The edifice which surmounts the platform at Tello is of bricks cemented together with bitumen; its exterior walls are 5 ft. 10 in. thick, and form a parallelogram 173 ft. long and 101 ft. broad. Like the palaces of Warka and Mugheir, its orientation is according to the Assyrian custom--that is to say, the angles are turned towards the cardinal points, not the sides as in the Egyptian monuments. The two longer sides bulge slightly towards the middle, thus describing two opposite elliptical curves--a peculiarity which gives to the plan of the edifice something of the appearance of [Illustration: Fig. 2.--Plan of the palace at Tello (after Heuzey).] a barrel, or of two trapeziums joined at the base. The outer surface of the walls is not everywhere uniform and flat; the adjacent sides of the northern angle are ornamented by projections alternately curved and rectilineal--a system of decoration which has also been observed at Warka, among the ruins of the temple called Wuswas, and is found later in the Assyrian monuments. The great north-eastern façade exhibits in the middle, besides the outward swell of which we have spoken, a projection 3 ft. 3 in. thick and 18 ft. long. The wings of this projection are formed of square pilasters and half-columns 1 ft. 7 in. in diameter, which recall the clustered pillars of our cathedrals, and form one of the most interesting peculiarities of the primitive architecture of Chaldæa. Taylor[5] and [Illustration: Fig. 3.--Section of pillar (after Heuzey).]