Part 34

When Mr. Layard revisited Kouyunjik in 1849, there were no vestiges of the sculptured walls discovered two years previously. The more recent trenches, however, dug under the superintendence of Mr. Ross, were still open; and the workmen employed by direction of the British Museum had run tunnels along the walls within the mound, to save the trouble of clearing away the soil, which had accumulated to a depth of thirty feet above the ruins. Under the direction of Layard, the excavations were resumed with great spirit, and before the lapse of many weeks, several chambers had been entered, and numerous bas-reliefs discovered. One hall, 124 feet by 90 feet, appears, says Layard, "to have formed a center, around which the principal chambers in this part of the palace were grouped. Its walls had been completely covered with the most elaborate and highly-finished sculptures. Unfortunately, all the bas-reliefs, as well as the gigantic monsters at the entrances, had suffered more or less from the fire which had destroyed the edifice; but enough of them still remained to show the subject, and even to enable him, in many places, to restore it entirely."

Continuing his discoveries in the mound, Layard "opened no less than seventy-one halls and chambers, also passages, whose walls, almost without an exception, had been paneled with slabs of sculptured alabaster, recording the wars, the triumphs, and the great deeds of the Assyrian king. By a rough calculation, about 9,880 feet, or nearly two miles of bas-reliefs, with twenty-seven portals formed by colossal winged bulls and lion sphinxes, were uncovered in that part alone of the building explored during his researches. The cut on page 435 shows some of them. The greatest length of the excavations was about 720 feet, the greatest breadth about 600 feet. The pavement of the chambers was from twenty to thirty-five feet below the surface of the mound. The measurements merely include that part of the palace actually excavated."

[Illustration: DISCOVERED IN THE PALACE.

EXPLANATION OF CUT.

1.} Figures from the portal of the palace of Sennacherib, having 2.} the forms of winged bulls with human heads, bearing crowns. 3. King Sennacherib on his throne. A sculpture found at Nimroud, dating from the 7th century Before Christ. 4. A king on the hunt. 5. The storming of a fortress. In the foreground are two warriors clad in armor, helmeted and heavily armed with swords and spears. 6.} Vases of glass and alabaster engraved with the word Sargon. 7.} From Nimroud. 8. Vessel of glazed earthenware--, found at Babel. 9. Bronze drinking cup ornamented with the head of an animal. 10. Lamp of earthenware. 11. Stuff woven in patterns of Assyrian style. From relief at Nimroud. 12. Table formed of fragments of sculptures found at Nimroud. 13.} 14.} Swords. 15.} 16. Bent sword. 17. Double edged ax. 18. Spear. 19. Quiver filled with arrows and elaborately sculptured. 20. Bow. 21.} 22.} Daggers and knife in one case. 23.} 24. Helmet. 25. Round shield such as was borne by foot soldiers. 26. Breastplate of a knight of high degree. 27. Parasol found at Nimroud. (Now in British Museum.) 28. Ear-ring of gold. 29.} 30.} 31.} Bracelets of gold. 32.} 33.{ 34.{ Diadems. 35. Wall painting representing lions.]

Most of the sculptures discovered in this hall and group of chambers have been deposited in the British Museum.

For the more recent collection of sculptures which have been brought to light, we are indebted to Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, a native of Mosul, and a friend and colleague of Layard; and to Mr. William Kennet Loftus, the agent of the Assyrian excavation fund. In 1852, Mr. Rassam was appointed by the Trustees of the British Museum to take charge of the excavations at Nineveh. For more than a year his researches were nearly fruitless, when, at length, just as his appointment was about to terminate, he turned again to a previously-abandoned trench in the north side of the mound, and was almost immediately rewarded by the discovery of numerous chambers and passages, covered with a variety of bas-reliefs in an excellent state of preservation, having suffered less injury from fire than those of the other palaces. In one room was a lion hunt, in a continuous series of twenty-three slabs, with but one interval. The other slabs represented exteriors of palaces, gardens, battles, sieges, processions, etc., the whole forming the decorations of what must have been a splendid palace.

Subsequently, in 1854, at the instance of Sir Henry Rawlinson, Mr. Loftus and his coadjutor, Mr. Boutcher, transferred their operations from South Babylonia to Nineveh. At first Mr. Loftus' excavations were unsuccessful, but about the beginning of August he discovered the remains of a building on a level twenty feet lower than the palace that Mr. Rassam was exploring, and which proved to be a lower terrace of the same building, even more highly elaborated and in better preservation than those previously discovered in the ruins. At the entrance of an ascending passage there was also found a "mass of solid masonry--apparently the pier of an arch--the springing of which is formed by projecting horizontal layers of limestone."

Mr. Loftus, in his Report of the 9th of October, observes: "The excavations carried on at the western angle of the North Palace, Kouyunjik, continue to reveal many interesting and important facts, and to determine several points which were previously doubtful.

"1. The existence of an outer basement wall of roughly cut stone blocks, supporting a mud wall, upon which white plaster still remains, and from which painted bricks have fallen. 2. At the corner of the palace, and at a considerable distance from the principal chambers, is an entrance hall, with column bases, precisely as we see them represented in the sculptures. 3. Above this entrance hall and its adjoining chambers, there was formerly another story, the first upper rooms yet discovered in Assyria. This, with its sculptured slabs, has fallen into the rooms below. 4. The various sculptures here disinterred are the works of four, if not five, different artists, whose styles are distinctly visible. It is evident that this portion of the edifice has been willfully destroyed, the woodwork burned, and the slabs broken to pieces. The faces of all the principal figures are slightly injured by blows of the ax."

This highly interesting series of bas-reliefs, which has now been placed in a lower chamber in the British Museum, consequently represents the siege and capture of Lachish, as described in the Second Book of Kings, and in the inscriptions on the human-headed bulls. Sennacherib himself is seen seated on his throne, and receiving the submission of the inhabitants of the city, whilst he had sent his generals to demand the tribute of payment from Hezekiah. The defenders of the castle walls and the prisoners tortured and crouching at the conqueror's feet are Jews, and the sculptor has evidently endeavored to indicate the peculiar physiognomy of the race, and the dress of the people.

The value of this discovery can scarcely be overrated. Whilst we have thus the representations of an event recorded in the Old Testament, of which consequently these bas-reliefs furnish a most interesting and important illustration, they serve to a certain extent to test the accuracy of the interpretation of the cuneiform inscriptions, and to remove any doubt that might still exist as to the identification of the King who built the palace on the mound of Kouyunjik with the Sennacherib of Scripture. Had these bas-reliefs been the only remains dug up from the ruins of Nineveh, the labor of the explorer would have been amply rewarded, and the sum expended by the nation on the excavations more than justified. They furnish, together with the inscriptions which they illustrate, and which are also now deposited in the national collection, the most valuable cotemporary historical record possessed by any museum in the world. They may be said to be the actual manuscript, caused to be written or carved by the principal actor in the events which it relates. Who would have believed it probable or possible, before these discoveries were made, that beneath the heap of earth and rubbish which marked the site of Nineveh, there would be found the history of the wars between Hezekiah and Sennacherib, written at the very time when they took place by Sennacherib himself and confirming even in minute details the Biblical record? He who would have ventured to predict such a discovery would have been treated as a dreamer or an impostor. Had it been known that such a monument really existed, what sum would have been considered too great for the precious record?

A few remarks are necessary on the architecture and architectural decorations, external and internal of the Assyrian palaces. The inscriptions on their walls, especially on those of Kouyunjik and Khorsabad, appear to contain important and even minute details not only as to their general plan and mode of construction, but even as to the materials employed for their different parts, and for the objects of sculpture and ornaments placed in them. (Capt. Jones calculated that the mound of Kouyunjik contains 14,500,000 tons of earth, and that its construction would have taken 10,000 men for twelve years.) This fact furnishes another remarkable analogy between the records of the Jewish and Assyrian kings. To the history of their monarchs and of their nation, the Hebrew chroniclers have added a full account of the building and ornaments of the temple and palaces of Solomon. In both cases, from the use of technical words, we can scarcely hope to understand, with any degree of certainty, all the details. It is impossible to comprehend, by the help of the description alone, the plan or appearance of the temple of Solomon. This arises not only from our being unacquainted with the exact meaning of various Hebrew architectural terms, but also from the difficulty experienced even in ordinary cases, of restoring from mere description an edifice of any kind. In the Assyrian inscriptions we labor, of course, under still greater disadvantages. The language in which they were written is as yet but very imperfectly known, and although we may be able to explain with some confidence the general meaning of the historical paragraphs, yet when we come to technical words relating to architecture, even with a very intimate acquaintance with the Assyrian tongue, we could scarcely hope to ascertain their precise signification. On the other hand, the materials, and the general plan of the Assyrian palaces are still preserved, whilst of the great edifices of the Jews, not a fragment of masonry, nor the smallest traces, are probably left to guide us. But, as Mr. Fergusson has shown, the architecture of the one people may be illustrated by that of the other. With the help of the sacred books, and of the ruins of the palaces of Nineveh, together with those of cotemporary and after remains, as well as from customs still existing in the East, we may, to a certain extent, ascertain the principal architectural features of the buildings of both nations.

Before suggesting a general restoration of the royal edifices of Nineveh, we shall endeavor to point out the analogies which appear to exist between their actual remains and what is recorded of the temple and palaces of Solomon. In the first place, as Sennacherib in his inscriptions declares himself to have done, the Jewish king sent the bearers of burdens and the hewers into the mountains to bring great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundations, which were probably artificial platforms, resembling the Assyrian mounds, though constructed of more solid materials. We have the remains of such a terrace or stage of stone masonry, perhaps built by King Solomon himself, at Baalbec. The enormous size of some of the hewn stones in that structure, and of those still remaining in the quarries, some of which are more than sixty feet long, has excited the wonder of modern travelers. The dimensions of the temple of Jerusalem, threescore cubits long, twenty broad, and thirty high, were much smaller than those of the great edifices explored in Assyria. Solomon's own palace, however, appears to have been considerably larger, and to have more nearly approached in its proportions those of the kings of Nineveh, for it was one hundred cubits long, fifty broad and thirty high. "The porch before the temple," twenty cubits by ten, may have been a propylæum, such as was discovered at Khorsabad in front of the palace. The chambers, with the exception of the oracle, were exceedingly small, the largest being only seven cubits broad, "for without, _in the wall_ of the house, he made numerous rests round about, that _the beams_ should not be fastened in the walls of the house." The words in italics are inserted in our version to make good the sense, and may consequently not convey the exact meaning, which may be, that these apartments were thus narrow in order that the beams might be supported without the use of pillars, a reason already suggested for the narrowness of the greater number of chambers in the Assyrian palaces. These smaller rooms appear to have been built round a large central hall called the oracle, the whole arrangement thus corresponding with the courts, halls, and surrounding rooms at Nimroud, Khorsabad, and Kouyunjik. The oracle was twenty cubits square, smaller far in dimensions than the Nineveh halls; but it was twenty cubits _high_--an important fact, illustrative of Assyrian architecture, for as the building itself was thirty cubits in height the oracle must not only have been much loftier than the adjoining chambers, but must have had an upper structure of ten cubits. Within it were the two cherubim of olive wood ten cubits high, with wings each five cubits long--"and he carved all the house around with carved figures of cherubim and palm trees, and open flowers, within and without." The cherubim have been described by Biblical commentators as mythic figures, uniting the human head with the body of a lion, or an ox, and the wings of an eagle. If for the palm trees we substitute the sacred trees of the Nineveh sculptures, and for the open flowers the Assyrian tulip-shaped ornament--objects most probably very nearly resembling each other--we find that the oracle of the temple was almost identical, in the general form of its ornaments, with some of the chambers of Nimroud and Khorsabad. In the Assyrian halls, too, the winged human-headed bulls were on the side of the wall, and their wings, like those of the cherubim, "touched one another in the midst of the house." The dimensions of these figures were in some cases nearly the same in the Jewish and Assyrian temples, namely, fifteen feet square. The doors were also carved with cherubim and palm trees, and open flowers; and thus, with the other parts of the building, corresponded with those of the Assyrian palaces. On the walls at Nineveh the only addition appears to have been the introduction of the human form and the image of the king, which were an abomination to the Jews. The pomegranates and lilies of Solomon's temple must have been nearly identical with the usual Assyrian ornament, in which, and

## particularly at Khorsabad, the promegranate frequently takes the place

of the tulip and the cune.

But the description given by Josephus of the interior of one of Solomon's houses still more completely corresponds with and illustrates the chambers in the palaces of Nineveh. "Solomon built some of these (houses) with stones of ten cubits, and wainscoted the walls with other stones that were sawed, and were of great value, such as were dug out of the bowels of the earth, for ornaments of temples," etc. The arrangement of the curious workmanship of these stones was in three rows; but the fourth was pre-eminent for the beauty of its sculpture, for on it were represented trees and all sorts of plants, with the shadows caused by their branches and the leaves that hung down from them. These trees and plants covered the stone that was beneath them, and their leaves were wrought so wonderfully thin and subtle that they appeared almost in motion; but the rest of the wall, up to the roof, was plastered over, and, as it were, wrought over with various colors and pictures.

To complete the analogy between the two edifices, it would appear that Solomon was seven years building his temple, and Sennacherib about the same time in erecting his great palace at Kouyunjik.

The ceiling, roof, and beams of the Jewish temple were of cedar wood. The discoveries of the ruins at Nimroud show that the same precious wood was used in Assyrian edifices; and the king of Nineveh, as we learn from the inscriptions, sent men, precisely as Solomon had done, to cut it in Mount Lebanon. Fir was also employed in the Jewish buildings, and probably in those of Assyria.

In order to understand the proposed restoration of the palace at Kouyunjik from the existing remains, the reader must refer to the cut, on page 427, of the excavated ruins. It will be remembered that the building does not face the cardinal points of the compass. We will, however, assume, for convenience sake that it stands due north and south. To the south, therefore, it immediately overlooked the Tigris; and on that side rose one of the principal facades. The edifice must have stood on the very edge of the platform, the foot of which was at that time washed by the river, which had five massive staircases leading to the river. Although from the fact of there having been a grand entrance to the palace on the east side, it is highly probable that some such approach once existed on the west side, yet no remains whatever of it have been discovered. The northern facade, like the southern, was formed by five pairs of human-headed bulls, and numerous colossal figures, forming three distinct gateways.

The principal approach to the palace appears, however, to have been on the eastern side, where the great bulls bearing the annals of Sennacherib were discovered. In the cut we have been able, by the assistance of Mr. Fergusson, to give a restoration of this magnificent palace and entrances. Inclined ways, or broad flights of steps, appear to have led up to it from the foot of the platform, and the remains of them, consisting of huge squared stones, are still in the ravines, which are but ancient ascents, deepened by the winter rains of centuries. From this grand entrance direct access could be had to all the principal halls and chambers in the palace; that on the western face, as appears from the ruins, only opened into a set of eight rooms.

The chambers hitherto explored appear to have been grouped round three great courts or halls. It must be borne in mind, however, that the palace extends considerably to the northeast of the grand entrance, and that there may have been another hall, and similar dependent chambers in that part of the edifice. Only a part of the palace has been hitherto excavated, and we are not, consequently, in possession of a perfect ground-plan of it.

The general arrangement of the chambers at Kouyunjik is similar to that at Khorsabad, though the extent of the building is very much greater. The Khorsabad mound falls gradually to the level of the plain, and there are the remains of a succession of broad terraces or stages. Parts of the palace, such as the propylæa, were actually beneath the platform, and stood at some distance from it in the midst of the walled enclosure. At Kouyunjik, however, the whole of the royal edifice, with its dependent buildings, appears to have stood on the summit of the artificial mound, whose lofty perpendicular sides could only have been accessible by steps, or inclined ways. No propylæa, or other edifices connected with the palace, have as yet been discovered below the platform.

The inscriptions, it is said, refer to four distinct parts of the palace, three of which, inhabited by the women, seem subsequently to have been reduced to one. It is not clear whether they were all on the ground-floor, or whether they formed different stories. Mr. Fergusson, in his ingenious work on the restoration of the palaces of Nineveh, in which he has, with great learning and research, fully examined the subject of the architecture of the Assyrians and ancient Persians, endeavors to divide the Khorsabad palace, after the manner of modern Mussulman houses, into the Salamlik or apartments of the men, and the Harem, or those of the women. The division he suggests must, of course, depend upon analogy and conjecture; but it may, we think, be accepted as highly probable, until fuller and more accurate translations of the inscriptions than can yet be made may furnish us with some positive data on the subject. In the ruins of Kouyunjik there is nothing, as far as we are aware, to mark the distinction between the male and female apartments. Of a temple no remains have as yet been found at Kouyunjik, nor is there any high conical mound as at Nimroud and Khorsabad.

[Illustration: VIEW OF A HALL. (_Of which 71 were discovered in the Palace._)]

In all the Assyrian edifices hitherto explored we find the same general plan. On the four sides of the great courts or halls are two or three narrow parallel chambers opening one into the other. Most of them have doorways at each end leading into smaller rooms, which have no other outlet. It seems highly probable that this uniform plan was adopted with reference to the peculiar architectural arrangements required by the building, and we agree with Mr. Fergusson in attributing it to the mode resorted to for lighting the apartments.

Early excavators expressed a belief that the chambers received light from the top. Although this may have been the case in some instances, yet recent discoveries now prove that the Assyrian palaces had more than one story. Such being the case, it is evident that other means must have been adopted to admit light to the inner rooms on the ground-floor. Mr. Fergusson's suggestion, that the upper part of the halls and principal chambers was formed by a row of pillars supporting the ceiling and admitting a free circulation of light and air, appears to us to meet, to a certain extent, the difficulty. It has, moreover, been borne out by subsequent discoveries, and by the representation of a large building, apparently a palace, on one side of the bas-reliefs from Kouyunjik.