bly have had a larger
number of entrances, since it belongs to tranquil times and a secure
locality.

[Illustration: PLATE XXVIII.]

The ornamentation of the existing facade of the palace is by doorways,
doubly-arched recesses, pilasters, and string-courses. These last divide
the building, externally, into an appearance of three or four distinct
stories. The first and second stories are broken into portions by
pilasters, which in the first or basement stories are in pairs, but
in the second stand singly. It is remarkable that the pilasters of the
second story are not arranged with any regard to those of the first,
and are consequently in many cases not superimposed upon the lower
pilasters. In the third and fourth stories there are no pilasters, the
arched recesses being here continued without any interruption. Over
the great arch of the central hall, a foiling of seventeen small
semicircular arches constitutes a pleasing and unusual feature.

The Mashita palace, which was almost certainly built between A.D. 614
and A.D. 627, while on a smaller scale than that of Ctesiphon, was far
more richly ornamented. [PLATE XXVIII., Fig. 2.] This construction of
Chosroes II. (Parwiz) consisted of two distinct, buildings (separated by
a court-yard, in which was a fountain), extending each of them about 180
feet along the front, with a depth respectively of 140 and 150 feet. The
main building, which lay to the north, was entered from the courtyard by
three archways, semicircular and standing side by side, separated only
by columns of hard, white stone, of a quality approaching to marble.
These columns were surmounted by debased Corinthian capitals, of a type
introduced by Justinian, and supported arches which were very richly
fluted, and which are said to have been "not unlike our own late Norman
work." [PLATE XXIX., Fig. 2.] The archways gave entrance into an oblong
court or hall, about 80 feet long, by sixty feet wide, on which opened
by a wide doorway the main room of the building. This was a triapsal
hall, built of brick, and surmounted by a massive domed roof of the same
material, which rested on pendentives like those employed at Serbistan
and at Firuzabad. The diameter of the hall was a little short of 60
feet. On either side of the triapsal hall, and in its rear, and again
on either side of the court or hall on which it opened, were rooms of
a smaller size, generally opening into each other, and arranged
symmetrically,