The five great monarchies of the ancient eastern world; or, The history, geography, and antiquites of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, and Persia . ercome the difficulty of carrying a roofover so vast an expanse. He wastherefore obliged to divide his hallby a wall down the middle ; which,though he broke it in an unusualway into portions, and kept it atsome distance from both ends ofthe apartment, still had the actualeffect of subdividing his grandroom into four apartments of onlymoderate size. The halls werepaved with sun-burnt brick. Theywere ornamented throughout bythe elaborate sculptures
The five great monarchies of the ancient eastern world; or, The history, geography, and antiquites of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, and Persia . ercome the difficulty of carrying a roofover so vast an expanse. He wastherefore obliged to divide his hallby a wall down the middle ; which,though he broke it in an unusualway into portions, and kept it atsome distance from both ends ofthe apartment, still had the actualeffect of subdividing his grandroom into four apartments of onlymoderate size. The halls werepaved with sun-burnt brick. Theywere ornamented throughout bythe elaborate sculptures, now sofamiliar to us, carried generallyin a single, but sometimes in a double line, round thefour walls of the apartment. The sculptured slabsrested on the ground, and clothed the walls to theheight of 10 or 12 feet. Above, for a space whichwe cannot positively fix, but which was certainly notless than four or five feet,^ the crude brick wall wascontinued, faced here with burnt brick enamelled onthe side towards the apartment, pleasingly and some-times even brilliantly coloured,^ The whole heightof the walls w^as probably from 15 to 20 Hall of Esar-ha. Nimrud.(Scale of 10 ft. to an inch.) » As much as four feet of the wallhas sometimes been found standing(Fergussons Palaces, p. 267). ^ See the specimens of enamelledbricks in Mr. Layards Monuments ofNineveh, 1st Series, Plates 84 to 86. Chap. VI. CHAMBEES. 355 By the side of the halls, or at their ends, and openinginto them, or sometimes collected together into groups,with no hall near, are the smaller chambers of whichmention has been already made. These chambers arein every case rectangular: in .their proportions theyvary from squares to narrow oblongs, 90 feet by 17, 85by 16, 80 by 15, and the like. When they are square,the side is never more than about 25 feet. They areoften as richly decorated as the halls, but sometimes aremerely faced with plain slabs or plastered; whileoccasionally they have no facing at all, b
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