Nothing is more probable than that in places the Khorsabad parapet may have been very much lower than this; and elsewhere it is not even ascertained that any parapet at all edged the platform.
On the whole we seem to have no right to conclude, merely on account of the small portions of parapet wall uncovered by M.Botta, that an upper story was a necessity to the palaces.

If the Assyrians valued a view, they may easily have made their parapets low in places: if they cared so little for it as to shut it out from all their halls and terraces, they may not improbably have dispensed with the advantage altogether.
The two questions of the roofing and lighting of the Assyrian palaces are so closely connected together that they will most conveniently be treated in combination.

The first conjecture published on the subject of roofing was that of M.Flandin.who suggested that the chambers generally--the great halls at any rate--had been ceiled with a brick vault.

He thought that the complete filling up of the apartments to the height of fifteen or twenty feet was thus best explained; and he believed that there were traces of the fallen vaulting in the _debris_ with which the apartments were filled.

His conjecture was combated, soon after he put it forth, by M.Botta, who gave it as his opinion--first, that the walls of the chambers, notwithstanding their great thickness, would have been unable, considering their material, to sustain the weight, and (still more to bear) the lateral thrust, of a vaulted roof; and, secondly, that such a roof, if it had existed at all, must have been made of baked brick or stone-crude brick being too weak for the purpose--and when it fell must have left ample traces of itself within the apartments, whereas, in none of them, though he searched, could he find any such traces.