To each planet fancy, partly grounding itself upon fact, had from of old assigned a peculiar tint or hue.

The Sun was golden, the Moon silver; the distant Saturn, almost beyond the region of light, was black; Jupiter was orange the fiery Mars was red; Venus was a pale Naples yellow; Mercury a deep blue.
The seven stages of the tower, like the seven walls of Ecbatana, gave a visible embodiment to these fancies.

The basement stage, assigned to Saturn, was blackened by means of a coating of bitumen spread over the face of the masonry; the second stage, assigned to Jupiter, obtained the appropriate orange color by means of a facing of burnt bricks of that hue; the third stage, that of Mars, was made blood-red by the use of half-burnt bricks formed of a bright red clay; the fourth stage, assigned to the Sun, appears to have been actually covered with thin plates of gold; the fifth, the stage of Venus, received a pale yellow tint from the employment of bricks of that hue; the sixth, the sphere of Mercury, was given an azure tint by vitrifaction, the whole stage having been subjected to an intense heat after it was erected, whereby the bricks composing it were converted into a mass of blue slag; the seventh stage, that of the Moon, was probably, like the fourth, coated with actual plates of metal.

Thus the building rose up in stripes of varied color, arranged almost as nature's cunning arranges hues in the rainbow, tones of red coming first, succeeded by a broad stripe of yellow, the yellow being followed by blue.

Above this the glowing silvery summit melted into the bright sheen of the sky.