to prove that Assyria derived from Chaldaea the first
idea of those tall and slender columns, the shafts of which were of wood
sheathed in metal, and the capitals of the latter material. The graceful
and original forms of Chaldaean art would have prepared the way for a
columnar architecture in stone, had that material been forthcoming.
Babylon, however, saw no such architecture. Her plastic genius never came
under the influence that would have led her to import stone from abroad;
and the grace and variety of the orders remained unknown to her builders.
Like Egypt, Chaldaea gave lessons but received none. The forms of her art
are to be explained by the inborn characteristics of her people and the
natural conditions among which they found themselves placed.

In Assyria these conditions were rather different. The stone column was
used there, but used in a timid and hesitating fashion. It never reached
the freedom and independence that would have characterized it had it arisen
naturally from the demands of construction.[258]

[Illustration: FIG. 74.--Assyrian capital, in perspective; compiled from
Place.]

We only possess one column, or rather one fragment of a column, from
Assyria, and that was found by M. Place at Khorsabad (Fig. 74). It is a
block of carefully worked and carved limestone about forty inches high, and
including both the capital and the upper part of the shaft in its single
piece.

Such a combination could not long exist in architectonic systems in which
the stone column played its true part. It is a survival from the use of
wood. Another characteristic feature is the complete absence both from this
fragment and from the columns in the sculptured reliefs of vertical lines
or divisions of any kind, no trace of a fluted or polygonal shaft has been
found.[259]

In writing the history of the Egyptian column we explained how the natural
desire for as much light as possible led the architects of Beni-Hassan to
transform the square pier, first into an octagonal prism, secondly into one
with sixteen sides.[260] And to this progressive elaboration of the
polyhedric shaft the flutes seemed to us to owe their origin. On the other
hand, with tall and slender supports such as those afforded by palm trunks
no necessity for reduction and for the shaving of angles would arise, and
those flutes whose peculiar section is owing to the desire for a happy play
of light and shadow, would never have been thought of. If we imi