Diodorus Siculus informs us that the top of the staged towers was occupied by statues, for which the zikkurat would only form a sort of pedestal: “At the summit of the ascent,” he says, “Semiramis placed three golden statues wrought with the hammer.” These statues were perhaps in the interior of the sanctuary which generally crowned the building; everything makes it probable also that little chapels were constructed at each stage in the thickness of the structure, and that each of them was consecrated to the stellar deity of whom the colour of the stage was emblematic. The chapel on the summit was covered by a gilded cupola, which glittered under the glorious sunlight of the pure eastern sky, and dazzled all beholders. Nebuchadnezzar relates in his inscriptions that he overlaid the dome of the sanctuary of Bel Marduk “with plates of wrought gold so that it shone like the day.” Does not Herodotus tell us that the last stage of the citadel of Ecbatana was gilded? Finally, Taylor picked up among the ruins on the summit of the _zikkurat_ at Abu Shahrein, a large quantity of thin plates of gold, still furnished with the gilded nails, which had served to fix them to the walls. Besides these sanctuaries erected on the top of staged towers, in which the priests passed the night in watching the courses of the stars, there were other temples not provided with similar basements. Thus, on a bas-relief from the palace of Sargon, we see a representation of the pillage of the temple of the god Haldia at Musasir, in Armenia (fig. 54). This sanctuary, built upon a terrace like that of a palace, has a façade decorated with a triangular pediment, like a Greek temple. Instead of a portico with columns to support the pediment, there are thick pilasters to the number of six, adorned at intervals with projecting horizontal lines, and with disks, which are seen upon the façade also, and may be taken for votive bucklers. Between the two middle pilasters is the door of the temple, the opening of which is enclosed by an architrave in stone; on each side of the door and of the same height as it, are two colossal genii in human form, carved in stone and holding lances, the points of which rise even higher than the pillars; behind them are lions; lastly, some distance in front of the door, two gigantic basins, probably of bronze, resting on tripods, recall the great vessel found before the façade of the palace of Tello, the brazen sea in the temple of Solomon, the vase from the temple of Amathus: they were basins for lustral water. [Illustration: Fig. 54.--Temple of the god Haldia (after a bas-relief at Khorsabad, Botta, pl. 141).]