The next great period is not clearly separated from the first, from which it may have been derived in our judgment by natural growth: it is characterised by the laying out of the whole city and township on much the same lines as it preserved through the succeeding centuries. During this phase there sprang up a wall surrounding the whole township, an outer and inner defensive wall to the citadel, a cross-wall which seemed to have marked some period of renovation, as well as the foundations of an older palace and several other minor features of rearrangement. The buildings of this time are characterised by rows of timber with stone layers between. This phase must be dated in the opinion of the excavators to twelfth century B.C.; and it is noticeable that the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pileser I., is found to have copied the plan of a Hittite palace (called _Hilâni_),[640] which corresponds exactly with the plans of the palaces built upon the citadel during the next period. The third phase is assigned to about the eighth century B.C. The city was now fully established. On its walls rose eight hundred towers. The south gate of the citadel was finally built and adorned with sculptures like the older gateway of the city, but in more elaborate fashion. The corner-stones of the palaces were architectural lions, and their porticos were supported by columns placed upon the backs of sphinxes. Of these palaces there were three in chief, and they conformed to a standard type, which is distinguished by wing-towers on either side of the portico, and was approached by steps leading beyond to a hall around which were several chambers.[641] Thereafter, from about 750 B.C., a date which the documentary evidence supplies, houses sprang up between the palaces. There was a departure from the former strict type of the Hilâni, to admit of greater accommodation, and the purely Hittite character of the buildings was greatly modified. The city seems to have been burned about 680 B.C., corresponding with the date of Esarhaddon’s stela.