f these is furnished by one of the most ancient monuments
that have come down to us; we mean a statue found at Tello in Lower Chaldaea
by M. de Sarzec. It represents a personage seated and holding on his knees
an engraved tablet on which two or three different things are represented
(Fig. 153). On the right there is one of those styles with which letters or
images were cut in the soft clay, at the bottom of the tablet there is a
scale which we know from another monument of the same kind to have been
originally 10.8 inches in length, _i.e._ the Babylonian half-cubit or span.
By far the larger part of the field, however, is occupied by an irregular
figure in which the trace of a fortified wall may be easily recognized.
When these monuments were first brought to France this statue was supposed
to be that of an architect. When the inscriptions were interpreted,
however, this opinion had to be modified in some degree. They were found to
contain the same royal title as the other figure of similar style and
material discovered by M. de Sarzec on the same spot, the title, namely, of
the individual whom archaeologists have at present agreed to call
Gudea.[416] It therefore seems to represent that prince in the character of
an architect, as the constructor of the building in which his statues were
placed as a sacred deposit. Must we take it to be the plan of his royal
city as a whole, or only of his palace? It is difficult to answer this
question, especially while no precise information has been obtained from
the inscriptions, whose interpretation presents many difficulties. There
can, however, be no doubt that the engraver has given us a plan according
to his lights of a wall strengthened by flanking towers, of which those
with the boldest salience guard the six passages into the interior.

We find a still more simple plan upon an Assyrian monument of much later
date, namely, upon the armour of beaten bronze that formerly protected the
gates of Balawat. In this example (Fig. 154) the doorways, the angles, and
the centres of the two longer curtains are strengthened by towers.

[Illustration: FIG. 154.--Assyrian plan; from the Balawat gates in the
British Museum.]

[Illustration: FIG. 155.--Plan and section of a fortress; from Layard.]

The way in which the sculptor has endeavoured to suggest the crenellations
shows that these plans are not drawn on the same principal as ours; there
is no section taken at the junction with the so