ABSTRACT
The foundation of a city is a religious act, and each detail in the arrangements is marked by long and complicated rites. It does not suffice to trace out an ·~nclosure, to plan streets, to open markets, to assemble haphazard several thousands of families: if the founder wishes that his work should. last and prosper, he must draw within its walls not only a human population, hut a divine one, too; he must invoke a number of gods, who will, not leave the town ~nd will undertake to protect the inhabitants. Sargen, before commencing
his enterprise, devoutly consulted Hea, the king of the gods, and his sister Damkou. He went to the temple of lAhtar, queen of Nineveh, and in the sanctuary itself he implored the goddess to bless his scheme. His request found favour in her eyes. She ordered him to commence the works, and relying upon the promises of the divinity, who never deceives her votaries, he immediately assembled his labourers and collected materials of all kinds. The city, erected upon a regular plan, was to form an almost perfect square, of about seven hundred acres. The angles exactly corresponded with the four points of heaven; the sides were traced on the soil by means of a banquette twenty-five yards' wide, built of slabs of calcareous stone hewn from the neighbouring mountains. To sanctify this structure and to avert evil influences, figurines in baked clay, representing the great gods of the country, cylinders covered with inscriptions, and amulets of various form, were placed in different parts of it, particularly in the openings reserved for the gateways. But the Assyrian architects, servile pupils of the old masters of Chaldea, never willingly use stone; as soon as the wall was a little more: than three feet high they continued the work in bricks up to the top.
