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It was the same with the Observatory at Khorsabad. LAYARD, Discoveries, p. 495. The authorities made use of by Strabo for his description of Babylon, all lived in the time of Alexander and his successors; no one of them could have seen the temple intact and measured its height. Founded upon tradition or upon the inspection of the remains, the figure given by the geographer can only be approximate.
And before Layard removed a basketful of the earth that covered the palace of Shalmaneser at Nimroud, had not the Frenchman Botta disclosed the friezes and sphinxes of Sargon at Khorsabad; and in these late years is it not the Frenchman De Sarzec who has brought from Telloh to the Louvre the statues of Chaldean kings that lived almost five thousand years ago?
The ruins of Khorsabad, Keremles, Nimrud, and Koyunjik bear on their bricks distinct local titles; and these titles are found attaching to distinct cities in the historical inscriptions. Nimrud, as already observed, is Calah; and Khorsabad is Dur-Sargina, or "the city of Sargon." Calah for a long time is the capital, while Nineveh is mentioned as a provincial town.
None of these bricks have been found in place, and none, so far as we know, unbroken. The coat at the back may have rendered the adherence so complete that no further precaution was necessary. In Assyria, so far at least as Khorsabad is concerned, they were content with less trouble.
On the one hand, fourteen grooms are leading fourteen horses down to the Tigris to be watered; on the other, servants are mounting with provisions for the royal table in baskets on their heads. The steps of basalt and gypsum, that afford communication between rooms of different levels at Khorsabad, are planned and adjusted with great skill and knowledge.
In their disinclination to use stone voussoirs, the Assyrian builders here found themselves compelled to mould bricks of very complicated form, and the way in which they accomplished their task speaks volumes for their skill. Drain at Khorsabad, with pointed arch.
At Khorsabad, then, stone played a much more important part in the palace wall than in that of the town, but even in the latter position it is used with skill and in no inconsiderable quantity; on the other hand, it is only employed in the interior of the palace for paving, for lining walls, for the bases, shafts and capitals of columns, and such minor purposes.
M. Botta expresses his astonishment at the preference of brick to stone exhibited by the builders of Khorsabad, when the neighborhood abounds in rocky hills capable of furnishing an inexhaustible supply of the better material. The limestone range of the Jebel Maklub is but a few miles distant, and many out-lying rocky elevations might have been worked with still greater facility.
Besides, we have proofs that they were not content to go on servilely reproducing one and the same type for twenty centuries; their temples were not all shaped in the same mould. The type of the Mugheir temple differed sensibly from that of the Khorsabad Observatory.
On the other hand, in many parts of the palace of Khorsabad no trace of fire remains, and yet here no suggestion of detached columns can be found, and, moreover, it is extremely difficult to arrange columns symmetrically in the various apartments so that doorways are not interfered with.
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