Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/148

128 A HISTORY OF ART IN CHALDYEA AND ASSYRIA. excess of their horizontal over their vertical development, have had but little effect. Such an arrangement would appear superfluous in the case of those towers in the shape of stepped pyramids, whose summits could be carried above the plain to any fanciful height by the simple process of adding story to story. But the Mesopotamian constructor went upon the same system as in the case of his palaces. It was well in any case to interpose a dense, firm, and dry FIG. 34. Temple ; from a Kouyundjik bas-relief. Ralinson, vol. i. p. 314. mass between the wet and often shifting soil and the building, and to afford a base which by its size and solidity should protect the great accumulation of material that was to be placed upon it from injury through any settling in the foundations. Moreover, the paved esplanade had its place in the general economy. It formed a spacious court about the temple, a sacred temenos as the Greeks would have called it, a haram as a modern Oriental would say. It could be peopled with statues and decorated with mystic