nd a confession of piety. At the same time the chief
divisions of the monument were strongly marked, and the eye was attracted
to their number and significance, while the building as a whole was more
imposing and majestic than if its colour had been a uniform white from base
to summit. The colours must have been frequently renewed.

In the interior, where the temperature was not subject to violent changes,
where there was neither rain nor scorching sun, the architect made use of
painting in distemper to reinforce the decoration in his more luxurious
chambers. Unfortunately these frescoes are now represented by nothing but a
few fragments. In the course of the excavations numerous instances of their
use were encountered, but in almost every case exposure to the air was
rapidly destructive of their tints, and even of their substance. They
occurred chiefly in the rooms whose walls were lined in their lower parts
with sculptured slabs. By dint of infinite painstaking M. Place succeeded
in copying a few fragments of these paintings.[346] According to the
examples thus preserved for us, human figures were mingled with purely
ornamental motives such as plumes, fillets, and rosettes. The colours here
used were black, green, red, and yellow, to which may be added a fifth in
the white of the plaster ground upon which they were laid. Flesh tints were
expressed by leaving this white uncoloured.

[Illustration: FIG. 116.--Ornament painted upon plaster; from Layard.]

[Illustration: FIG. 117.--Ornament painted upon plaster; from Layard.]

Several fragments of these painted decorations have also been preserved by
Sir Henry Layard. The simplest of them all is a broad yellow band edged on
each side by a line of alternately red and blue chevrons separated from
each other by white lines. Down the centre of the yellow band there is a
row of blue and white rosettes (Fig. 116). Another example in which the
same colours are employed is at once more complex and more elegant (see
Fig. 117). Finally, in a third fragment, a slightly simplified version of
this latter motive serves as a lower border to a frieze upon which two
bulls face each other, their white bodies being divided from the yellow
ground by a thick black line. The battlements at the top are dark blue
(Fig. 118). An idea of the tints used in this decoration may be obtained
from Fig. 2 of our plate xiv.

[Illustration: FIG. 118.--Ornament painted upon plaster; from Layard.]

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