Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/343

ORIENTATION AND FOUNDATION CEREMONIES. 321 must have detached them from the cords by which they were suspended, and thrown them, upon the utterance of some pro- pitiatory formula by the priests, into the sand about to be covered with the first larcre slabs of alabaster. o The terra-cotta cylinders were in no less frequent use in Assyria than in Chaldaea. M. Place found no less than fourteen still in place in niches of the harem walls at Khorsabad. The long inscription they bore contained circumstantial details of the construction of both town and palace. Like that on the metal tablets, it ended with a malediction on all who should dare to raise their hands against the work of Sar^on. 1 O O As for the cylinders hidden in each angle of a building, none, we believe, have as yet been found in Assyria ; perhaps because no search or an inefficient search has been made for them. We have dwelt at some length upon the orientation of buildings, upon the importance attached to their angle stones, and upon the precautions taken to place an edifice under the protection of the gods, and to preserve the name of its founder from oblivion. We can point to no stronger evidence than that furnished by these proceedings as a whole, of the high civilization to which the people of Chaldaea and Assyria had attained at a very early date. The temple and palace did not spread themselves out upon the soil at the word of a capricious and individual fancy ; a constant will governed the arrangement of its plan, solemn rites inaugurated its construction and recommended its welfare to the gods. The texts tell us nothing about the architects, who raised so many noble monuments ; we know neither their names, nor their social condition, but we can divine from their works that they had strongly established traditions, and that they could look back upon a solid and careful education for their profession. As to whether they formed one of those close corporations in which the secrets of a trade are handed down from generation to generation of their members, or whether they belonged to the sacerdotal caste, we do not know. We are inclined to the latter supposition in some degree by the profoundly religious character of the ceremonies that accompanied the inception of a building, and by the accounts left by the ancients of those priests whom they called the Chaldeans. It was to these Chaldseans that Mesopotamian society owed all it knew of scientific methods and modes of 1 OPPERT, Expedition stientifique, vol. i. pp. 354 et set/. T T