Excavations in the Kasr and at Tell-Amran might bring many precious objects to light, but we can hardly think that any room or other part of a building in such good preservation as many of those in the Assyrian palaces would be recovered. To the latter, then, we shall have again to turn to complete our study of the civil architecture of Mesopotamia.
If we have placed the edifices from which the English explorers have drawn so many precious monuments in the second line, it is not only because their exploration is incomplete, but also because they do not lend themselves to our purpose quite so readily as that cleared by MM. Botta and Place. At Khorsabad there have never been any buildings but those of Sargon; city and palace were built at a single operation, and those who undertake their study do not run any risk of confusion between the work of different generations. The plan we have discussed so minutely is really that elaborated by the Assyrian architect to whom Sargon committed the direction of the work. We can hardly say the same of the ruins explored by Mr. Layard and his successors. The mounds of Nimroud and Kouyundjik saw one royal dwelling succeed another, and the architects who were employed upon them hardly had their hands free. They had, to a certain extent, to reckon with buildings already in existence. These may sometimes have prevented them from extending their works as far as they wished in one direction or another, or even compelled them now and then to vary the levels of their floors; so that it is not always easy for a modern explorer to know exactly how he stands among the ruins of their creations, or to clearly distinguish the work of one date from that of another.[40]
It was at Nimroud that this perplexity was chiefly felt, until the decipherment of the inscriptions came to enable different periods and princes to be easily distinguished. This name of Nimroud, handed down by the ancient traditions collected in Genesis, has been given to a mound which rises about six leagues to the south of Mossoul, on the left bank of the Tigris, and both by its form and elevation attracts the attention of every traveller that descends the stream. The river is now at some distance from the ruins, but as our map shows (Fig. 1), it is easy to trace its ancient bed, which was close to the foot of the mound. The latter is an elongated parallelogram, about 1,300 yards in one direction, and 750 in the other (see Vol. I., Fig. 145). Above its weather-beaten sides, and the flat expanse at their summit, stood, before the excavations began, the apex of the conical mound in which Layard found the lower stories of a staged tower (Fig. 13). Calah seems to have been the first capital of the Assyrian Empire and even to have preserved some considerable importance after the Sargonids had transported the seat of government to Nineveh, and built their most sumptuous buildings in the latter city. Nearly every king of any importance, down to the very last years of the monarchy, left the mark of his hand upon Nimroud.[41]
Of all the royal buildings at Calah that which has been most methodically and thoroughly cleared is the oldest of all, the north-western palace, or palace of Assurnazirpal (885–860). It has not been entirely laid open, but the most richly decorated parts, corresponding to the seraglio at Khorsabad, have been cleared. The adjoining plan (Fig. 14) shows arrangements quite similar to those of Sargon’s palace. A large court is surrounded on three sides by as many rectangular groups of apartments, each group forming a separate suite, with its own entrances to the court.
Fig. 13.—General view of Nimroud; from Layard.
The chief entrance faces the north. Two great doorways flanked by winged and human-headed lions, give access to a long gallery (4 on plan). At the western end of this gallery there is a small platform or daïs raised several steps above the rest of the floor. Upon this, no doubt, the king’s throne was placed on those reception days when subjects and vassals crowded to his feet. Some idea of what such a reception must have been may be gained from an Indian Durbar, or from the Sultan of Turkey’s annual review of all his great functionaries of state at the feast of Courban-Baïram. I witnessed the latter ceremony in the Old Seraglio in 1857, and when those great officers, like the mollahs and sheiks of the dervishes, who had preserved the turban and floating robes of the East, bent to the feet of Abd-al-Medjid, I was irresistibly reminded of the pompous ceremonials sculptured on the walls of Nineveh and Persepolis.
Fig. 14.—-Plan of the north-western palace at Nimroud; from Layard.
The walls of this saloon were entirely lined in their lower parts with reliefs representing the king surrounded by his chief officers, offering prayers to the god of his people and doing homage for the destruction of his enemies and for successful hunts (Fig. 15). The figures in these reliefs are larger than life. A doorway flanked by two bulls leads into another saloon (2 on plan) rather shorter and narrower than the first. In this the ornamentation is less varied. The limestone slabs are carved with eagle-headed genii in pairs, separated by the sacred tree (Vol. I., Fig. 8). The inner wall of this saloon is pierced with a fine doorway leading into the central court (1), while in one corner there is a narrower opening into a third long hall (6), which runs along the eastern side of the court. It was in this latter room that the finest sculptures, those that may perhaps be considered the masterpieces of the Assyrian artists, were found. Behind this saloon there was another, rather longer, but not quite so wide (7); then five chambers, completing the palace on this side. To the south of the great court there were two large halls (3 and 5) similar in arrangement to those already mentioned but less richly decorated, and several smaller rooms opening some into the halls, others into the passages on the west of the court. As to whether the latter was inclosed or not on the west by buildings like those on the other three sides we cannot now be certain, as on that side the mound has been much broken away by the floods of the Tigris, which once bathed its foot. There is nothing to forbid the hypothesis of a grand staircase on this side leading up from the river bank.[42]