t
has been given of their width or height. According to Diodorus, the wall
wherewith Ninus surrounded his capital was 100 feet high, and so broad
that three chariots might drive side by side along the top. Xenophon,
who passed close to the ruins on his retreat with the Ten Thousand,
calls the height 150 feet, and the width 50 feet. The actual greatest
height at present seems to be 46 feet; but the _debris_ at the foot of the
walls are so great, and the crumbled character of the walls themselves
is so evident, that the chief modern explorer inclines to regard the
computation of Diodorus as probably no exaggeration of the truth. The
width of the walls, in their crumbled condition, is from 100 to 200
feet.

The mode in which the walls were constructed seems to have been the
following. Up to a certain height--fifty feet, according to
Xenophon--they were composed of neatly-hewn blocks of a fossiliferous
limestone, smoothed and polished on the outside. Above this, the
material used was sun-dried brick. The stone masonry was certainly
ornamented along its top by a continuous series of battlements or
gradines in the same material [PLATE XXXVII., Fig. 2] and it is not
unlikely that a similar ornamentation crowned the upper brick structure.
The wall was pierced at irregular intervals by gates, above which rose
lofty towers; while towers, probably of lesser elevation, occurred also
in the portions of the wall intervening between one gate and another. A
gate in the north-western rampart has been cleared by means of
excavation, the form and construction of which will best appear from the
annexed ground-plan. [PLATE XXXVII., Fig. 3.] It seems to have consisted
of three gateways, whereof the inner and outer were ornamented with
colossal human-headed hulls and other figures, while the central one was
merely panelled with slabs of alabaster. Between the gateways were two
large chambers, 70 feet long by 23 feet wide, which were thus capable of
containing a considerable body of soldiers. The chambers and gateways
are supposed to have been arched over, like the castles' gates on the
bas-reliefs. The gates themselves have wholly disappeared: but the
debris which filled both the chambers and the passages contained so much
charcoal that it is thought they must have been made, not of bronze,
like the gates of Babylon, but of wood. The ground within the gate-way
was paved with large slabs of limestone, still bearing the marks of
chariot wheels