ed near the villages of Nimrod, Khorsabad, and Koyunjik, all
supposed to be relics of Nineveh. They originally consisted of lofty
many-roomed structures raised on high platforms, and entered from arched
gateways flanked by colossal winged bulls of stone. The brick walls were
encased in alabaster slabs carved with figure subjects in low relief,
some of which are in the British Museum, and galleries, rising from
columns with capitals that foreshadowed Greek forms, admitted air and
light freely. The Palace of Nebuchadnezzar has also recently been
identified, and must when uninjured have been an immense castle-like
pile with a vast number of courts and halls to which a paved way led up.

[Illustration: Terrace Wall at Khorsabad]

Tombs and palaces are the chief relics of Persian architecture. Many of
the former, notably that near Murghab, supposed to have been the
sepulchre of Cyrus, resemble Greek temples in general style, whilst
others are rock-cut and recall the Mastabas of Egypt. Of the palaces
those at Persepolis were the most remarkable, for in them Persian
architecture reached its fullest development. Their ruins, that rise
from a platform some forty feet high hewn out of the surface of the
living rock, to which long flights of steps led up, consist of vast
columned halls entered from detached porticoes known as propylaea. When
intact the largest of these halls, named after Xerxes, must have
exceeded in size the cathedrals of Canterbury or Winchester.

Other noteworthy relics of early Asiatic architecture are the tombs of
Lycia, Phrygia, and Lydia. The first named--of which the so-called tomb
of the Harpies now in the British Museum is a typical example--are all
either cut in the living rock or carved out of detached masses of stone,
in either case recalling in their general appearance the log-huts of
prehistoric times. More ornate than those of Lycia, the Phrygian
sepulchral monuments, of which the grave of Midas at Doganlu is the
finest, are also rock hewn, but their shape and decoration are more
suggestive of the tent than the wooden dwelling, whilst those in Lydia
are comparatively primitive, being in some cases, notably in the Tumulus
of Tantalus on the Gulf of Smyrna, mere masses of stone heaped up above
a huge mound.

[Illustration: Restored Section of Hall of Xerxes]

[Illustration: Capital of Lat]

The most ancient examples of Indian architecture are the Stambhas or
Lats, the earliest dating from the t