allic bands covered with _repousse_ reliefs and
bearing the name of Shalmaneser III. (895-825). The site of this discovery
was Balawat, an artificial mound about fifteen miles to the east of
Mossoul.[303] As soon as these bands had been examined in London by
competent archaeologists, they were recognized as having belonged to the
leaves of a wooden door, which must have been nearly twenty-seven feet high
and about three inches thick. This latter dimension has been deduced from
the length of the nails used to keep the bands in place. At one end these
bands were bent with the hammer round the pivot to which each half of the
door was attached. These pivots, judging from the bronze feet into which
they were "stepped," were about twelve inches in diameter.

It is easy to see from their shape how these feet were fixed and how they
did their work (Fig. 97). The point of the cone was let into a hollow
socket prepared for it in a block cut from the hardest stone that could be
found. Such a material would resist friction better and take a higher
polish than brick, so that it was at once more durable and less holding.
Sockets of flint, basalt, trachyte, and other volcanic rocks have been
found in great numbers both in Assyria and Chaldaea.[304] Instances of the
use of brick in this situation are not wanting,[305] however, and now and
then the greenish marks left by the prolonged contact of metal have been
discovered in the hollows of these sockets.[306]

[Illustration: FIG. 97.--Bronze foot from the Balawat gates and its
socket.[307] British Museum.]

More than one method was in use for fixing the pivots of the doors and
enabling them to turn easily. Sir Henry Layard brought from Nimroud four
heavy bronze rings which must have been used to supplement these hollow
sockets.[308] In one way or another bronze occupied a very important place
in the door architecture of the Assyrians. In those cases where it neither
supplied the door-case nor ornamented its leaves, it was at least used to
fix the latter and to enable them to turn.

In Assyrian facades doors had much greater importance than in those
architectural styles in which walls are broken up by numerous openings.
Their great size, their rich and varied ornamentation, the important
figures in high relief with which the walls about them were adorned, the
solemn tints of bronze lighted up here and there by the glory of gold, the
lively colours of the enamelled bricks that formed th