Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/159

Tin-: GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FORM. 139 At first we are inclined to pity kings shut up within such blind walls as these. But we must not be betrayed into believing that they took no measures to enjoy the evening breeze, or to cast their eyes over the broad plains at their feet, over the cities that lay under the shadows of the lofty mounds upon which their palaces were built. At certain times of the year and day they would retire within the shelter of their thickest walls and roofs ; just as at the present moment the inhabitants of Mossoul, Bassorah, and Bagdad, take refuge within their serdabs as soon as the sun is a little high in the heavens, and stay there until the approach of evening. 1 When the heat was less suffocating the courtyards would be pleasant, with their encircling porticoes sustaining a light covering inclined towards the centre, an arrangement required by the climate, and one which is to be found both at Pompeii and in the the Arab houses of Damascus, and is sure to have been adopted by the inhabitants of ancient Chaldaea. Additional space was given by the wide esplanades in front of the doors, and by the flat roofs, upon which sleep was often more successfully wooed than in the rooms below. And sometimes the pleasures given by refreshing breezes, cool shadows, and a distant prospect could be all enjoyed together, for in a certain bas-relief that seems to represent one of those great buildings of which we possess the ruins, we see an open arcade a loggia as it would be called in Italy- rise above the roof for the whole length of the facade (Fig. 39). 2 There are houses in the neighbourhood of Mossoul in which a similar arrangement is to be met with, as we may see from Mr. Layard's sketch of a house in a village of Kurdistan [ The serdab is a kind of cellar, the walls and floor of which are drenched periodically with water, which, by its evaporation, lowers the temperature by several degrees. 2 The town represented on the sculptured slab here reproduced is not Assyrian but Phoenician ; it affords data, however, which may be legitimately used in the restoration of the upper part of an Assyrian palace. We can hardly believe that the Mesopotamian artists, in illustrating the wars of the Assyrian kings, copied servilely the real features of the conquered towns. They had no sketches by " special artists " to guide their chisels. They were told that a successful campaign had been fought in the marshes of the lower Euphrates, or in some country covered with forests of date trees, and these they had no difficulty in representing because they had examples before their eyes ; so too, when buildings were in question, we may fairly conclude that they borrowed their motives from the architecture vvitn which they were familiar.