erved
as a background and support to other colours. No Chaldaean interiors have
come down to us, while the exteriors are in such bad preservation that we
can hardly form any true judgment of the colours and designs with which
they were once adorned. But in the case of Assyria we know pretty well how
the decorator understood his business, and it is probable that, like his
colleagues, the architect and the sculptor, he was content to perpetuate
the traditions of his Chaldaean masters.

In certain cases the decorator makes use of wide unbroken tints. This is
the simplest way of using colour. In the palace of Sargon, for instance,
wherever the sculptured slabs are absent we find a plinth painted black in
distemper. These plinths are from two to nearly four feet high, according
to the extent of the courts or chambers in which they occur. The object of
such a dado is clear; it was to protect the lower part of the wall, if not
against deliberate violence, at least against dirt. A white stucco in such
a position would soon have been disfigured by spots and various marks which
would be invisible on a black background. Moreover, the contrast between
the plinth and the white wall above it must have had a certain decorative
effect.[342]

This coloured dado is to be found even in places to which it seems quite
unsuited. At Khorsabad, for instance, it runs across the foot of those
semicircular pilasters we noticed in one of the harem chambers (Fig. 101).
These pilasters stand upon a plinth between three and four feet high, so
that any contact with the dirt of the floor need not have been feared. The
existence of the dado in such a position is to be accounted for by
supposing that the decorator considered it as the regular ornament for the
bottom of a wall. It is more difficult to understand why the alcoves
believed by MM. Place and Thomas to have been bedrooms were in each case
painted with this same band of black.[343]

The most curious example of the employment of unbroken tints to which we
can point, is in the case of M. Place's observatory. The stages of that
building were each about twenty feet high, and each was painted a colour of
its own; the first was white, the second black, the third red, the fourth
white. When the excavations were made, these tints were still easily
visible. The building seems originally to have had seven stages, and the
three upper ones must certainly have been coloured on the same principle as
those b