THE
Repository
OF
ARTS, LITERATURE, COMMERCE,
Manufactures, Fashions, and Politics,
For APRIL, 1809.
The Fourth Number.
The suffrage of the wise,
The praise that’s worth ambition, is attain’d
By sense alone, and dignity of mind.
HISTORY OF THE USEFUL AND POLITE ARTS.
(Continued from page 136.)
ARCHITECTURE OF THE BABYLONIANS AND PERSIANS.
Taste and the arts were known in Egypt before they penetrated into the regions bordering on the Euphrates, where Babylon was the source and center of civilization. The ancient historians speak with admiration of several monuments of Babylonian architecture: Herodotus, in particular, extols, as an eye- witness, the prodigious size and magnificence of the temple of Belus. According to his account, it was built in the form of a pyramid of very great extent and height, containing a large temple below, and a smaller in the upper part. This form and disposition perfectly correspond with the style of architecture which was introduced subsequent to the period of subterraneous temples, for Indian pagodas, and which still prevails in those countries.
As the country round Babylon,
to a great distance, has neither
timber, limestone, nor quarries of any
kind, the Babylonian edifices were
constructed only of bricks cemented
with bitumen, and therefore were
tar inferior in durability and skill
to those of the Egyptians: the
columns too, in the former, were
nothing but the trunks of palm-trees.
But it was this very want of large
stones for building that occasioned
the invention, by the Babylonians,
of the art of turning arches, which
was unknown to the Egyptians.
The principal decorations of the
Babylonian edifices were cast of
No. IV. Vol. I. Dd
