Moreover, George Smith saw two of these bases in place at one of the entrances to the palace of Assurbanipal. Unfortunately he gives no drawing and his description is wanting in clearness, but he seems to have noticed the traces left by a cylindrical shaft on the upper surface of one base; his expression, "a flat circle to receive the column," evidently means that the latter was sunk into the substance of the base.[278] Here, no doubt was the end of a gallery, like that in front of Sennacherib's palace. There must in all probability have been other remains of these columns besides those noticed by the English explorer, but at Khorsabad alone were the excavations superintended by a professional architect, there alone were they watched by the trained eye of a man capable of giving its true meaning and value to every detail of a ruinous building. At Nimroud, at Kouyundjik, at Nebbi-Younas, many interesting traces of ancient arrangements may have been obliterated in the course of the excavations without those who stood by having the least suspicion of their significance. We might perhaps, if it were worth while, come upon further representations of columns on engraved stones, on ivories, and bronzes,[279] but upon such small objects forms are indicated in a very summary fashion, and, besides, they would be nothing more than curtailed repetitions of motives shown in more detail and upon a larger scale elsewhere. Our readers may fairly judge, from the examples we have placed before them, of the appearance of those columns of wood and metal, which the Chaldaeans used in the light and graceful tabernacles figured for us on the relief from Sippara, and of the more durable stone supports of the Assyrians. Long habit and an excessive respect for tradition, hindered the latter from turning the column to its fullest use. They stopped half way. They employed the feature with such timidity that we can point to nothing that can be called an Assyrian order. They produced nothing to compare with the rich and varied colonnades that we admired in the hypostyle halls of Egypt. And yet we cannot say that they showed any lack of originality or invention in their choice of decorations for the bases and capitals of their columns. Their favourite motive seems to have been the volute, to which, however, they gave an endless variety. They used it, no doubt, in many ways that now escape us, and by applying it now to this purpose and now to that, and sometimes with the happiest results, they accumulated an amount of experience as to the value of those graceful curves which was of great value to their successors. Who those successors were and how they carried to perfection a form which had its origin on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, will be shown in the course of our history. NOTES: [251] See above, p. 118, note 1. [252] TAYLOR, _Notes on Abou-Sharein, and Tell-el-Lahm_, (_Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. xv. p. 404).--ED.