Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec.  The plan is traced upon the tablet held in the lap of Statue E in the Louvre.  Below the plan can be seen the ruler marked with the divisions used by the architect for drawing his designs to the desired scale; the scribe’s stylus is represented lying on the left of the plan. [Prof.  Petrie has shown that the unit of measurement represented on this ruler is the cubit of the Pyramid-builders of Egypt.—­Te.]

Gudea did not destroy the work of his remote predecessor, he merely incorporated it into the substructures of the new building, thus showing an indifference similar to that evinced by the Pharaohs for the monuments of a former dynasty.  The palaces, like the temples, never rose directly from the soil, but were invariably built on the top of an artificial mound of crude brick.  At Lagash, this solid platform rises to the height of 40 feet above the plain, and the only means of access to the top is by a single narrow steep staircase, easily cut off or defended.

[Illustration:  249.jpg TERRA-COTTA BARREL-right]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the facsimile by Place.

The palace which surmounts this artificial eminence describes a sort of irregular rectangle, 174 feet long by 69 feet wide, and had, contrary to the custom in Egypt, the four angles orientated to the four cardinal points.  The two principal sides are not parallel, but swell out slightly towards the middle, and the flexion of the lines almost follows the contour of one of those little clay cones upon which the kings were wont to inscribe their annals or dedications.  This flexure was probably not intentional on the part of the architect, but was owing to the difficulty of keeping a wall of such considerable extent in a straight line from one end to another; and all Eastern nations, whether Chaldaeans or Egyptians, troubled themselves but little about correctness of alignment, since defects of this kind were scarcely ever perceptible in the actual edifice, and are only clearly revealed in the plan drawn out to scale with modern precision.*

* Mons. Heuzey thinks that the outward deflection of the lines is owing “merely to a primitive method of obtaining greater solidity of construction, and of giving a better foundation to these long facades, which are placed upon artificial terraces of crude brick always subject to cracks and settlements.”  I think that the explanation of the facts which I have given in the text is simpler than that ingeniously proposed by Mons. Heuzey:  the masons, having begun to build the wall at one end, were unable to carry it on in a straight line until it reached the spot denoted on the architect’s plan, and therefore altered the direction of the wall when they detected their error; or, having begun to build the wall from both ends simultaneously, were not successful in making the two lines meet correctly, and they have frankly patched up the junction by a mass of projecting brickwork which conceals their unskilfulness.

[Illustration:  250.jpg PLAN OF THE EXISTING BUILDINGS OF TELLOH.]