These first discoveries excited so much attention that they were sure to attract many to the task begun with such unhoped-for success by Botta. England especially, by whom all that has the slightest bearing on Jewish history is so passionately followed up, was sure to take her part. In November, 1845, Mr. Layard began to excavate at Nimroud; he carried on his work there and at Kouyundjik, until the year 1847. The adjoining map (Fig. 1) will-give an idea of the relative position of the sites we shall so often have to mention. The beauty and variety of the monuments sent home by Mr. Layard, decided the authorities of the British Museum to intrust him with a new mission, and from 1849 to 1851 he was again busy at Nimroud; he cleared some more rooms in the great palace on the Kouyundjik mound, and he undertook some explorations on the sites of several Chaldæan cities. The objects he collected form the true foundation of the Assyrian collection in the British Museum, which is, at present, by far the richest in existence.
Fig. 1.—Map of Nineveh and its neighbourhood; from Oppert.
In 1851, France decided to resume the excavations at Khorsabad, which had been abandoned on the departure of Botta. M. Place, his successor at Mossoul, continued and completed the excavations, which had been little more than begun. His labours lasted till 1855, but unhappily most of the sculptures recovered by him are now at the bottom of the Tigris. The great work in which he was helped by the skill of Felix Thomas is the most precious result of his enterprise.
The era of heroic explorations seems to have closed with Layard and Place, but during the last thirty years there has always been some English agent sounding the flanks of the Assyrian mounds. Under the surveillance of Sir Henry, then Colonel, Rawlinson, the East India Company’s resident at Bagdad, many discoveries were made by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, Sir Henry Layard’s collaborator, and by the late William Kennett Loftus. Finally, we must mention George Smith, who died at Aleppo in 1876, on the eve of his third journey into Assyria. He had visited that country for the first time in 1873, at the expense of the Daily Telegraph, which had placed a sum of one thousand guineas at his disposal, and had afterwards presented all the objects he had sent home to the British Museum.
We have enumerated all these dates with some dryness, and without any attempt to write a taking narrative, because we wished to impress upon our readers how recent these discoveries are, how they have followed closely one upon another, and well within the lifetime of a single man. The difficulty of our task will thus be evident. We are making a first attempt to bring the results of all these explorations into a connected form, and to present them systematically to the reader. There is one thing that stands out very strongly in the whole inquiry. The monuments, by which the art of a great vanished civilization is represented in our museums, come mainly from the ruins of royal dwellings. The chief idea suggested by the words Khorsabad, Nimroud and Kouyundjik, is the excavation of the magnificent palaces raised by the Assyrian monarchs within a period of something more than three centuries. Following a custom still in vogue with the native rulers of Egypt and India, of Persia and Turkey, each prince signalized his accession by the commencement of a palace which should be entirely his own.[7] To establish himself in the dwelling which had seen the death of his predecessor would have seemed an invitation to misfortune, and his pride would have been wounded at seeing the walls of his house given up to celebrating the exploits of any one but himself. Finally, each king hoped to surpass all those who had gone before in the extent and luxury of the edifice to which his name would be thenceforward attached. Sometimes he took dressed masonry from abandoned seraglios; sometimes he raised at his doors winged bulls which had already done duty elsewhere, changing, of course, their inscriptions; sometimes he lined his chambers with alabaster slabs bearing reliefs in which the conquests of his fathers were narrated; in that case he turned the sculptured side to the wall, and caused his own prowess to be celebrated upon the new surface thus cheaply won.[8] Whether old materials were used or new, the palace was always personal to the king who built it. Thus it is that the remains of some ten palaces have been found in the mounds already attacked, although that of Khorsabad is the only one that has been completely explored.
We cannot attempt to describe the ruins of so many palaces. No one of them is an exact copy of any other; their dimensions, and many of their arrangements have much variety, but nevertheless, we may say that they all follow the same general plan. The only way to avoid continual repetition is to take, as a type of all, the example that has been most completely studied. Our choice of such a type is soon made. The palace of Sargon, at Khorsabad, may be neither the largest of the Assyrian palaces nor that in which the best sculptors were employed upon the decorations, but it is certainly that in which the excavations have been most systematically carried on. Except at a few points the explorers have only held their hands when the flat summit of the mound was reached. The whole has been cleared except the centres of some of the quadrangles and a few unimportant outbuildings. Nowhere else can the general arrangement be so clearly followed, or the guiding spirit of an Assyrian plan so easily grasped.
PLATE V
PALACE OF SARGON, KHORSABAD