p. 209); but so far as we understand his
system--which he has not illustrated with any figure--he does not double
his incline, he merely alternates its side at each stage, so that part of
it would be on the north-west, part on the south-west face of his tower.

[470] The original of this relief has not been brought to Europe. We are
therefore unable to decide whether Layard's draughtsman has accurately
represented its condition or not.

Sec. 2.--_Ruins of Staged Towers._

In describing the first of our four types we had occasion to point to the
buildings at Warka and Mugheir, which enabled us to restore what may be
called the Lower Chaldaean form of temple. The mounds formed by the remains
of those buildings had not been touched for thousands of years, they had
entirely escaped such disturbance as the ruins of Babylon have undergone
for so many centuries at the hand of the builders of Bagdad and Hillah; and
it is probable that explorations carried on methodically and with
intelligent patience would give most interesting results. If, for instance,
the foundations of all walls were systematically cleared, we should be
enabled to restore with absolute certainty the plans of the buildings to
which they belonged. To the monuments discovered by the English explorers
we must now add a find made by M. de Sarzec at Tello, of which, however,
full details have yet to be furnished.[471] We take the following from the
too short letter that was read to the Academy of Inscriptions on the 2nd of
December 1881. "Finally, it was in that part of the building marked H that
opens upon the court B that I found the curious structure of which I spoke
to you. This solid mass of burnt brick and bitumen, with diminishing
terraces rising one above the other, reminds us of those
Chaldaeo-Babylonian structures whose probable object was to afford a refuge
to the inhabitants from the swarms of insects and burning winds that
devastate these regions for nine months of the year." Here, we believe, M.
de Sarzec is in error; the only refuges against the inflamed breath of the
desert were the _serdabs_, the subterranean chambers with their scanty
light and moistened walls, and the dark apartments of Assyrian palaces with
their walls of prodigious thickness. The great terraces erected at such a
vast expenditure of labour were not undertaken merely to escape the
mosquitoes; we may take M. de Sarzec's words, however, as a proof that at
Sirtella as in all th