e now in the British Museum.

[309] BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, vol. v. pp. 53-55.

[310] BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, plates 149 and 150. See also LAYARD,
_Discoveries_, p. 131, and FERGUSSON, _History of Architecture_, vol. i. p.
185 (2nd edition).

[311] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches_, p. 175.

[312] M. Place offers a similar explanation of the engaged columns that
were found in many parts of the palace at Khorsabad (_Ninive_, vol. ii. p.
50). He has brought together in a single plate all the examples of
pilasters and half columns that he encountered in that edifice. Similar
attempts to imitate the characteristic features of a log house are found in
many of the most ancient Egyptian tombs. See _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol.
ii. p. 62 and fig. 37.

[313] See, for instance, in _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. i. figs. 123, 124,
201, and in vol. ii. pp. 55-64, and figs. 35-37 and 139.

[314] _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. i. p. 117.

[315] We here give a resume of M. PLACE'S observations on this point. He
made a careful study of these crenellations. _Ninive_, vol. ii. pp. 53-57.

[316] See M. PLACE'S diagrams, _Ninive_, vol. ii. p. 54.

[317] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. ii. p. 53.

[318] M. Perrot dismisses the evidence of those who believe in a palisade
origin of the Assyrian battlements in what is, perhaps, rather too summary
a fashion. The fact is that the great majority of the crenellated buildings
in the reliefs have triangular battlements, while the theory that they are
merely a hasty way of representing the stepped crenellations is to some
extent discredited by their frequent occurrence side by side with the
latter on the same relief. The Balawat gates, for instance, contain some
nine or ten examples of the triangular, and four or five of the stepped,
shape. In the series of sculptured slabs representing the siege of a city
by Assurnazirpal (10 to 15 in the Kouyundjik gallery at the British
Museum), there are examples of both forms, and in more than one instance
the triangular battlements are decorated with lines and rosettes--similar
in principle to those shown above in fig. 106--that can hardly be
reconciled with the notion that their form is the result of haste on the
part of the artist. In the Assyrian Basement Room in the British Museum
there is an interesting bas-relief representing Assyrian soldiers busy with
the demolition of a fortified wall, probably of some city just taken. The
air is thick with the mat