orms themselves are interesting. Close study will convince
us that, when copied by neighbouring peoples who made frequent and general
use of stone supports, they might well have exercised an influence that
was felt as far as the AEgaean, and had something to do with one of the
fairest creations of Greek art.

We thus catch side glimpses of the column, as it were, in small buildings,
in the porches before the principal doors of palaces, and in the open
galleries with which some of the latter buildings were crowned (Fig. 39).
In all these cases it is nothing but a more or less elegant accessory; we
might if we pleased give a sufficiently full description of Mesopotamian
architecture without hinting at its existence.

[Illustration: FIG. 41.--Temple on the bank of a river, Khorsabad; from
Botta.]

We cannot say the same of the arch, which played a much more important
_role_ than it did in Egypt. There it was banished, as we have seen, to the
secondary parts of an edifice. It hardly entered into the composition of
the nobler class of buildings; it was used mainly in store-rooms built near
the temples, in the gateways through the outer walls of tombs, and in
underground cellars and passages.[162] In Mesopotamia, on the other hand,
the arch is one of the real constituent elements of the national
architecture.

[Illustration: FIG. 42.--Temple in a Royal Park, Kouyundjik; from the
British Museum.]

That the Chaldaean architects were early led to the invention of the arch is
easily understood. They were unable to support the upper parts of their
walls, their ceilings or their roofs, upon beams of stone or timber, and
they had to devise some other means of arriving at the desired result. This
means was not matured all at once. With most peoples the first stage
consisted probably in those corbels or off-sets by which the width of the
space to be covered was reduced course by course, till a junction was
effected at the top; and sometimes this early stage may have been dispensed
with. In some cases, the workman who had to cover a narrow void with small
units of construction may, in trying them in various positions and
combinations, have hit upon the real principle of the arch. This principle
must everywhere have been discovered more or less accidentally; in one
place the accident may have come sooner than in another, and here it may
have been turned to more profit than there. We shall have to describe and
explain these differen