Note 31 — Chapter I · CIVIL AND MILITARY ARCHITECTURE.

So far as I know, Place alone has given this problem a moment’s attention (Ninive, vol. i. p. 279), but nothing could be more improbable than the hypothesis by which he attempts to solve it. He suggests that one of the drains of which we have already spoken may have been a conduit or siphon in communication with some subterranean reservoir and provided with pumping apparatus at its summit. We have no evidence whatever that the principle of the suction-pump was known to the Assyrians.