Schrader,[35] and to suppose that “the Great City” of Genesis x. 12 was a group composed of the four towns there enumerated, of which Nineveh proper was the chief, and gave its name to the whole group. [Illustration: Fig. 56.--Chaldæan plan of a fortress.] In the absence of textual evidence, the very sculptures of the Assyrians place before our eyes numerous fortresses in plan or in a bird’s-eye view. One of the statues from Tello represents the patesi Gudea as an architect, holding on his knees a tablet on which is carved in outline the plan of a stronghold (fig. 56). There are six gates flanked by towers, and the walls are surmounted by battlements. In all the bas-reliefs in which sieges are represented, the fortress is seen to be composed of several concentric walls supported by towers of greater elevation than the rampart from which they project, and surmounted by denticulated battlements (figs. 58 and 74), which stand out on corbels beyond the perpendicular surface of the wall. [Illustration: Fig. 57.--Assyrian plan of a fortress (from a bas-relief in the British Museum).] Might we not imagine ourselves in presence of a naïve miniature of the middle ages, representing the siege of a feudal castle, when we examine in the galleries of our museums these Assyrian bas-reliefs, on which are carved the sieges of fortresses, which to defend themselves against battering-rams, arrows, and projectiles of all sorts, are provided with redans and round towers, battlemented pierced with loopholes, and furnished with a system of defence which looks like _ourdeys_ and machicolations? As in the middle ages, a gate is never opened in the wall of a fortified enclosure without being provided with a drawbridge, sheltered by two strong towers, and defended by a projecting structure composed of another rampart and two new bastions. The gate is the weak point; it is the flaw in the cuirass, the natural breach by which the enemy might enter: every system of defence is there ingeniously accumulated, and the walls are thicker at that point. These tall towers, these thick walls were guarded by bodies [Illustration: Fig. 58.--Siege of a fortress (from a bas-relief in the British Museum).]