ick platform, was 150 feet.

The ornamentation of the edifice was chiefly by means of color. The
seven stages represented the Seven Spheres, in which moved (according
to ancient Chaldaean astronomy) the seven planets. To each planet fancy,
partly grounding itself upon fact, had from of old assigned a peculiar
tint or hue. The Sun was golden, the Moon silver; the distant Saturn,
almost beyond the region of light, was black; Jupiter was orange the
fiery Mars was red; Venus was a pale Naples yellow; Mercury a deep blue.
The seven stages of the tower, like the seven walls of Ecbatana, gave
a visible embodiment to these fancies. The basement stage, assigned to
Saturn, was blackened by means of a coating of bitumen spread over the
face of the masonry; the second stage, assigned to Jupiter, obtained the
appropriate orange color by means of a facing of burnt bricks of that
hue; the third stage, that of Mars, was made blood-red by the use
of half-burnt bricks formed of a bright red clay; the fourth stage,
assigned to the Sun, appears to have been actually covered with thin
plates of gold; the fifth, the stage of Venus, received a pale yellow
tint from the employment of bricks of that hue; the sixth, the sphere of
Mercury, was given an azure tint by vitrifaction, the whole stage having
been subjected to an intense heat after it was erected, whereby the
bricks composing it were converted into a mass of blue slag; the seventh
stage, that of the Moon, was probably, like the fourth, coated with
actual plates of metal. Thus the building rose up in stripes of varied
color, arranged almost as nature's cunning arranges hues in the rainbow,
tones of red coming first, succeeded by a broad stripe of yellow, the
yellow being followed by blue. Above this the glowing silvery summit
melted into the bright sheen of the sky. [PLATE XVI.]

[Illustration: PLATE XVI.]

The faces of the various stages were, as a general rule, flat and
unbroken, unless it were by a stair or ascent, of which however there
has been found no trace. But there were two exceptions to this general
plainness. The basement stage was indented with a number of shallow
squared recesses, which seem to have been intended for a decoration. The
face of the third stage was weak on account of its material, which was
brick but half-burnt. Here then the builders, not for ornament's sake,
but to strengthen their work, gave to the wall the support of a number
of shallow buttresses. T