While engaged in these important wars, which were all included within his first six years, Asshur-izir-pal, like his great predecessor, Tiglath-Pileser, occasionally so far unbent as to indulge in the recreation of hunting. He interrupts the account of his military achievements to record, for the benefit of posterity, that on one occasion he slew fifty large wild bulls on the left bank of the Euphrates, and captured eight of the same animals; while, on another, he killed twenty ostriches (?), and took captive the same number. We may conclude, from the example of Tiglath-Pileser, and from other inscriptions of Asshur-izir-pal himself, that the captured animals were convoyed to Assyria either as curiosities, or, more probably, as objects of chase. Asshur-izir-pal’s sculptures show that the pursuit of the wild bull was one of his favorite occupations; and as the animals were scarce in Assyria, he may have found it expedient to import them.
Asshur-izir-pal appears, however, to have possessed a menagerie park in the neighborhood of Nineveh, in which were maintained a variety of strange and curious animals. Animals called paguts or pagats—perhaps elephants—were received as tribute from the Phoenicians during his reign, on at least one occasion, and placed in this enclosure, where (he tells us) they throve and bred. So well was his taste for such curiosities known, that even neighboring sovereigns sought to gratify it; and the king of Egypt, a Pharaoh probably of the twenty-second dynasty, sent him a present of strange animals when he was in Southern Syria, as a compliment likely to be appreciated. This love of the chase, which he no doubt indulged to some extent at home, found in Syria, and in the country on the Upper Tigris, its amplest and most varied exercise. In an obelisk inscription, designed especially to commemorate a great hunting expedition into these regions, he tells us that, besides antelopes of all sorts, which he took and sent to Asshur, he captured and destroyed the following animals:—lions, wild sheep, red deer, fallow-deer, wild goats or ibexes, leopards large and small, bears, wolves, jackals, wild boars, ostriches, foxes, hyaenas, wild asses, and a few kinds which have not been identified. From another inscription we learn that, in the course of another expedition, which seems to have been in the Mesopotamian desert, he destroyed 360 large lions, 257 large wild cattle, and thirty buffaloes, while he took and sent to Calah fifteen full-grown lions, fifty young lions, some leopards, several pairs of wild buffaloes and wild cattle, together with ostriches, wolves, red deer, bears, cheetas, and hyeenas. Thus in his peaceful hours he was still actively employed, and in the chase of many dangerous beasts was able to exercise the same qualities of courage, coolness, and skill in the use of weapons which procured him in his wars such frequent and such great successes.
Thus distinguished, both as a hunter and as a warrior, Asshur-izir-pal, nevertheless, excelled his predecessors most remarkably in the grandeur of his public buildings and the free use which he made of the mimetic and other arts in their ornamentation. The constructions of the earlier kings at Asshur (or Kileh-Sherghat), whatever merit they may have had, were beyond a doubt far inferior to those which, from the time of Asshur-izir-pal, were raised in rapid succession at Calah, Nineveh, and Beth-Sargina by that monarch and his successors upon the throne. The mounds of Kileh-Sherghat have yielded no bas-reliefs, nor do they show any traces of buildings on the scale of those which, at Nimrud, Koyunjik, and Khorsabad, provoke the admiration of the traveller. The great palace of Asshur-izir-pal was at Calah, which he first raised from a provincial town to be the metropolis of the empire. [PLATE CXLV., Fig. 1.] It was a building 360 feet long by 300 broad, consisting of seven or eight large halls, and a far greater number of small chambers, grouped round a central court 130 feet long and nearly 100 wide. The longest of the halls, which faced towards the north, and was the first room entered by one who approached from the town, was in length 154 and in breadth 33 feet. The others varied between a size little short of this, and a length of 65 with a breadth of less than 20 feet. The chambers were generally square, or nearly so, and in their greatest dimensions rarely exceeded ten yards. The whole palace was raised upon a lofty platform, made of sun-burnt brick, but externally cased on every side with hewn stone. There were two grand facades, one facing the north, on which side there was an ascent to the platform from the town: and the other facing the Tigris, which anciently flowed at the foot of the platform towards the west. On the northern front two or three gateways, flanked with andro-sphinxes, gave direct access to the principal hall or audience chamber, a noble apartment, but too narrow for its length, lined throughout with sculptured slabs representing the various actions of the king, and containing at the upper or eastern end a raised stone platform cut into steps, which, it is probable, was intended to support at a proper elevation the carved throne of the monarch. A grand portal in the southern wall of the chamber, guarded on either side by winged human-headed bulls in yellow limestone, conducted into a second hall considerably smaller than the first, and having less variety of ornament, which communicated with the central court by a handsome gateway towards the south; and, towards the east, was connected with a third hall, one of the most remarkable in the palace. This chamber was a better-proportioned room than most, being about ninety feet long by twenty-six wide; it ran along the eastern side of the great court, with which it communicated by two gateways, and, internally, it was adorned with sculptures of a more finished and elaborate character than any other room in the building. Behind this eastern hall was another opening into it, of somewhat greater length, but only twenty feet wide; and this led to five small chambers, which here bounded the palace. South of the Great Court were, again, two halls communicating with each other; but they were of inferior size to those on the north and west, and were far less richly ornamented. It is conjectured that there were also two or three halls on the west side of the court between it and the river; but of this there was no very clear evidence, and it may be doubted whether the court towards the west was not, at least partially, open to the river. Almost every hall had one or two small chambers attached to it, which were most usually at the ends of the halls, and connected with them by large doorways.
Such was the general plan of the palace of Asshur-izir-pal. Its great halls, so narrow for their length, were probably roofed with beams stretching across them from side to side, and lighted by small louvres in their roofs after the manner already described elsewhere. Its square chambers may have been domed, and perhaps were not lighted at all, or only by lamps and torches. They were generally without ornamentation. The grand halls, on the contrary, and some of the narrower chambers, were decorated on every side, first with sculptures to the height of nine or ten feet, and then with enamelled bricks, or patterns painted in fresco, to the height, probably, of seven or eight feet more. The entire height of the rooms was thus from sixteen to seventeen or eighteen feet.
The character of Asshur-izir-pal’s sculptures has been sufficiently described in an earlier chapter. They have great spirit, boldness, and force; occasionally they show real merit in the design; but they are clumsy in the drawing and somewhat coarse in the execution. What chiefly surprises us in regard to them is the suddenness with which the art they manifest appears to have sprung up, without going through the usual stages of rudeness and imperfection. Setting aside one mutilated statue, of very poor execution, and a single rock tablet, we have no specimens remaining of Assyrian mimetic art more ancient than this monarch. That art almost seems to start in Assyria, like Minerva from the head of Jove, full-grown. Asshur-izir-pal had undoubtedly some constructions of former monarchs to copy from, both in his palatial and in his sacred edifices; the old palaces and temples at Kileh-Sherghat must have had a certain grandeur; and in his architecture this monarch may have merely amplified and improved upon the models left him by his predecessors; but his ornamentation, so far as appears, was his own. The mounds of Kileh-Sherghat have yielded bricks in abundance, but not a single fragment of a sculptured slab. We cannot prove that ornamental bas-reliefs did not exist before the time of Asshur-izir-pal; indeed the rock tablets which earlier monarchs set up were sculptures of this character; but to Asshur-izir-pal seems at any rate to belong the merit of having first adopted bas-reliefs on an extensive scale as an architectural ornament, and of having employed them so as to represent by their means all the public life of the monarch.
The other arts employed by this king in the adornment of his buildings were those of enamelling bricks and painting in fresco upon a plaster. Both involve considerable skill in the preparation of colors, and the former especially implies much dexterity in the management of several very delicate processes.
The sculptures of Asshur-izir-pal, besides proving directly the high condition of mimetic art in Assyria at this time, furnish indirect evidence of the wonderful progress which had been made in various important manufactures. The metallurgy which produced the swords, sword-sheaths, daggers, earrings, necklaces, armlets, and bracelets of this period, must have been of a very advanced description. The coach-building which constructed the chariots, the saddlery which made the harness of the horses, the embroidery which ornamented the robes, must, similarly, have been of a superior character. The evidence of the sculptures alone is quite sufficient to show that, in the time of Asshur-izir-pal, the Assyrians were already a great and luxurious people, that most of the useful arts not only existed among them, but were cultivated to a high pitch, and that in dress, furniture, jewelry, etc., they were not very much behind the moderns.
Besides the magnificent palace which he built at Calah, Asshur-izir-pal is known also to have erected a certain number of temples. The most important of these have been already described. They stood at the north-western corner of the Nimrud platform, and consisted of two edifices, one exactly at the angle, comprising the higher tower or ziggurat, which stood out as a sort of corner buttress from the great mound, and a shrine with chambers at the tower’s base; the other, a little further to the east, consisting of a shrine and chambers without a tower. These temples were richly ornamented both within and without; and in front of the larger one was an erection which seems to show that the Assyrian monarchs, either during their lifetime, or at any rate after their decease, received divine honors from their subjects. On a plain square pedestal about two feet in height was raised a solid block of limestone cut into the shape of an arched frame, and within this frame was carved the monarch in his sacerdotal dress, and with the sacred collar round his neck, while the five principal divine emblems were represented above his head. In front of this figure, marking (apparently) the object of its erection, was a triangular altar with a circular top, very much resembling the tripod of the Greeks. Here we may presume were laid the offerings with which the credulous and the servile propitiated the new god,—many a gift, not improbably, being intercepted on its way to the deity of the temple. [PLATE CXLV., Fig. 2.]