Ancti•rEctunE. Architecture as a fine art was first practiced in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, in the region we call Babylonia. Here were worked mat the earliest forms of re ligious and civil structures. Everything had to be invented—mate•ials, tools, methods, architec tural forms, from the merest details to the broadest compositions. It was the same with the other arts utilized to assist in this develop ment of arehiteeture. The material used was brick, sun-dried and kiln-baked. The obvious reason for this was the absence both of stone quarries and of forests for timber. The tools re quired were therefore extremely simple: and the forms of ornamentation and composition were conditioned both by the material used and the physical surroundings. The absence of stone tor walls and columns and of wood for timbers forced the builders to make their walls thick and their halls narrow, so that they could be spanned by brick vaulting. Thus, at the very beginning the arch and vault were invented— both the false corbel arch with straight courses. and the true voussoir arch. Both poilted and 1..11111(1 arches were used in barrel vaults. Since the country was very Hat, it was difficult to lend impressiveness to buildings. In almost every other country natural eminences could be found, but here artificial platforms had to he constructed to make the buildings bulk large in the landscape. On this immense stage arose solid artificial mounds supporting single build ings or groups. The principal mound was al ways that of the temple, which 'MIS in the shape of an immense stepped truncated pyramid. At Babylon the 'Mrs Ninuud' is reckoned to have been over 250 feet high. The tower varied in the number of its stories from three to seven. The ascent was made in various ways—either by a continuous inclined ramp around the reced ing stories, or by a combination of internal staircases through the mass. On the way up were shrines, and the summit was crowned by the principal sanctuary. The chambers, how ever, were few and small. The stories appear to have been colored differently. In many temples the builders used brick dipped in colored en amel, to signify that each particular story was eonseerated to one of the planetary deities.
These brick were stack into the mass of sun dried brick, and formed both a preservative and a decoration. Moldings were used as well as color. The broad surfaces were broken into panels, often framed by pilasters or groups of palm-stem shafts, and even by series of convex flutings. The sites of nearly all the great Baby lonian cities have been located, but natural dis integration has reduced them all to masses so unpromising and shapeless, without traces of construction, as to have discouraged explorers. Now, however, the buildings of Sirpurla, Nip pur, and Babylon itself are being brought to light, and something has been done at Lippara, Eridu, Larsa, Cr, and Erech. At Tel-lo ( — Sir purla ) the French have unearthed a royal palace dating back to about r..c. 5000, but rebuilt by King Gudc.a. Its platform was 12 meters high, 200 meters long, and 50 meters wide, and was reached both by a stairway and by a ramp. The palace itself is an elliptical rhomboid, almost like a barrel. The outer walls are decorated with pilasters and semi-columns. The rooms, 36 in all, are grouped armed three courts, presumably, as in the later Assyrian palaces, the centres of the three sections—state apart ments, harem, and dependents' quarters. The decoration given to these apartments is un known. in other sites brilliantly enameled cones were stuck into the soft. bricks to form varied pattern:41. Far larger and more sumptu ous palaces existed in other Babylonian cities, but they have not yet been excavated. Com pared with our rapidly growing, knowledge of the history, religion. and literature of the Baby Ionians, our knowledge of their architecture is small. No history of this architecture can yet be written. It would appear as if the reeon structions by the Neo-Bahylonian kings, such as Nebuchadnezzar. of the ancient sacred shrines, such as the temples of Babylon and Ur, were substantially in the same style as the original structures built 2000 or 3000 years before. See BAnyi,ox; BABEL, TOWER OE: Merritt.