ides of the
mound, and meeting each other at right angles. Neither the ground-plan
nor the elevation of a Babylonian palace can be given; nor can even
a conjectural restoration of such a building be made, since the small
fragment of Nebuchadnezzar's palace which remains has defied all
attempts to reduce it to system. We can only say that the lines of
the building were straight; that the walls rose, at any rate to a
considerable height, without windows; and that the flatness of the
straight line was broken by numerous buttressses and pilasters. We
have also evidence that occasionally there was an ornamentation of the
building, either within or without, by means of sculptured stone slabs,
on which were represented figures of a small size, carefully wrought.
The general ornamentation, however, external as well as internal, we
may well believe to have been such as Diodorus states, colored
representations on brick of war-scenes, and hunting-scenes, the
counterparts in a certain sense of those magnificent bas-reliefs which
everywhere clothed the walls of palaces in Assyria. It has been already
noticed that abundant remains of such representations have been found
upon the Kasr mound. [PLATE XV., Fig. 2.] They seem to have alternated
with cuneiform inscriptions, in white on a blue ground, or else with a
patterning of rosettes in the same colors.

Of the general arrangement of the royal palaces, of their height, their
number of stories, their roofing, and their lighting, we know absolutely
nothing. The statement made by Herodotus, that many of the private
houses in the town had three or four stories, would naturally lead us
to suppose that the palaces were built similarly; but no ancient author
tells us that this was so. The fact that the walls which exist, though
of considerable height, show no traces of windows, would seem to imply
that the lighting, as in Assyria, was from the top of the apartment,
either from the ceiling, or from apertures in the part of the walls
adjoining the ceiling. Altogether, such evidence as exists favors
the notion that the Babylonian palace, in its character and general
arrangements, resembled the Assyrian, with only the two differences,
that Babylonian was wholly constructed of burnt brick, while in the
Assyrian the sun-dried material was employed to a large extent; and,
further, that in Babylonia the decoration of the walls was made, not
by slabs of alabaster, which did not exist in the country, b