945 NINEVEH, ARCHITECTURE OF. 916 Khorsabad, and Kouyunjik." But among the discoveries made by M. Place at Nineveh was that of one of the city gates. These appear to have been constructed in pairs of about equal width, from 12 to 15 feet ; one gateway being devoted to wheeled carriages, the other to foot passengers, as is shown by the deep lines cut by the wheels in the pavement of the one, while that of the other is quite smooth. The foot passengers' gate is ornamented with slabs of human-headed winged bulls, alongside of which stand colossal figures strangling lions. The carriage gateway has plain slabs. Both have semicircular arches, with elegantly adorned archivolts formed of blue enamelled with yellow figures.
The private residences, being constructed of sun-dried bricks, have entirely perished. 1 'Babylonian Architecture.—Of the buildings of Babylon no complete example remains. Long before Layard or Botta began to excavate the buried Nineveh, Babylon had been the scene of frequent and careful, though by no means fruitful, explorations. The remarkable results of the researches at Nineveh led to a renewal of the investigation ; but the success has been far from commensurable with the labour, and there is little reason to look forward to happier results at a future time. Like the ordinary dwellings of Nineveh, the buildings of Babylon were constructed entirely of brick, and where vast masses of brickwork remain they have utterly lost their form as buildings. The great mounds, which now comprise all that remains of the magnificent structures which excited the wonder alike of the ancient Hebrews and the polished Greeks, have been so fully described elsewhere [BABYLON, in GE00. Dtv.] that here a very brief notice will suffice.
The chief of the existing remains is that standing on the western side of the Euphrates, and known as the Birs Nixnroud, a conical mound, formed of bricks, clay, and broken pottery, 762 yards in cir cumference, and at the western end rising to a height of 198 feet. On this summit is a solid structure of brick, 37 feet high and 28 feet broad, but diminishing to the top, which is broken and irregular. [See the cut and description in the article BABYLON, before referred to.] The building on the top is constructed of kiln-burnt bricks, and is in the best style of Babylonian brick-work ; fragments of stone, marble, and basalt scattered about, show that it was adorned with more costly materials. The only openings are square holes pierced through the solid structure. By most writers it has been supposed to be the Temple of Belus, described by Herodotus ; but there were always diffi culties about the identification of the site, and the recent investigations of Sir H. Rawlinson have shown it to be a different building. Sir Henry. on discovering the angle of the basement wall by sinking a shaft, at once directed the workmen to look at a particular spot near it for a recess in which would be found a commemorative cylinder.
This was done, and a cylinder covered with inscriptions [C4NEIFoam] was drawn out. A similar hollow with a duplicate cylinder iu it was discovered near the opposite angle. On translating the inscription it was found to state that this building, the Temple of the Seven Spheres, which was built 504 years before (about 1100 me.), having become ruinous owing to the neglect of the drainage, the god Merodack had put it into the heart of the great King Nebuchadnezzar to rebuild it all but the platform which had not been injured. The building would appear from the investigations of Sir H. Rawlinson, to have consisted of a square basement about 360 feet on each side, and 6 feet high, on which fstond a pyramidal structure of six stories, each about 20 feet high, and 42 feet less in horizontal extent than that on which it stands. These stories instead of being concentrically above each other, recede regularly, so that the front of the tower on the summit is above 200 feet from the front line of the basement, while the back is less than 100 feet from the rear line. The sides recede equally. The tower which crowns the summit, and which is spoken of above, was probably in two stories, and surmounted with a cornice. Within it was probably the shrine or holy place of the temple. In the front of the temple were steps leading from story to story from the basement to the tower at the summit. The seven stories, or platforms, were, Sir Henry believes, dedicated to the seven planets, and coloured with the colours attributed to them by the Sabmean astrologers. The lowest platform was panelled and painted black, the colour emblematic of Saturn ; the secqnd orange, the colour of Jupiter ; the third red, Mars ; the fourth gold, as dedi cated to the Sun ; the fifth green, for Venus ; the sixth blue, Mercury; and the highest white, as the colour of the Moon, whose place was the highest in the Chaldaian system. This remarkable discovery accords not only very closely with the descriptions of Greek writers, but in general form with figures on slabs found at Kouyunjik, and is probably therefore nearly correct.
The mound called the Mujelibd, by Rich, or the Mount of Babel by Layard (described under BABYLON in GEOG. Div.], seems to be the site of a great palace resembling, probably, in its general character the palaces of Nineveh ; but it appears to be too utterly ruined to admit of any very definite restoration. The Kasr of Rich, Layard (who calls it the Mujelibd) conceives to have been a fortified palace. There are numerous other mounds, but they yield no insight into the peculiarities of Babylonian architecture ; which, therefore, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we may fairly suppose to have been in its general characteristics, analogous to that of Nineveh. Its chief differ ence arose probably from being built wholly of brick. Instead of the walls of the facades and the interior being faced with sculptured slabs