Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/410

382 A HISTORY OF ART IN CIIALD.KA AND ASSYRIA. plate we have introduced one of those small temples of which remains have been found at Khorsabad and Nimroud. The walls of the town form a continuation of those about the temple. In front of the principal entrance to the sacred inclosure we have set up a commemorative stele. Aided by these restorations we hope to have given a clearer and more vivid idea of Chaldsean art than if we had confined ourselves to describing the scanty remains of their religious buildings. We have now to give a rapid review of those existing ruins whose former purposes and arrangements may still to a certain extent be traced. ^ 2. Ruins of Staged Toilers. IN describing the first of our four types we had occasion to point to the buildings at Warka and Mughcir, which enabled us to restore what may be called the Lower Chalckean form of temple. The mounds formed by the remains of those buildings had not been touched for thousands of years, they had entirely escaped such disturbance as the ruins of Babylon have undergone for so many centuries at the hand of the builders of Bagdad and Hillah ; and it is probable that explorations carried on methodically arid with intelligent patience would give most interesting results. If, for instance, the foundations of all walls were systematically cleared, we should be enabled to restore with absolute certainty the plans of the buildings to which they belonged. To the monuments discovered by the English explorers we must now add a find made by M. de Sarzec at Tello, of which, however, full details have yet to be furnished. 1 We take the following from the too short letter that was read to the Academy of Inscriptions on the 2nd of December 1881. " Finally, it was in that part of the building marked n that opens upon the court r, that I louncl the curious structure of which I spoke to you. This solid mass of burnt brick and bitumen, with diminishino- terraces rising one above o r> 1 See Les Fonilles de CJialdce in the Rerue archeologique for November, 1881. M. de Sarzec refers us in his paper to a plan which has not yet been laid before the Academy. We regret very much that its publication should have been so long delayed, as we have been prevented from making as much use as we should have wished of M. de Sarzec's architectural discoveries.