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The route from Khorsabad to Mosul was about 18 kilometers, taking into account all the detours that had to be made in order to have a somewhat firm roadway.
It is, however, very probable that the astronomers availed themselves of such a height above the plain in order to escape from floating vapours and to gain a wider horizon. The platform of the Khorsabad tower must have had a superficial extent of about 180 square yards.
Botta's first finds of a pronounced character were made at a village known as Khorsabad, which stood on one of the mounds in question. Here, at a short distance below the surface, he came across the remains of what proved to be a palace of enormous extent.
The walls of Khorsabad even now are everywhere at least ten feet high, and in some parts they are as much as fifteen, twenty, and five-and-twenty feet, an elevation far in excess of a man's stature, and they show no trace of a window. Hence we may at least affirm that windows were not pierced under the same conditions as in modern architecture.
The day when the history of Rome and its monuments may be but material for erudition to put into the museums by the side of the bricks of the palace of Khorsabad, the cuneiform inscriptions, and the statues of the kings of Assyria, Latin civilisation will be overwhelmed by a fatal catastrophe.
Taking everything into consideration the clay vaults of Khorsabad are no more surprising than these domes of modern Mossoul. We cannot say for certain that the Assyrian builders made use of domes in addition to the barrel vaults, but all the probabilities are in favour of such an hypothesis. A dome is a peculiar kind of vault used for the covering of square, circular, or polygonal spaces.
Fill this space with the necessary bricks, and a section of wall would be restored identical in bond with that below the battlements, with the one exception that the highest block of the battlement, being only one brick wide, is formed by laying three whole bricks one upon the other. The crenellations we have been describing are those upon the retaining walls of Sargon's palace at Khorsabad.
Distributed about the entrance these genii seem to be the protectors of the city, they are beneficent images, their gesture is a prayer, a promise, a benediction. His face is turned towards the vaulted passage. Detail of enamelled archivolt. Khorsabad. The other composition is to be found on a plinth in the doorway of the harem at Khorsabad.
The blue of Babylon seems however to have had more body and to have been darker in shade than that of the Khorsabad tiles. We have already referred to this inferiority in the Assyrian enamel.
They had been strewn in the sand under the threshold of one of the doors. Terra-cotta cone. Height 6 inches. It was at Khorsabad, however, that the observations were made which have most clearly shown the importance attached to this ceremony of consecration.
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