was not a survival from a previous
form, it was a natural consequence from the fundamental principle of
Assyrian construction.

It has been thought that some of the buildings represented on the
bas-reliefs have triangular denticulation in place of the battlements
figured on the last page;[317] and there are, in fact, instances in the
reliefs of walls denticulated like a palisade (see Fig. 38), but these must
not, we think, be taken literally. In most cases the chisel has been at the
trouble to show the real shapes of the battlements (Fig. 42), but in some
instances, as in this, it has been content to suggest them by a series of
zig-zags. Here and there we may point out a picture in stone which forms a
transition between the two shapes, in Fig. 41 for example. Such an
abbreviation explains itself. It is, in fact, nothing more than an
imitation of the real appearance of the rectangular battlements when seen
from a distance.[318]

The architect was not content with the mere play of light and shade
afforded by these battlements. He gave them a slight salience over the
facade and a polychromatic decoration. About three feet below the base of
the crenellations the face of the wall was brought forward an inch or two,
so that the battlements themselves, and some eight or ten courses of bricks
below them, overhung the facade by that distance, forming a kind of
rudimentary cornice (see Fig. 106). In very elaborate buildings enamelled
bricks were inserted between the battlements and this cornice. These were
decorated with white rosettes of different sizes upon a blue ground. The
explorers of Khorsabad encountered numberless fragments of these bricks and
some whole ones in the heaps of rubbish at the foot of the external walls.
Their situation proved that they had come from the top of the walls, and on
the whole we may accept the restoration of M. Thomas, which we borrow from
the work of M. Place, as sufficiently justified (Fig. 106).[319]

This method of crowning a wall may seem poor when compared to the Greek
cornice, or even to that of Egypt, but in view of the materials with which
he had to work, it does honour to the architect. The long band of shadow
near the summit of the facade, the bands of brilliantly coloured ornament
above it, and the rich play of light and shade among the battlements, the
whole relieved against the brilliant blue of an Eastern sky, must have had
a fine effect. The uniformity from which it suffered was