Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/95

Towns and their Defences. 77 command of enough time and means to clear the whole interior of the enceinte. Even as it was he found enough to justify him in asserting that the great inclosure of some eight hundred acres was not, as we might be tempted to imagine at first sight, a royal park attached to the palace, but a city. He sunk trenches at three points where low mounds suggested the presence of ruins, and all his doubts soon disappeared. Several yards below the present level of the ground he found the original surface, with the pave- ments of streets, courtyards and rooms ; doorways with their thresholds and jambs ; walls covered with stucco, cut stone and even alabaster slabs ; potsherds, fragments of brick and utensils of various kinds — decisive evidence, in fact, that one of those agglomerations of civilized human beings that we call towns, had formerly occupied the site.