In the central and south-western palaces, built by Shalmaneser II. and his grandson Vulnirari III. the excavations have not been carried far enough to allow the plans to be restored. The explorers have been content to carry off inscriptions and fragments of sculpture in stone, ivory, and metal.[43]
The south-western palace, or palace of Esarhaddon, has been the scene of explorations sufficiently prolonged to give us some idea of its general arrangements (Fig. 16). A curious circumstance was noticed by the English explorers. While the works of Assurbanipal bore the strongest marks of care and skill, those of Esarhaddon showed signs of having been carried out with a haste that amounted to precipitation, and his palace was never finished. Nearly all the alabaster slabs were taken from older buildings.[44] Most of these were fixed with their original carved surfaces against the wall, but a few were turned the proper way. Doubtless, had time served, these would have been smoothed down and reworked. Nothing was finished, however, but the bulls and sphinxes at the doors (Vol. I. Fig. 85) and a few reliefs in their immediate neighbourhood.[45] Esarhaddon died, no doubt, before the completion of the work, which was never continued.
Fig. 15.—Assurnazirpal offering a libation to the gods after his victory over a wild bull. British Museum. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.
And yet his architect was by no means lacking in ambition. Upon the southern face of the building he intended to build the largest hall, which, so far as we know, was ever attempted in an Assyrian palace. This saloon would have been about 170 feet long by 63 feet wide. As soon as the walls were raised he saw that he could not roof it in. Neither barrel vault nor timber ceiling could have so great a span. He determined to get over the difficulty by erecting a central wall down the major axis of the room, upon which either timber beams or the springers of a double vault could rest. This wall was pierced by several openings, and was stopped some distance short of the two end walls. It divided the saloon into four different rooms (marked 1, 2, 3, 4 on our plan) each of which was by no means small. Even with this modification the magnificence of the original plan did not entirely disappear. The two colossal lions opposite the door were very wide apart, and all the openings between the various subdivisions were large enough to allow the eye to range freely over the whole saloon, and to grasp the first thought of the architect in its entirety.
Fig. 16.—Plan of the south-western palace at Nimroud; from Layard.
As to the buildings on the other sides of the court and the total extent of the palace, we know very little; towards the west the walls of several saloons have been recognized, but they have been left half cleared. On the east, landslips have carried away part of the buildings.[46]
Between the palace of Assurnazirpal and that of Esarhaddon Layard found what seemed to him the remains of the second story of some building, or at least of a new building erected over one of earlier date (Fig. 17). Impelled, no doubt, by the rarity of the circumstance, he gives a plan of these remains, and goes so far as to express his belief that the arrangements shown in the plan were repeated on the three other faces of a tower of which he encountered the summit, still partly preserved.[47]
Although Calah was never abandoned, it fell, after the accession of the Sargonids, from the first place among Assyrian cities; on the other hand Sargon’s attempt to fix the seat of government in his own town of Dour-Saryoukin does not seem to have met with permanent success. From the eighth century to the end of the seventh the Assyrian kings appear to have made Nineveh their favourite place of residence.