Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/140

I2O A HISTORY OF ART ix CHALD.KA AND ASSYRIA. upper valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. 1 But quarrying and transport involved an expenditure that prevented any thought of brino-ine these volcanic rocks into common use. o o Compared with the towns of the lower Euphrates, Babylon was not far from mountains whence, by means of canals and rivers, she might have easily obtained a limestone of good quality. Even in these days, when commerce and industry have fallen so low in those regions, the gypseous alabaster from the neighbourhood of Mossoul is transported in no unimportant quantities as far as Baeclad. It is used for lining baths and those serdabs to which o the people retreat in summer. - The remains of the great capital show no trace of dressed stone. And yet it was used during the second empire in some of the great public works undertaken by Nabopolassar and more especially by Nebuchadnezzar. Herodotus, who saw Babylon, declares this in the most formal manner in his description of the bridge which then united, for the first time, the two banks of the Euphrates. While the river was bordered by quays of burnt brick, the bridge, says the historian, " was built of very large stones, bound together with iron clamps embedded in lead." 3 That, however, was but one exception, and it was necessitated by the very nature of the work to be carried out. No cement was to be had which could resist the action of water for an indefi- nite period and maintain the coherence of brickwork subjected to its unsleeping attacks. In order to obtain piers capable of with- standing the current during the great floods, it was better too to use blocks of considerable weight, which could be held together by metal tenons or clasps. It was but at rare intervals that buildings had to be erected in which the habits of ages had to be thus abandoned. Why is it that such works have perished and left no sign ? The question may be easily answered. When the ruins of Babylon began to be used as an open quarry, the stone buildings must have been the first to disappear. This material, precious by its rarity and in greater request than any other, was used again and again until no trace of its original destination or of the buildings in which it was found remained. 1 LAYARD, Discoveries, &c., p. 528. - LAYARD, Discoveries, p. 116. 3 HERODOTUS, i. 186. DIODORUS (ii. viii. 2), quoting Ctesias, speaks in almost the same terms of this stone bridge, which he attributes to Semiramis.