On the northern side of the great hall the portal formed by the winged bulls, and the two smaller doorways guarded by colossal winged figures, led into a chamber one hundred feet by twenty-four, which opened into a further room of somewhat smaller dimensions. In the first, a few slabs were still standing, to show that on the walls had been represented some warlike expedition of the Assyrian king, and, as usual, the triumphant issue of the campaign. The monarch, in his chariot, and surrounded by his body-guards, was seen receiving the captives and the spoil in a hilly country, whilst his warriors were dragging their horses up a steep mountain near a fortified town, driving their chariots along the banks of a river, and slaying with the spear the flying enemy.
The bas-reliefs, which had once ornamented the second chamber, had been still more completely destroyed. A few fragments proved that they had recorded the wars of the Assyrians with a maritime people, whose overthrow was represented on more than one sculptured wall in the palace, and who may probably be identified with some nation on the Phoenician coast conquered by Sennacherib, and mentioned in his great inscriptions. Their galleys, rowed by double banks of oarsmen, and the high conical head-dress of their women, have already been described.[101] On the best preserved slab was the interior of a fortified camp, amidst mountains. Within the walls were tents whose owners were engaged in various domestic occupations, cooking in pots placed on stones over the fire, receiving the blood of a slaughtered sheep in a jar, and making ready the couches. Warriors were seated before a table, with their shields hung to the tent-pole above them.
To the south of the palace, but part of the same great building, though somewhat removed from the new excavations, and adjoining those formerly carried on, an additional chamber had been opened, in which several bas-reliefs of considerable interest had been discovered.
Its principal entrance, facing the west, was formed by a pair of colossal human-headed lions, carved in coarse limestone, so much injured that even the inscriptions on the lower part of them were nearly illegible. Unfortunately the bas-reliefs were equally mutilated, four slabs only retaining any traces of sculpture. One of them represented Assyrian warriors leading captives, who differed in costume from any other conquered people hitherto found on the walls of the palaces. Their head-dress consisted of high feathers, forming a kind of tiara like that of an Indian chief, and they wore a robe confined at the waist, by an ornamented girdle. Some of them carried an object resembling a torch. Amongst the enemies of the Egyptians represented on their monuments is a tribe similarly attired. Their name has been read Tokkari, and they have been identified with an Asiatic nation. We have seen that in the inscriptions on the bulls, the Tokkari are mentioned amongst the people conquered by Sennacherib[102], and it is highly probable that the captives in the bas-reliefs I am describing belonged to them. Unfortunately no epigraph, or vestige of an inscription, remained on the sculptures themselves, to enable us to identify them.
A captive (of the Tokkari?) Kouyunjik.
On a second slab, preserved in this chamber, was represented a double-walled city with arched gateways, and inclined approaches leading to them from the outer walls. Within were warriors with horses; outside the fortifications was a narrow stream or canal, planted on both sides with trees, and flowing into a broad river, on which were large boats, holding several persons, and a raft of skins, bearing a man fishing, and two others seated before a pot or caldron. Along the banks, and apparently washed by the stream, was a wall with equidistant towers and battlements. On another part of the same river were men ferrying horses across the river in boats, whilst others were swimming over on inflated skins. The water swarmed with fish and crabs. Gardens and orchards, with various kinds of trees, appeared to be watered by canals similar to those which once spread fertility over the plains of Babylonia, and of which the choked-up beds still remain. A man, suspended by a rope, was being lowered into the water. Upon the corner of a slab almost destroyed, was a hanging garden, supported upon columns, whose capitals were not unlike those of the Corinthian order. This representation of ornamental gardens was highly curious. It is much to be regretted that the bas-reliefs had sustained too much injury to be restored or removed.