Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph of the sculpture in the
British Museum.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a sketch by Layard.
The statues of men and gods, as a rule, are lacking in originality. The heavy robes which drape them from head to foot give them the appearance of cylinders tied in at the centre and slightly flattened towards the top. The head surmounting this shapeless bundle is the only life-like part, and even the lower half of this is rendered heavy by the hair and beard, whose tightly curled tresses lie in stiff rows one above the other. The upper part of the face which alone is visible is correctly drawn; the expression is of rather a commonplace type of nobility—respectable but self-sufficient. The features—eyes, forehead, nose, mouth—are all those of Assur-nazir-pal; the hair is arranged in the fashion he affected, and the robe is embroidered with his jewels; but amid all this we miss the keen intelligence always present in Egyptian sculpture, whether under the royal head-dress of Cheops or in the expectant eyes of the sitting scribe: the Assyrian sculptor could copy the general outline of his model fairly well, but could not infuse soul into the face of the conqueror, whose “countenance beamed above the destruction around him.”
The water of the Tigris being muddy, and unpleasant to the taste, and the wells at Calah so charged with lime and bitumen as to render them unwholesome, Assur-nazir-pal supplied the city with water from the neighbouring Zab.* An abundant stream was diverted from this river at the spot now called Negub, and conveyed at first by a tunnel excavated in the rock, and thence by an open canal to the foot of the great terrace: at this point the flow of the water was regulated by dams, and the surplus was utilised for irrigation** purposes by means of openings cut in the banks.
* The presence of bitumen in the waters of Calah is due to
the hot springs which rise in the bed of the brook Shor-
derreh.
** The canal of Negub—Negub signifies hole in Arabic—
was discovered by Layard. The Zab having changed its course
to the south, and scooped out a deeper bed for itself, the
double arch, which serves as an entrance to the canal, is
actually above the ordinary level of the river, and the
water flows through it only in flood-time.
The aqueduct was named Bâbilat-khigal—the bringer of plenty—and, to justify the epithet, date-palms, vines, and many kinds of fruit trees were planted along its course, so that both banks soon assumed the appearance of a shady orchard interspersed with small towns and villas. The population rapidly increased, partly through the spontaneous influx of Assyrians themselves, but still more through the repeated introduction of bands of foreign prisoners: forts, established at the fords of the Zab, or commanding the roads which cross the Gebel Makhlub, kept the country in subjection and formed an inner line of defence at a short distance from the capital.
