a defect common to
Mesopotamian architecture as a whole, and one inseparable from the absence
or comparative disuse of stone. But in the details we have been studying we
find yet another illustration of the skill with which these people
corrected, if we may so phrase it, the vices of matter, and by a frank use
of their materials and insistence upon those horizontal and perpendicular
lines which they were best fitted to give, evolved from it an architecture
that proved them to have possessed a real genius for art.

[Illustration: FIG. 106.--Battlements of Sargon's palace at Khorsabad;
compiled from Place.]

The Assyrians seem to have been so pleased with these crenellations that
they placed them upon such small things as steles and altars. In one of the
Kouyundjik reliefs (Fig. 42) there is a small object--a pavilion or altar,
its exact character is not very clearly shown--which is thus crowned.
Another example is to be found in a bas-relief from Khorsabad (Fig. 107).

[Illustration: FIG. 107.--Altar; from Rawlinson.]

We are thus brought to the subject of altars. These are sufficiently varied
in form. In the Kouyundjik bas-relief (Fig. 42) we find those shapes at the
four angles which were copied by the peoples of the Mediterranean, and led
to the expression, "the horns of the altar." In the Khorsabad relief (Fig.
107) the salience of these horns is less marked. On the other hand, the die
or dado below them is fluted. Another altar brought from Khorsabad to the
Louvre is quite different in shape (Fig. 108). It is triangular on plan.
Above a plinth with a gentle salience rises the altar itself, supported at
each angle by the paw of a lion. The table is circular, and decorated
round the edge with cuneiform characters.

[Illustration: FIG. 108.--Altar in the Louvre. Height 32 inches.[320]]

A third type is to be found in an altar from Nimroud, now in the British
Museum (Fig. 109); it dates from the reign of Rammanu-nirari, who appears
to have lived in the first half of the eighth century before our era.[321]
The rolls at each end of this altar are very curious and seem to be the
prototype of a form with which the Graeco-Roman sarcophagi have made us
familiar.

[Illustration: FIG. 109.--Altar in the British Museum. Height 22 inches,
length at base 22 inches.]

The various kinds of steles are also very interesting. The most remarkable
of all is one discovered at Khorsabad by M. Place (Fig. 100). The shaft is
compose