structures
betray a painstaking desire to insure the stability of the work, and no
little skill in the selection of means. Thus the Chaldaean architect pierced
his crude brick masses with numerous narrow tunnels, or ventilating pipes,
through which the warm and desiccating air of a Mesopotamian summer could
be brought into contact with every part, and the slight remains of moisture
still left in the bricks when fixed could be gradually carried off. These
shafts have been found in the ruins of Babylon and of other Chaldaean
cities.[189] Nothing of the kind has been discovered in Assyria, and for a
very simple reason. It would have been impossible to preserve them in the
soft paste, the kind of pise, we have described.

Another thing that had to be carefully provided for was the discharge of
the rain water which, unless it had proper channels of escape, would filter
through the cracks and crevices of the brick and set up a rapid process of
disintegration. In the Assyrian palaces we find, therefore, that the
pavements of the flat roofs of the courtyards and open halls had a decided
slope, and that the rain water was thus conducted to scuppers, through
which it fell into runnels communicating with a main drain, from which it
was finally discharged into the nearest river.

It rained less in Chaldaea than in Assyria. But we may fairly conclude that
the Chaldaean architects were as careful as their northern rivals to provide
such safeguards as those we have described; but their buildings are now in
such a condition that no definite traces of them are to be distinguished.
On the other hand, the ruins in Lower Chaldaea prove that even in the most
ancient times the constructor had then the same object in view; but the
means of which he made use were much more simple, although contrived with
no little ingenuity. We shall here epitomize what we have learnt from one
of those few observers to whom we owe all our knowledge of the earliest
Chaldaean civilization.

Mr. J. E. Taylor, British vice-consul at Bassorah, explored not a few of
the mounds in the immediate neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf which mark
the sites of the burying places belonging to the most ancient cities of
Chaldaea.

The summits of these mounds are paved with burnt brick; their mass consists
of heaped up coffins separated from one another by divisions of the same
material. To insure the preservation of the bodies and of the objects
buried with them liquids of