every kind had to be provided with a ready
means of escape. The structures were pierced, therefore, with a vast number
of vertical drains. Long conduits of terra-cotta (see Fig. 49) stretched
from the paved summit, upon which they opened with very narrow mouths, to
the base. They were composed of tubes, each about two feet long and
eighteen inches in diameter. In some cases there are as many as forty of
these one upon another. They are held together by thin coats of bitumen,
and in order to give them greater strength their sides are slightly
concave. Their interiors are filled in with fragments of broken pottery,
which gave considerable support while they in no way hindered the passage
of the water. These potsherds are even placed around the outsides of the
tubes, so that the latter are nowhere in contact with the brick; they have
a certain amount of play, and with the tubes which they encase they form a
series of shafts, like chimneys, measuring about four feet square. Every
precaution was taken to carry off the water left by the storms. They were
not contented with the small opening at the head of each tube. The whole of
its dome-shaped top was pierced with small holes, that made it a kind of
cullender. Either through this or through the interstices of the potsherd
packing, all the moisture that escaped the central opening would find a
safe passage to the level of the ground, whence, no doubt, it would be
carried off to the streams in conduits now hidden by the mass of _debris_
round the foot of every mound.

[Illustration: FIG. 49.--Upper part of the drainage arrangements of a
mound.]

That these arrangements were well adapted to their purpose has been proved
by the result. Thanks to the drains we have described, these sepulchral
mounds have remained perfectly dry to the present day. Not only the
coffins, with the objects in metal or terra-cotta they contained, but even
the skeletons themselves have been preserved intact. A touch will reduce
the latter to powder, but on the first opening of their coffins they look
as if time had had no effect upon their substance.[190]

By these details we may see how far the art of the constructor was pushed
in the early centuries of the Chaldaean monarchy. They excite a strong
desire in us to discover the internal arrangements of his buildings, the
method by which access was given or forbidden to those chambers of the
Babylonian temples and houses whose magnificence has been celeb