entered either from the hall or from the outer air.  Beyond the great hall was probably a domed chamber, equalling it in width, and opening upon a court, round which were a number of moderate-sized apartments.  The entire building was no doubt an oblong square, of which the shorter sides seem to have measured 370 feet.  It had at least three, and may not improbably have had a larger number of entrances, since it belongs to tranquil times and a secure locality.

[Illustration:  PLATE XXVIII.]

The ornamentation of the existing facade of the palace is by doorways, doubly-arched recesses, pilasters, and string-courses.  These last divide the building, externally, into an appearance of three or four distinct stories.  The first and second stories are broken into portions by pilasters, which in the first or basement stories are in pairs, but in the second stand singly.  It is remarkable that the pilasters of the second story are not arranged with any regard to those of the first, and are consequently in many cases not superimposed upon the lower pilasters.  In the third and fourth stories there are no pilasters, the arched recesses being here continued without any interruption.  Over the great arch of the central hall, a foiling of seventeen small semicircular arches constitutes a pleasing and unusual feature.

The Mashita palace, which was almost certainly built between A.D. 614 and A.D. 627, while on a smaller scale than that of Ctesiphon, was far more richly ornamented. [PLATE XXVIII., Fig. 2.] This construction of Chosroes II. (Parwiz) consisted of two distinct, buildings (separated by a court-yard, in which was a fountain), extending each of them about 180 feet along the front, with a depth respectively of 140 and 150 feet.  The main building, which lay to the north, was entered from the courtyard by three archways, semicircular and standing side by side, separated only by columns of hard, white stone, of a quality approaching to marble.  These columns were surmounted by debased Corinthian capitals, of a type introduced by Justinian, and supported arches which were very richly fluted, and which are said to have been “not unlike our own late Norman work.” [PLATE XXIX., Fig. 2.] The archways gave entrance into an oblong court or hall, about 80 feet long, by sixty feet wide, on which opened by a wide doorway the main room of the building.  This was a triapsal hall, built of brick, and surmounted by a massive domed roof of the same material, which rested on pendentives like those employed at Serbistan and at Firuzabad.  The diameter of the hall was a little short of 60 feet.  On either side of the triapsal hall, and in its rear, and again on either side of the court or hall on which it opened, were rooms of a smaller size, generally opening into each other, and arranged symmetrically, each side being the exact counterpart of the other.  The number of these smaller apartments was twenty-five. [PLATE XXIX., Fig. 1.]