elow them. In his restoration, Thomas makes the fifth vermilion, the
sixth a silver grey, while he gilds the seventh and last.[344] In this
choice and arrangement of tints there is nothing arbitrary. It is founded
on the description given by Herodotus of Ecbatana, the capital of the
Medes. "The Medes ... built the city now called Agbatana, the walls of
which are of great size and strength, rising in circles one within the
other. The plan of the place is, that each of the walls should out-top the
one beyond it by the battlements. The nature of the ground, which is a
gentle hill, favours this arrangement in some degree, but it was mainly
effected by art. The number of the circles is seven, the royal palace and
the treasuries standing within the last. The circuit of the outer wall is
very nearly the same with that of Athens. Of this wall the battlements are
white, of the next black, of the third scarlet, of the fourth blue, of the
fifth orange; all these are coloured with paint. The two last have their
battlements coated respectively with silver and gold."[345]

Between the series of colours found upon the ruin in question and the list
here given by Herodotus there is, so far as they go, an identity which
cannot be due to chance. The Medes and Persians invented nothing; their
whole art was no more than an eastern offshoot from that of Mesopotamia. It
was in Chaldaea that the number seven first received an exceptional and
quasi sacred character. Our week of seven days is a result from the early
worship of the five great planets and of the sun and moon. There were also
the seven colours of the rainbow. From such indications as these the early
architects of Assyria must have determined the number of stages to be given
to a religious building; they also regulated the order of the colours, each
one of which was consecrated by tradition to one of those great heavenly
bodies. We can easily understand how the silver white of the penultimate
stage was chosen to symbolize the moon, while the glory of the gold upon
the upper story recalled that of the noonday sun.

Thus must we figure the tower with seven stages which Nebuchadnezzar
boasted of having restored in more than its early magnificence. These
arrangements of coloured bands had a double value. Each tint had a symbolic
and traditional signification of its own, and the series formed by the
seven was, so to speak, a phrase in the national theology, an appeal to the
imagination, a