material, to sustain the
weight, and (still more to bear) the lateral thrust, of a vaulted roof;
and, secondly, that such a roof, if it had existed at all, must have
been made of baked brick or stone-crude brick being too weak for the
purpose--and when it fell must have left ample traces of itself within
the apartments, whereas, in none of them, though he searched, could he
find any such traces. On this latter point M. Botta and M. Flandin--both
eye witnesses--were at variance. M. Flandin believed that he had seen
such traces, not only in numerous broken fragments of burnt brick strewn
through all the chambers, but in occasional masses of brick-work
contained in some of them actual portions, as he thought, of the
original vaulting. M. Botta, however, observed--first, that the quantity
of baked brick within the chambers was quite insufficient for a vaulted
roof; and, secondly, that the position of the masses of brickwork
noticed by M. Flandin was always towards the sides, never towards the
centres of the apartments; a clear proof that they had fallen from the
upper part of the walls above the sculptures, and not from a ceiling
covering the whole room. He further observed that the quantity of
charred wood and charcoal within the chambers, and the calcined
appearance of all the slabs, were phenomena incompatible with any other
theory than that of the destruction of the palace by the conflagration
of a roof mainly of wood.

To these arguments of M. Botta may be added another from the
improbability of the Assyrians being sufficiently advanced in
architectural science to be able to construct an arch of the width
necessary to cover some of the chambers. The principle of the arch was,
indeed, as will be hereafter shown, well known to the Assyrians, but
hitherto we possess no proof that they were capable of applying it on a
large scale. The widest arch which has been found in any of the
buildings is that of the Khorsabad town-gate uncovered by M. Place,
which spans a space of (at most) fourteen or fifteen feet. But the great
halls of the Assyrian palaces have a width of twenty-five, thirty, and
even forty feet. It is at any rate uncertain whether the constructive
skill of their architects could have grappled successfully with the
difficulty of throwing a vault over so wide an interval as even the
least of these.

M. Botta, after objecting, certainly with great force, to the theory of
M. Flandin, proceeded to suggest a theory o