Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/199

CONSTRUCTION. 177 In his attempt to describe Babylon, Strabo says 1 : "In the absence of timber, properly speaking, beams and columns of palm-wood were used in the buildings of Babylonia. These pillars were covered with twisted ropes of rushes, over which several coats of paint were laid. The doors were coated with asphalte. Both doors and houses were very high. We may add that the houses were vaulted, in consequence of the absence of wood There were, of course, no tile roofs in countries where it never rains,' 2 such as Babylonia, Susiana and Sittacenia." Strabo himself never visited Mesopotamia. This we know from the passage in his introduction, in which he tells us exactly how far his voyages extended, from north to south, and from east to west. 3 When he had to describe Asia from the Taurus to India, he could only do so with the help of passages borrowed from various authors, and in the course of his work it has some- times happened that he has brought into juxtaposition pieces of information that contradict each other. 4 Something of the kind has happened in the lines we have quoted, in which he first speaks of pillars and timber roofs, and ends by declaring that all the Chaldean houses were vaulted, although vaults and timber could not exist together. The truth is, in all probability, that one system of covering prevailed here and another there, and that the seeming contradiction in the text is clue to hasty editing. We may conclude from it that travellers had reported the existence of both systems, and that each was to be explained by local conditions and the varying supply of materials. The two systems still exist side by side over all Western Asia. From Syria to Kurdistan and the Persian Gulf the hemispherical cupola upon a square substructure continually occurs. The timber roof is hardly less frequent ; when the apartment in which it is used is of any considerable size it is carried upon two or three rows of wooden columns. These columns rest upon cubes of stone, and a tablet of the same material is often interposed 1 STRABO, xvi. i, 5. 2 Kepa/xw 8'ov xpwvTcu, says Strabo. These words, as Letronne remarked apropos of this passage, combine the ideas of a tiled roof and of one with a ridge. The one notion must be taken with the other; hence we may infer that the Babylonian houses were flat-roofed. 3 STRABO, ii. 5, IT. 4 See M. AMEDEE TARDIEU'S reflections ujon Strabo's method of work, in his Geographic de Strabon (Hachette, 3 vols, i2mo.), vol. iii. p. 286, note 2. A A