out, _in the wall_ of the house, he made numerous rests round
about, that _the beams_ should not be fastened in the walls of the
house." The words in italics are inserted in our version to make good
the sense, and may consequently not convey the exact meaning, which
may be, that these apartments were thus narrow in order that the beams
might be supported without the use of pillars, a reason already
suggested for the narrowness of the greater number of chambers in the
Assyrian palaces. These smaller rooms appear to have been built round
a large central hall called the oracle, the whole arrangement thus
corresponding with the courts, halls, and surrounding rooms at
Nimroud, Khorsabad, and Kouyunjik. The oracle was twenty cubits
square, smaller far in dimensions than the Nineveh halls; but it was
twenty cubits _high_--an important fact, illustrative of Assyrian
architecture, for as the building itself was thirty cubits in height
the oracle must not only have been much loftier than the adjoining
chambers, but must have had an upper structure of ten cubits. Within
it were the two cherubim of olive wood ten cubits high, with wings
each five cubits long--"and he carved all the house around with carved
figures of cherubim and palm trees, and open flowers, within and
without." The cherubim have been described by Biblical commentators as
mythic figures, uniting the human head with the body of a lion, or an
ox, and the wings of an eagle. If for the palm trees we substitute the
sacred trees of the Nineveh sculptures, and for the open flowers the
Assyrian tulip-shaped ornament--objects most probably very nearly
resembling each other--we find that the oracle of the temple was
almost identical, in the general form of its ornaments, with some of
the chambers of Nimroud and Khorsabad. In the Assyrian halls, too, the
winged human-headed bulls were on the side of the wall, and their
wings, like those of the cherubim, "touched one another in the midst
of the house." The dimensions of these figures were in some cases
nearly the same in the Jewish and Assyrian temples, namely, fifteen
feet square. The doors were also carved with cherubim and palm trees,
and open flowers; and thus, with the other parts of the building,
corresponded with those of the Assyrian palaces. On the walls at
Nineveh the only addition appears to have been the introduction of the
human form and the image of the king, which were an abomination to the
Jews. The pomegranate