orth inventive powers and a refined taste of which we catch a
few glimpses in the bas-reliefs. It gave an opportunity for the employment
of forms and motives which could not be used at all, or used in a very
restricted fashion, in more solid structures, such as palaces and temples.
Of all these that which most closely results from the necessities of wooden
or metal construction is the column, and we therefore find that it is in
this tent-architecture that it takes on the characteristics that
distinguish it from the Egyptian column and give it an originality of its
own.

NOTES:

[164] The remains of stone walls are at least so rare in Lower Mesopotamia
that we may disregard their existence. In my researches I have only found
mention of a single example. At Abou-Sharein TAYLOR found a building in
which an upper story was supported by a mass of crude brick faced with
blocks of dressed sandstone. The stones of the lower courses were held
together by mortar, those of the upper ones by bitumen. We have no
information as to the "bond" or the size of stones used (_Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. xv. p. 408). The materials for this revetment
must have been quarried in one of those rocky hills--islands, perhaps,
formerly--with which Lower Chaldaea is sparsely studded. TAYLOR mentions one
seven miles west of Mugheir, in the desert that stretches away towards
Arabia from the right bank of the Euphrates (_Journal_, &c. vol. xv. p.
460).

[165] We shall here give a _resume_ of M. Place's observations (_Ninive et
l'Assyrie_, vol. i. pp. 31-34).

[166] PLACE, _Ninive_, &c. vol. i. p.

[167] _Ibid._ p. 33.

[168] In every country in which buildings have been surmounted by flat
roofs, this precaution has been taken--"When thou buildest a new house,
then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood
upon thine house, if any man fall from thence." (_Deuteronomy_ xxii. 8).
See also _Les Monuments en Chaldee, en Assyrie et a Babylon, d'apres les
recentes decouvertes archeologique, avec neuf planches lithographies_, 8vo,
by H. CAVANIOL, published in 1870 by Durand et Pedone-Lauriel. It contains
a very good _resume_, especially in the matter of architecture, of those
labours of French and English explorers to which we owe our knowledge of
Chaldaea and Assyria.

[169] PLACE, _Ninive et l'Assyrie_, vol i. p. 64.

[170] XENOPHON, _Anabasis_, iii. 4, 7-11. The identity of Larissa and
Mespila has been