On returning to Mosul, Mr. Layard received letters from England, informing him that Sir Stratford Canning had presented the Assyrian sculptures to the British nation, and that the British Museum had received a grant of funds for the continuation of the researches at Nimroud and elsewhere. The grant was small; but Mr. Layard was induced to accept the charge of superintending the excavations even with that inadequate sum. He immediately applied himself to organizing a band of workmen, selected from the Chaldæans of the mountains and the Arabs of the Jebour tribe; and, at the end of October, 1846, he was again among the ruins, with complete material for extensive excavations.
Many new trenches were opened along the walls of the chambers; but the interior of them was left unexplored, as Mr. Layard desired to economize his means as much as possible. Upon the slabs exposed to view were bas-reliefs, representing the wars of the king, and the conquests of some strange people. In the battles, chariots, highly ornamented, spears, shields, and armor appeared. In the sieges, battering-rams, instruments like blunt spears, machines for throwing fire, and women tearing their hair and imploring mercy from the walls were seen. Boats towed by men, or rowed with oars, and persons supported on inflated skins swimming rivers, in the manner to be witnessed at the present day upon the Tigris, were finely sculptured.
Among other objects found amid the ruins, were fragments of copper and iron armor, several entire helmets of a pointed shape, and some vases of alabaster and glass. On exposure to the air, most of these articles fell to pieces. A glass vase, however, was preserved. On a brick in one of the chambers was found a genealogy, which afforded a kind of clue to the date of the building. An obelisk, containing twenty small bas-reliefs and a cuneiform inscription 210 lines in length, was taken from one of the trenches. From the nature of the sculptures, Mr. Layard conjectured that the monument was erected to commemorate the conquest of India by the king of Khorsobad. Winged bulls, crouching sphinxes, and winged divinities were exhumed in abundance. They had been injured by fire, and almost crumbled at the touch. A small sarcophagus, containing a crumbling skeleton, was found in another part of the mound; there was no name inscribed upon the sepulchre, and Mr. Layard could obtain no clue to its origin. A large number of these interesting relics of the past made up a cargo, to be sent to England.
By the end of April, 1847, Mr. Layard had explored almost the whole building which he had first touched, and which he calls the north-west palace. He had opened twenty-eight chambers cased with alabaster slabs. Each of the chambers had several entrances, and some of them were extensive enough to have been halls of state. Many sculptures, ivory ornaments, and other curious objects were taken from the various apartments. Paintings, in which the colors blue, red, white, yellow, and black were visible, were discovered in upper chambers. The subjects of the paintings appeared to be generally processions, in which the king was represented followed by his eunuchs and attendant warriors. But the most important discovery connected with these upper chambers was that of the slabs forming the pavement of the entrances, upon which were the names and titles of five kings, in genealogical succession, commencing with the father of the founder of the north-west palace, and ending with the grandson of the builder of the centre edifice.
In the centre of the mound, Mr. Layard discovered a number of tombs, which seemed to be the remains of a people whose funeral vases and ornaments were identical in form and material with those found in the catacombs of Egypt; while beneath these receptacles of the dead were the Assyrian ruins. From this state of things, it was inferred that, after the destruction of the Assyrian palaces, another nation had occupied the country.
Mr. Layard was astonished to find, by the vaulted passages of the palaces, that the principle of the arch was understood by the ancient Assyrians. This important principle was long believed to be a comparatively modern discovery. A pulley, resembling the one now used, was also seen upon one of the bas-reliefs.
Transferring the scene of his excavations to the mound called Kalah Sherghat, Mr. Layard came upon a sitting figure in basalt, which, from the inscriptions, he inferred to be a statue of one of the Nimroud kings. Around it were a large number of tombs, which seemed to have been made long after the destruction of the Assyrian buildings, and in the rubbish and earth that had accumulated above them. The principal ruin at Kalah Sherghat, as at Nimroud, Khorsobad, and on other ancient Assyrian sites, is a large square mound, surmounted by a cone or pyramid. Long lines of smaller mounds, or ramparts, inclose a quadrangle, which, from the irregularities in the surface of the ground, and from the pottery and other rubbish scattered about, appears originally to have been partly occupied by small houses, or buildings of no importance. The excavations at Kalah Sherghat were soon abandoned as laborious and unprofitable.
The removal of the larger sculptures from the ruins to Busrah was a work of great difficulty. Mr. Layard took drawings of a number of them that were too much injured to be conveyed to Europe. A gigantic winged lion, and a winged bull of equal size, were safely placed on board of an English vessel, while a considerable number of small bas-reliefs and ornaments were sent with them to enrich the British Museum, and set the scientific to speculating. Those sculptures which Mr. Layard had not the means of removing were covered with earth, and thus preserved from injury.
(To be continued.)
