The five great monarchies of the ancient eastern world; or, The history, geography, and antiquites of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, and Persia . etween twotowers also battlemented. It is curious that thepaths do not lead to the propylsea, but seem to curveround the hill. Remains of ziggurats similar to this have been dis-covered at Khorsabad, at Nimrud, and at Kileh-Sherghat. The conical mound at Khorsabad ex-plored by M. Place, was found to contain a tower inseven stages ; ^ that of Nimrud, which is so striking » Herod, i. 181. ^ See the illustration, infra, p. Journal of the Asiat
The five great monarchies of the ancient eastern world; or, The history, geography, and antiquites of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, and Persia . etween twotowers also battlemented. It is curious that thepaths do not lead to the propylsea, but seem to curveround the hill. Remains of ziggurats similar to this have been dis-covered at Khorsabad, at Nimrud, and at Kileh-Sherghat. The conical mound at Khorsabad ex-plored by M. Place, was found to contain a tower inseven stages ; ^ that of Nimrud, which is so striking » Herod, i. 181. ^ See the illustration, infra, p. Journal of the Asiatic Society,vol. xvii. p. 13. 3 Fergusson, Eandhooh of Archi-tecture, J). 172. I have been unableto obtain any detailed account of thisbuildins;. Chap. VI. TEMPLE TOWERS OR ZIGGURATS. 395 an object from the plain,* and which was carefullyexamined by Mr. Layard, presented no positive proofof more than a single stage ; but, from its conicalshape, and from the general analogy of such towers,it is believed to have had several stages. Mr. Layardmakes their number five, and crowns the fifth with acircular tower terminating in a heavy cornice ; ^ but. for this last there is no authority at all, and the actualnumber of the stages is wholly uncertain. The baseof this ziggurat was a square, 167 feet 6 inches eachway, composed of a solid mass of sun-dried brick, facedat bottom to the height of twenty feet with a wall ofhewn stones, more than eight feet and a half in thick-ness. The outer stones were bevelled at the edges,and on the two most conspicuous sides the wall was Supra, p. 253. Nineveh and Babylon, plan opp. p. 128 ; Monuments of Nineveh, 2ndseries, frontispiece. 396 THE SECOND MONARCHY. Chap. VI, -M -p --
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