believed that there were traces of the fallen vaulting in the _debris_
with which the apartments were filled. His conjecture was combated, soon
after he put it forth, by M. Botta, who gave it as his opinion--first,
that the walls of the chambers, notwithstanding their great thickness,
would have been unable, considering their material, to sustain the
weight, and (still more to bear) the lateral thrust, of a vaulted roof;
and, secondly, that such a roof, if it had existed at all, must have
been made of baked brick or stone-crude brick being too weak for the
purpose--and when it fell must have left ample traces of itself within
the apartments, whereas, in none of them, though he searched, could he
find any such traces. On this latter point M. Botta and M. Flandin--both
eye witnesses--were at variance. M. Flandin believed that he had seen
such traces, not only in numerous broken fragments of burnt brick strewn
through all the chambers, but in occasional masses of brick-work
contained in some of them actual portions, as he thought, of the
original vaulting. M. Botta, however, observed--first, that the quantity
of baked brick within the chambers was quite insufficient for a vaulted
roof; and, secondly, that the position of the masses of brickwork
noticed by M. Flandin was always towards the sides, never towards the
centres of the apartments; a clear proof that they had fallen from the
upper part of the walls above the sculptures, and not from a ceiling
covering the whole room. He further observed that the quantity of
charred wood and charcoal within the chambers, and the calcined
appearance of all the slabs, were phenomena incompatible with any other
theory than that of the destruction of the palace by the conflagration
of a roof mainly of wood.

To these arguments of M. Botta may be added another from the
improbability of the Assyrians being sufficiently advanced in
architectural science to be able to construct an arch of the width