eems to us to be much less
probable. He asks whether these bases may not have been the pedestals of
statues. Many Assyrian statues have been found together with their
pedestals, and these are always simple in the extreme and without any kind
of ornament. Moreover, the statues themselves were made rather to be set up
against a wall than to pass an independent existence in an open courtyard.

Moreover, George Smith saw two of these bases in place at one of the
entrances to the palace of Assurbanipal. Unfortunately he gives no drawing
and his description is wanting in clearness, but he seems to have noticed
the traces left by a cylindrical shaft on the upper surface of one base;
his expression, "a flat circle to receive the column," evidently means that
the latter was sunk into the substance of the base.[278] Here, no doubt was
the end of a gallery, like that in front of Sennacherib's palace.

There must in all probability have been other remains of these columns
besides those noticed by the English explorer, but at Khorsabad alone were
the excavations superintended by a professional architect, there alone were
they watched by the trained eye of a man capable of giving its true meaning
and value to every detail of a ruinous building. At Nimroud, at Kouyundjik,
at Nebbi-Younas, many interesting traces of ancient arrangements may have
been obliterated in the course of the excavations without those who stood
by having the least suspicion of their significance.

We might perhaps, if it were worth while, come upon further representations
of columns on engraved stones, on ivories, and bronzes,[279] but upon such
small objects forms are indicated in a very summary fashion, and, besides,
they would be nothing more than curtailed repetitions of motives shown in
more detail and upon a larger scale elsewhere. Our readers may fairly
judge, from the examples we have placed before them, of the appearance of
those columns of wood and metal, which the Chaldaeans used in the light and
graceful tabernacles figured for us on the relief from Sippara, and of the
more durable stone supports of the Assyrians. Long habit and an excessive
respect for tradition, hindered the latter from turning the column to its
fullest use. They stopped half way. They employed the feature with such
timidity that we can point to nothing that can be called an Assyrian order.
They produced nothing to compare with the rich and varied colonnades that
we admired in the