ilukhkha, and beams of cedar and cypress in the forests of the Amanus
and the Upper Tigris. Under these conditions a temple was soon erected,
and its construction did not demand centuries of continuous labour, like
the great limestone and granite sanctuaries of Egypt: the same ruler who
laid the first brick, almost always placed the final one, and succeeding
generations had only to keep the building in ordinary repair, without
altering its original plan. The work of construction was in almost
every case carried out all at one time, designed and finished from
the drawings of one architect, and bears traces but rarely of those
deviations from the earlier plans which sometimes make the comprehension
of the Theban temples so difficult a matter: if the state of decay of
certain parts, or more often inadequate excavation, frequently prevent
us from appreciating their details, we can at least reinstate their
general outline with tolerable accuracy.

While the Egyptian temple was spread superficially over a large area,
the Chalaean temple strove to attain as high an elevation as possible.
The "ziggurats," whose angular profile is a special characteristic of
the landscapes of the Euphrates, were composed of several immense cubes,
piled up on one another, and diminishing in size up to the small shrine
by which they were crowned and wherein the god himself was supposed to
dwell. There are two principal types of these ziggurats. In the first,
for which the builders of Lower Chaldaea showed a marked preference,
the vertical axis, common to all the superimposed stories, did not pass
through the centre of the rectangle which served as the base of the
whole building; it was carried back and placed near to one of the narrow
ends of the base, so that the back elevation of the temple rose abruptly
in steep narrow ledges above the plain, while the terraces of the front
broadened out into wide platforms. The stories are composed of solid
blocks of crude brick; up to the present, at least, no traces of
internal chambers have been found.* The chapel on the summit could not
contain more than one apartment: an altar stood before the door, and
access to it was obtained by a straight external staircase, interrupted
at each terrace by a more or less spacious landing.** The second type
of temple frequently found in Northern Chaldaea was represented by a
building on a square base with seven stories, all of equal height,
connected by one or two latera