mmit. On the topmost tower
there is a spacious temple, and inside the temple stands a couch of unusual
size, richly adorned with a golden table by its side. There is no statue of
any kind set up in the place nor is the chamber occupied of nights by any
one but a single native woman.... Below in the same precinct there is a
second temple, in which is a sitting figure of Jupiter all of gold ...
outside the temple are two altars."[453]

This description is, of course, very short; it omits many details that we
should have wished to find in it; but like nearly all the descriptions of
Herodotus it is very clear. The old historian saw well, and his mind
retained what he saw. From his recital it is plain that this was the finest
of the Babylonian temples, and that even when partly ruinous, under the
successors of Alexander, its colossal dimensions were yet able to astonish
foreign visitors. We may, then, take it as the type of the Chaldaean temple,
as the finest religious building in the first city of Mesopotamia.
Nebuchadnezzar reconstructed it and made it higher and richer in its
ornamentation than before, but he kept to the ancient foundations and made
no change in the general character of the plan. In this single edifice were
gathered up all the threads of a long tradition; it was, as it were, the
supreme effort, the last word of the national art: and Herodotus declares
plainly that it was a staged tower.

Such an assertion puts the matter beyond a doubt, and enables us to point
to the staged tower as the form chosen by these people and made use of
throughout their civilization for the buildings raised in honour of their
gods. And having dismissed this fundamental question we have now to give a
rapid description of the principal varieties of the type as they have been
established by M. Chipiez. And as we go on we shall point out the
authorities for each restoration; whether the ruins themselves, the
inscribed texts, or the sculptured reliefs.

[Illustration: FIGS. 169-171.--Longitudinal section, plan and horizontal
section of the rectangular type of Chaldaean temple.]

In the first line we must place the RECTANGULAR CHALDAEAN TEMPLE (Plate II.
and Figs. 169, 170, and 171). We have put it first because the remains from
which it has been reconstructed have all been found in Lower Chaldaea, that
is, amongst the oldest of the Chaldaean cities. As we learn from the texts,
these temples were repaired under the last kings of Bab