necessary to cover some of the chambers. The principle of the arch was,
indeed, as will be hereafter shown, well known to the Assyrians, but
hitherto we possess no proof that they were capable of applying it on a
large scale. The widest arch which has been found in any of the
buildings is that of the Khorsabad town-gate uncovered by M. Place,
which spans a space of (at most) fourteen or fifteen feet. But the great
halls of the Assyrian palaces have a width of twenty-five, thirty, and
even forty feet. It is at any rate uncertain whether the constructive
skill of their architects could have grappled successfully with the
difficulty of throwing a vault over so wide an interval as even the
least of these.

M. Botta, after objecting, certainly with great force, to the theory of
M. Flandin, proceeded to suggest a theory of his own. After carefully
reviewing all the circumstances, he gave it as his opinion that the
Khorsabad building had been roofed throughout with a flat, earth-covered
roofing of wood. He observed that some of the buildings on the
bas-reliefs had flat roofs, that flat roofs are still the fashion of the
country, and that the debris within the chambers were exactly such as a
roof of that kind would be likely, if destroyed by fire, to have
produced. He further noticed that on the floors of the chambers, in
various parts of the palace, there had been discovered stone rollers
closely resembling those still in use at Mosul and Baghdad, for keeping
close-pressed and hard the earthen surface of such roofs; which rollers
had, in all probability, been applied to the same use by the Assyrians,
and, being kept on the roofs, had fallen through during the
conflagration.

The first difficulty which presented itself here was one of those
regarded as most fatal to the vaulting theory, namely, the width of the