Part 4 (2/2)

”Sennacherib, king of assyria Hewn stones, _which_, as the Gods[43]

willed, were found in the land of Belad, for the _walls_ (?) (or foundations, the word reads '_shi+bri_') of n countries_ (?) and the people of the forests (Kershani), the great bulls for the gates of )”

If this inscription be rightly rendered, we have direct evidence that captives froreat public works undertaken by the assyrian kings, as ere led to infer, from the variety of costume represented in the bas-reliefs, and fros of some of the workmen The Jews themselves, after their captivity, may have been thus condeypt, in erecting the nise thest the builders portrayed in the sculptures

Froments of inscriptions without the sculptured representations of the events recorded Theonto Dr Hincks it is to be translated:--

”Sennacherib, king of assyria(some object, the nature not ascertained) of wood, which froh_ ?) the Kharri, or Khasri, on sledges (or boats), I caused to be carried (or to mount)”

The name of the river in this inscription very nearly resembles that of the sreat raph, we have ht from Mount Lebanon, and taken up (to the top of the ris” These may have been beams of cedar, which, it will be hereafter seen, were extensively used in the assyrian palaces It is highly interesting thus to find the inhabitants of Nineveh fetching their rare and precious woods froht the choicest ork of the te from or up the saallery containing the bas-relief representing the reat stone, led out of a chamber, whose walls had been completely uncovered The sculptures upon them were partly preserved, and recorded the conquest of a city standing on a broad river, in the midst of mountains and forests

The last bas-relief of the series represented the king seated within a fortified ca beneath his feet a footstool of equally elegant for to their ankles Unfortunately, no inscription reht identify the conquered nation

It will be remembered that excavations had been resu the enclosure round Kouyunjik It was apparently the re into this quarter of the city, and part of a building, with fragures, had already been discovered in it By the end of November, the whole had been explored, and the results were of considerable interest As the ed to tunnel along the walls of the building within it, through a co al the rows of low li through two halls or chath to the opposite entrance

This gateway, facing the open country, was formed by a pair of th, still entire, though cracked and injured by fire They were si the lofty head-dress, richly ornae of feathers peculiar to that period Their faces were in full, and the relief was high and bold More knowledge of art was shown in the outline of the limbs and in the delineation of the muscles, than in any sculpture I have seen of this period The naked leg and foot were designed with a spirit and truthfulness worthy of a Greek artist It is, however, reures were unfinished, none of the details having been put in, and parts being but roughly outlined

The sculptures to the left, on entering from the open country, were in a far more unfinished state than those on the opposite side The hair and beard were but roughlythe elaborate curls The horned cap of the hus ular, still requiring to be rounded off, and to have expression given to theures were more perfect No inscription had yet been carved on either sculpture

The entrance formed by these colossal bulls was fourteen feet and a quarter wide It was paved with large slabs of li the marks of chariot wheels The sculptures were buried in a led with charcoal and charred wood; for ”the gates of the land had been set wide open unto the enehted from above by a deep shaft sunk from the top of the mound It would be difficult to describe the effect produced, or the reflections suggested by these solelooes, you suddenly came into their presence Between theht and glory to the conquest of distant lands, and had returned rich with spoil and captives, ast whom may have been the handh them, too, the assyrian monarch had entered his capital in shame, after his last and fatal defeat Then the lofty walls, now but long lines of loave-like ht and to the left--a base a curtain of solid bricktowers

Behind the colossal figures, and between the outer and inner face of the gateere two chath, by 23 in breadth Of that part of the entrance which ithin the walls, only the frag my previous researches, now remained

The whole entrance thus consisted of two distinct chaateways, two formed by human-headed bulls, and a third between them simply panelled with low liht, including the tower, must have been full one hundred feet Most of the baked bricks found ast the rubbish bore the name of Sennacherib, the builder of the palace of Kouyunjik A siures, and panelled with plain alabaster slabs, was subsequently discovered in the inner line of walls forle, where the road to Baashi+ekhah and Baazani leaves the ruins

At Nimroud discoveries of very considerable ih conicalthat remarkable ruin, I had e a tunnel into its western base After penetrating for no less than eighty-four feet through a coravel, earth, burnt bricks, and fragments of stone, the excavators came to a wall of solid stone masonry I have already observed that the edifice covered by this high inally built upon the natural rock, a bank of hard conglo about fifteen feet above the plain, and washed in days of yore by the waters of the Tigris Our tunnel was carried for thirty-four feet on a level with this rock, which appears to have been covered by a kind of flooring of sun-dried bricks, probably once for It was buried to the distance of thirty feet fro upon the base stone h, and in it were found bones apparently human, and a yellow earthen jar, rudely colored with sins The rest of this part of the h which ran two thin lines of extraneous deposit, one _of pebbles_, the other of fragments of brick and pottery I am totally at a loss to account for their for the base to reach some doorway or entrance, but it was found to consist of solid th of the ularly enough, coincides with that assigned by Xenophon to the stone basement of the wall of the city (Larissa)[45] The stones in this structure were carefully fitted together, though not united with mortar, unless the earth which filled the crevices was the remains of mud, used, as it still is in the country, as a ce bevel, and in the face of the ere eight recesses or false s, four on each side of a square projecting block between gradines

The basement, of which this wall proved to be only one face, was not excavated on the northern and eastern side until a later period, but I will describe all the discoveries connected with this singular building at once The northern side was of the saht as, and resembled in its masonry, the western It had a semicircular hollow projection in the centre, sixteen feet in diameter, on the east side of which were two recesses, and on the west four, so that the two ends of the ere not uniforreat artificial mound or platform abutted, and which was consequently concealed by it, that is, the eastern and southern sides, was of simple stone masonry without recesses or orna on the stone substructure, consisted of compact masonry of burnt bricks, which were mostly inscribed with the na), the inscription being in many instances turned outwards

It was thus evident that the high conicalthe north-west corner of the ruins of Nimroud, was the remains of a square tower, and not of a pyramid, as had previously been conjectured The lower part, built of solid stone es, but the upper walls of burnt brick, and the inneroutwards, and having been subsequently covered with earth and vegetation, the ruin had taken the pyra in this manner would naturally assume

It is very probable that this ruin represents the toraphers, stood at the entrance of the city of Nineveh It will hereafter be seen that it is not impossible the builder of the north-west palace of Nih it is doubtful whether he can be identified with the historical Sardanapalus Subsequent discoveries proved that he h his son, whose na It was, of course, natural to conjecture that some traces of the chamber in which the royal remains were deposited, were to be found in the ruin, and I deter first ascertained the exact centre of the western stone baseh it This was a work of soly built of large rough stones Having, however, accoh the mound, at its very base, and on a level with the natural rock, until we reached the opposite base been discovered by this cutting, I directed a second to beit exactly in the centre, and reaching from the northern to the southern base was made in the centre of the mound, on a line with the top of the stone basement wall, which was also the level of the platform of the north-west palace The work, 12 feet high, and 6 feet broad, which was blocked up at the two ends without any entrance being left into it It was vaulted with sun-dried bricks, a further proof of the use of the arch at a very early period, and the vault had in one or two places fallen in No rements of sculpture or inscription, nor any smaller relic There were, however, undoubted traces of its having once been broken into on the western side, by digging into the face of the mound after the edifice was in ruins, and consequently, therefore, long after the fall of the assyrian empire The remains which it , with vessels of precious metals and other objects of value buried with it, had been carried off by those who had opened the tomb at some remote period, in search of treasure They must have had some clue to the precise position of the cha into the ht spot? Had this depositary of the dead escaped earlier violation, who can tell hat valuable and iht have furnished us? I explored, with feelings of great disappointment, the empty chamber, and then opened other tunnels, without further results, in the upper parts of the allery or chamber I have described was the place of deposit for the body of the king, if this were really his tos in other parts of the mound only exposed a compact and solid mass of sun-dried brick masonry I much doubt, for many reasons, whether any sepulchre exists in the rock beneath the foundations of the tower, though, of course, it is not impossible that such may be the case[46]

From the present state of the ruin it is difficult to conjecture the exact original forht of this edifice There can be no doubt that it was a vast square tower, and it is not improbable that it radines, like the obelisk of black marble from the centre palace now in the British Museum Like the palaces, too, it was probably painted on the outside with various ures and devices, and its summit may have been crowned by an altar, on which the assyrian king offered up his great sacrifices, or on which was fed the ever-burning sacred fire But I will defer any further remarks upon this subject until I treat of the architecture of the assyrians

As the ruin is 140 feet high, the building could scarcely have been much less than 200, whilst the i the base shows that itthe two reater part of the discoveries described in this chapter were made, I was occupied al spent between Ni to visit Baasheikhah, Khorsabad, and other ruins at the foot of the range of low hills of the Gebel Makloub, I left Nimroud on the 26th of Noveht us to soe of Lak, about three h road to Mosul Here we found a party of work under one of the Christian superintendents Nothing had been discovered except frag the na As the ruins, from their size, did not promise other results, I sent thefor nearly eight hours over a rich plain, capable of very high cultivation, though wanting in water, and still well stocked with villages, bethich we startled large flocks of gazelles and bustards

I had sent one of my overseers there some days before to uncover the platform to the west of the principal edifice, a part of the building I was desirous of exa away the rubbish, he had discovered two bas-reliefs sculptured in black stone They represented a hunting scene, and were executed with , believed to be a temple, entirely constructed of black marble, and attached to the palace It stood upon a platforth and 100 in width, raised about six feet above the level of the flooring of the chaht of broad steps This platforrey limestone carried round the four sides,--one of the few remains of exterior decoration in assyrian architecture, hich we are acquainted It is carefully built of separate stones, placed _side by side_, each forusson observes,[47] with reference to it, ”at first sight it seeyptian; but there are peculiarities in which it differs fro continued beyond the vertical tangent, and the consequent projection of the torus giving a second shadow Whether the effect of this would be pleasant or not in a cornice placed so high that we must look up to it, is not quite clear; but below the level of the eye, or slightly above it, the result ypt, and where sculpture is not added ments of bas-reliefs in the saures, had been uncovered; but this building has been more completely destroyed than any other part of the palace of Khorsabad, and there is scarcely enough rubbish even to cover the few remains of sculpture which are scattered over the platform