chambers. Where flat timber roofs prevail in the East, their span seems
never to exceed twenty-five feet. The ordinary chambers in the Assyrian
palaces might, undoubtedly, therefore, have been roofed in this way, by
a series of horizontal beans laid across them from side to side, with
the ends resting upon the tops of the side walls. But the great halls
seemed too wide to have borne such a roofing without supports.
Accordingly, M. Botts suggested that in the greater apartments a single
or a double row of pillars ran down the middle, reaching to the roof and
sustaining it. His theory was afterwards warmly embraced by Mr.
Fergusson, who endeavored to point out the exact position of the pillars
in the three great halls of Sargon at Khorsabad. It seems, however, a
strong and almost a fatal objection to this theory, that no bases of
pillars have been found within the apartments, nor any marks on the
brick floors of such bases or of the pressure of the pillars. M. Botta
states that he made a careful search for bases, or for marks of pillars,
on the pavement of the north-east hall (No. VIII.) at Khorsabad, but
that he _entirely failed to discover any_. This negative evidence is the
more noticeable as stone pillar-bases have been found in wide doorways,
where they would have been less necessary than in the chambers, as
pillars in doorways could have had but little weight to sustain.

M. Botta and Mr. Fergusson, who both suppose that in an Assyrian palace
the entire edifice was roofed in, and only the courts left open to the
sky, suggest two very different modes by which the buildings may have
been lighted. M. Botta brings light in from the roof by means of wooden
_louvres_, such as are still employed for the purpose in Armenia and
parts of India, whereof he gives the representation which is reproduced.
[PLATE XLVII., Fig. 7.] Mr. Fergusson introduces light from the sides,
by supposing that the roof did not rest directly on the walls, but on
rows of wooden pillars placed along the edge of the walls both