed by fire, the absence of the remains of columns offers no difficulty. On the other hand, in many parts of the palace of Khorsabad no trace of fire remains, and yet here no suggestion of detached columns can be found, and, moreover, it is extremely difficult to arrange columns symmetrically in the various apartments so that doorways are not interfered with. There is also another difficulty, viz. that if the building called the Harem at Khorsabad was built in this way, the apartments would have been open to the view of any one ascending the lofty building called the observatory. It is quite possible that further explorations may tend to elucidate this difficult question of roofing, but at present all that can be said is that none of the theories that have been put forward is wholly satisfactory.
As no columns at all exist, we cannot say what capitals were employed, but it is probable that those of Persepolis, which will be shortly described, were copied from an earlier wooden form, which may have been that used by the Assyrian builders. There is, however, capping the terrace on which the temple was erected at Khorsabad, a good example of an Assyrian cornice, which is very similar indeed to the forms found in Egypt, and some of the sculptured bas-reliefs which have been discovered depict rude copies of Assyrian buildings drawn by the people themselves; and it is most interesting to notice that just as we found in the Egyptian style the proto-Doric column, so in the Assyrian we find the proto-Ionic (Figs. [34], [34a]), and possibly also the proto-Corinthian (Fig. [34b]).
Fig. 34.—Proto-Ionic Column.
Fig. 34a.—Proto-Ionic Capital from Assyrian Sculpture.