and the
perfection of their surfaces.[167]

[Illustration: FIG. 47.--Section in perspective through the south-western
part of Sargon's palace at Khorsabad; compiled from Place.]

The total height of this Khorsabad wall was sixty feet--nine feet for the
foundations, forty-six for the retaining-wall, and five for the parapet,
for the wall did not stop at the level of the roofs. A row of battlements
was thought necessary both as a slight fortification and as an
ornament.[168] These were finished at the top with open crenellations in
brick, along the base of which ran apparently a frieze of painted rosettes.
A reference to our Fig. 47 will explain all these arrangements better than
words. It is a bird's-eye view in perspective of the south-western part of
the palace. The vertical sections on the right of the engraving show how
the stones were bonded to the crude brick. The crenellations are omitted
here, but they may be seen in place on the left.

The great size of the stones and the regularity of the masonry, the height
of the wall and the long line of battlements with which it was crowned, the
contrast between the brilliant whiteness of its main surface and the bright
colours of the painted frieze that, we have supposed, defined its
summit--all this made up a composition simple enough, but by no means
devoid of beauty and grandeur.

In the _enceinte_ surrounding the town, stone was also employed, but in a
rather different fashion. It was used to give strength to the foot of the
wall, which consisted of a limestone plinth nearly four feet high,
surmounted by a mass of crude brick, rising to a total height of about
forty-four feet. Its thickness was eighty feet. The bed of stone upon which
the brick rested was made up of two retaining walls with a core of rubble.
In the former, large blocks, carefully dressed and fixed, were used; in the
latter, pieces of broken stone thrown together pell-mell, except towards
the top, where they were so placed as to present a smooth surface, upon
which the first courses of brick could safely rest.[169]

When Xenophon crossed Assyria with the "ten thousand," he noticed this
method of constructing city walls, but in all the _enceintes_ that
attracted his attention, the height of the plinth was much greater than
that of Khorsabad. At Larissa it was twenty, and at Mespila fifty feet, or
respectively a fifth and a third of the total height of the walls.[170]
These figures can only be looked