Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/53

Other Palaces of Mesopotamia. 35 setting, sun. Round the palace that faced westwards, she built a wall sixty stades in circumference, &c." * The larger and more richly decorated of the two palaces was that on the left bank. 2 Its opposite neighbour has vanished and left no trace. The Euphrates has been gradually encroaching on its right bank ever since the days of antiquity, and has long ago disunited and carried away the last stones and bricks of the western palace. The eastern palace is on the other hand still represented by one of the great mounds that dominate the plain ; this mound is called the Kasr, or castle (Fig. 183, vol. i.). Its circumference is now not far short of a mile. 3 Its form is that of an oblong parallelogram, with its longest side next the river and parallel to it. The flanks of the mound have, however, been so deeply seamed by searchers for treasure and building materials that no vestige of its arrangements is now to be traced. The bricks employed in the building all bore the name of Nebuchadnezzar. South of the Kasr there is another mound, rising about one hundred feet above the plain and very irregular in shape. This is Tel-Amran-ibn-Ali, or Tell-Amran, (Fig. 183, vol. L). It is agreed that this contains all that remains of the hanging gardens, a conjecture that is confirmed by the numerous tombs dating from the Seleucid, the Parthian, and the Sassanid periods, which have been found in its flanks whenever any excavation has been attempted. 4 Tell-Amram seems to have been a far more popular depository for corpses than either Babil, the Kasr, or the Birs- Nimroud, a preference which is easily explained. Whether we believe, with Diodorus, that the gardens were supported by great stone architraves, or with Strabo, that they stood upon several stories of vaults, we may understand that in either case their substructure offered long galleries which, when the gardens were no longer kept up and the whole building was abandoned to itself, were readily turned into burial places. 5 The palace and 1 Diodorus, ii. viii. 3-4. 2 Diodorus, ii. viii. 7. 3 Oppert, Expédition scientifique de Mésopotamie, vol. i. p. T50. See also La yard, Discoveries, p. 508, upon the tradition of the Arabs relating to the tall tamarisk, the only tree that grows on the summit of the mound. 4 J. Menant, Babylon et la Chaldée (1 vol. 8vo. 1875), p. 181. 5 Diodorus (ii. 10), speaks of XtBivai Sokol, or stone beams, to which he attributes a length of sixteen feet, and a width of four ; Strabo (xvii. i. 5) makes use of the<