Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/94

76 A History of Art in ChalD/EA and Assyria. They were about forty feet wide. Their construction was, of course, far inferior to that of a Roman road. There were no footpaths, either within or without the cities ; the stones were small, irregular in shape, and not of a very durable kind. They were placed in a single layer, and the pavement when finished looked like a mere bed of broken stones. All Mesopotamia, however, cannot now show a road that can be compared to these ancient ways. Wherever the traveller goes, his beasts of burden and the wheels of his carts sink either into a bed of dust or into Fig. 31. — Chariot for three combatants; from the "palace of Assurbanipal. Louvre. Height 16 inches. Drawn by Bourgoin. deep and clinging mud, according to the season. It is no better in the towns^. Whoever has had the ill luck to be out, in the rainy season, in the sloughs and sewers that the Turks call streets, will be ready to acknowledge that the civilization of Assyria in the time of Sargon was better furnished than that of Turkey in the days of Abdul- H amid. At Khorsabad, where the main streets must, like those of Babylon, have intersected each other at right angles, how were the buildings, public and private, arranged ? We might have had an answer to this interesting question had M. Place been in