From the state in which the ruins of Nineveh were when discovered by Layard it is easy to see that, from the very day of the sacking of the city, it had for the most part been left just as it fell. It may have been rifled of its material wealth, but its literary and artistic treasures were left uncared for and undesired. A few hundred years later the very site of Nineveh was unknown.
The great city would not have been treated with such neglect had the Medo-Persian artists turned to it for inspiration and for themes of symbolic art with which to decorate the palaces of Persepolis.
PLATE VI.
FIG. 1.
The Assyrian god Assur.
FIG. 2.
The Assyrian god Assur.
FIG. 3.