Museum of Antiquity: A Description of Ancient Life

by L. W. Yaggy; T. L. Haines

For the more recent collection of sculptures which have been brought to light, we are indebted to Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, a native of Mosul, and a friend and colleague of Layard; and to Mr. William Kennet Loftus, the agent of the Assyrian excavation fund. In 1852, Mr. Rassam was appointed by the Trustees of the British Museum to take charge of the excavations at Nineveh. For more than a year his researches were nearly fruitless, when, at length, just as his appointment was about to terminate, he turned again to a previously-abandoned trench in the north side of the mound, and was almost immediately rewarded by the discovery of numerous chambers and passages, covered with a variety of bas-reliefs in an excellent state of preservation, having suffered less injury from fire than those of the other palaces. In one room was a lion hunt, in a continuous series of twenty-three slabs, with but one interval. The other slabs represented exteriors of palaces, gardens, battles, sieges, processions, etc., the whole forming the decorations of what must have been a splendid palace.

Subsequently, in 1854, at the instance of Sir Henry Rawlinson, Mr. Loftus and his coadjutor, Mr. Boutcher, transferred their operations from South Babylonia to Nineveh. At first Mr. Loftus' excavations were unsuccessful, but about the beginning of August he discovered the remains of a building on a level twenty feet lower than the palace that Mr. Rassam was exploring, and which proved to be a lower terrace of the same building, even more highly elaborated and in better preservation than those previously discovered in the ruins. At the entrance of an ascending passage there was also found a "mass of solid masonry—apparently the pier of an arch—the springing of which is formed by projecting horizontal layers of limestone."

Mr. Loftus, in his Report of the 9th of October, observes: "The excavations carried on at the western angle of the North Palace, Kouyunjik, continue to reveal many interesting and important facts, and to determine several points which were previously doubtful.

"1. The existence of an outer basement wall of roughly cut stone blocks, supporting a mud wall, upon which white plaster still remains, and from which painted bricks have fallen. 2. At the corner of the palace, and at a considerable distance from the principal chambers, is an entrance hall, with column bases, precisely as we see them represented in the sculptures. 3. Above this entrance hall and its adjoining chambers, there was formerly another story, the first upper rooms yet discovered in Assyria. This, with its sculptured slabs, has fallen into the rooms below. 4. The various sculptures here disinterred are the works of four, if not five, different artists, whose styles are distinctly visible. It is evident that this portion of the edifice has been willfully destroyed, the woodwork burned, and the slabs broken to pieces. The faces of all the principal figures are slightly injured by blows of the ax."

This highly interesting series of bas-reliefs, which has now been placed in a lower chamber in the British Museum, consequently represents the siege and capture of Lachish, as described in the Second Book of Kings, and in the inscriptions on the human-headed bulls. Sennacherib himself is seen seated on his throne, and receiving the submission of the inhabitants of the city, whilst he had sent his generals to demand the tribute of payment from Hezekiah. The defenders of the castle walls and the prisoners tortured and crouching at the conqueror's feet are Jews, and the sculptor has evidently endeavored to indicate the peculiar physiognomy of the race, and the dress of the people.

The value of this discovery can scarcely be overrated. Whilst we have thus the representations of an event recorded in the Old Testament, of which consequently these bas-reliefs furnish a most interesting and important illustration, they serve to a certain extent to test the accuracy of the interpretation of the cuneiform inscriptions, and to remove any doubt that might still exist as to the identification of the King who built the palace on the mound of Kouyunjik with the Sennacherib of Scripture. Had these bas-reliefs been the only remains dug up from the ruins of Nineveh, the labor of the explorer would have been amply rewarded, and the sum expended by the nation on the excavations more than justified. They furnish, together with the inscriptions which they illustrate, and which are also now deposited in the national collection, the most valuable cotemporary historical record possessed by any museum in the world. They may be said to be the actual manuscript, caused to be written or carved by the principal actor in the events which it relates. Who would have believed it probable or possible, before these discoveries were made, that beneath the heap of earth and rubbish which marked the site of Nineveh, there would be found the history of the wars between Hezekiah and Sennacherib, written at the very time when they took place by Sennacherib himself and confirming even in minute details the Biblical record? He who would have ventured to predict such a discovery would have been treated as a dreamer or an impostor. Had it been known that such a monument really existed, what sum would have been considered too great for the precious record?

A few remarks are necessary on the architecture and architectural decorations, external and internal of the Assyrian palaces. The inscriptions on their walls, especially on those of Kouyunjik and Khorsabad, appear to contain important and even minute details not only as to their general plan and mode of construction, but even as to the materials employed for their different parts, and for the objects of sculpture and ornaments placed in them. (Capt. Jones calculated that the mound of Kouyunjik contains 14,500,000 tons of earth, and that its construction would have taken 10,000 men for twelve years.) This fact furnishes another remarkable analogy between the records of the Jewish and Assyrian kings. To the history of their monarchs and of their nation, the Hebrew chroniclers have added a full account of the building and ornaments of the temple and palaces of Solomon. In both cases, from the use of technical words, we can scarcely hope to understand, with any degree of certainty, all the details. It is impossible to comprehend, by the help of the description alone, the plan or appearance of the temple of Solomon. This arises not only from our being unacquainted with the exact meaning of various Hebrew architectural terms, but also from the difficulty experienced even in ordinary cases, of restoring from mere description an edifice of any kind. In the Assyrian inscriptions we labor, of course, under still greater disadvantages. The language in which they were written is as yet but very imperfectly known, and although we may be able to explain with some confidence the general meaning of the historical paragraphs, yet when we come to technical words relating to architecture, even with a very intimate acquaintance with the Assyrian tongue, we could scarcely hope to ascertain their precise signification. On the other hand, the materials, and the general plan of the Assyrian palaces are still preserved, whilst of the great edifices of the Jews, not a fragment of masonry, nor the smallest traces, are probably left to guide us. But, as Mr. Fergusson has shown, the architecture of the one people may be illustrated by that of the other. With the help of the sacred books, and of the ruins of the palaces of Nineveh, together with those of cotemporary and after remains, as well as from customs still existing in the East, we may, to a certain extent, ascertain the principal architectural features of the buildings of both nations.

Before suggesting a general restoration of the royal edifices of Nineveh, we shall endeavor to point out the analogies which appear to exist between their actual remains and what is recorded of the temple and palaces of Solomon. In the first place, as Sennacherib in his inscriptions declares himself to have done, the Jewish king sent the bearers of burdens and the hewers into the mountains to bring great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundations, which were probably artificial platforms, resembling the Assyrian mounds, though constructed of more solid materials. We have the remains of such a terrace or stage of stone masonry, perhaps built by King Solomon himself, at Baalbec. The enormous size of some of the hewn stones in that structure, and of those still remaining in the quarries, some of which are more than sixty feet long, has excited the wonder of modern travelers. The dimensions of the temple of Jerusalem, threescore cubits long, twenty broad, and thirty high, were much smaller than those of the great edifices explored in Assyria. Solomon's own palace, however, appears to have been considerably larger, and to have more nearly approached in its proportions those of the kings of Nineveh, for it was one hundred cubits long, fifty broad and thirty high. "The porch before the temple," twenty cubits by ten, may have been a propylæum, such as was discovered at Khorsabad in front of the palace. The chambers, with the exception of the oracle, were exceedingly small, the largest being only seven cubits broad, "for without, in the wall of the house, he made numerous rests round about, that the beams should not be fastened in the walls of the house." The words in italics are inserted in our version to make good the sense, and may consequently not convey the exact meaning, which may be, that these apartments were thus narrow in order that the beams might be supported without the use of pillars, a reason already suggested for the narrowness of the greater number of chambers in the Assyrian palaces. These smaller rooms appear to have been built round a large central hall called the oracle, the whole arrangement thus corresponding with the courts, halls, and surrounding rooms at Nimroud, Khorsabad, and Kouyunjik. The oracle was twenty cubits square, smaller far in dimensions than the Nineveh halls; but it was twenty cubits high—an important fact, illustrative of Assyrian architecture, for as the building itself was thirty cubits in height the oracle must not only have been much loftier than the adjoining chambers, but must have had an upper structure of ten cubits. Within it were the two cherubim of olive wood ten cubits high, with wings each five cubits long—"and he carved all the house around with carved figures of cherubim and palm trees, and open flowers, within and without." The cherubim have been described by Biblical commentators as mythic figures, uniting the human head with the body of a lion, or an ox, and the wings of an eagle. If for the palm trees we substitute the sacred trees of the Nineveh sculptures, and for the open flowers the Assyrian tulip-shaped ornament—objects most probably very nearly resembling each other—we find that the oracle of the temple was almost identical, in the general form of its ornaments, with some of the chambers of Nimroud and Khorsabad. In the Assyrian halls, too, the winged human-headed bulls were on the side of the wall, and their wings, like those of the cherubim, "touched one another in the midst of the house." The dimensions of these figures were in some cases nearly the same in the Jewish and Assyrian temples, namely, fifteen feet square. The doors were also carved with cherubim and palm trees, and open flowers; and thus, with the other parts of the building, corresponded with those of the Assyrian palaces. On the walls at Nineveh the only addition appears to have been the introduction of the human form and the image of the king, which were an abomination to the Jews. The pomegranates and lilies of Solomon's temple must have been nearly identical with the usual Assyrian ornament, in which, and particularly at Khorsabad, the promegranate frequently takes the place of the tulip and the cune.

But the description given by Josephus of the interior of one of Solomon's houses still more completely corresponds with and illustrates the chambers in the palaces of Nineveh. "Solomon built some of these (houses) with stones of ten cubits, and wainscoted the walls with other stones that were sawed, and were of great value, such as were dug out of the bowels of the earth, for ornaments of temples," etc. The arrangement of the curious workmanship of these stones was in three rows; but the fourth was pre-eminent for the beauty of its sculpture, for on it were represented trees and all sorts of plants, with the shadows caused by their branches and the leaves that hung down from them. These trees and plants covered the stone that was beneath them, and their leaves were wrought so wonderfully thin and subtle that they appeared almost in motion; but the rest of the wall, up to the roof, was plastered over, and, as it were, wrought over with various colors and pictures.

To complete the analogy between the two edifices, it would appear that Solomon was seven years building his temple, and Sennacherib about the same time in erecting his great palace at Kouyunjik.