Having examined the monumental remains of the Egyptians and the
ancient inhabitants of Persia, the visitor, in order to complete a
general impression of the sculptures of remote antiquity, should now
direct his attention to the remains recently discovered on the site of
ancient Nineveh and Nimroud. Most readers have read something of the
history of Assyria, of the effeminate Sardanapalus, of Semiramis, and
of the more fabulous Ninus. These three names are the three landmarks
of Assyrian history; and the long lapses of time which separate them
are shrouded in mystery, and up to late years have been filled up only
by fanciful histories but slenderly based on fact. Men have written
confidently on the fall of the Assyrian empire, and of its invasion by
the Medes; but the discrepancies of rival authorities, who differ as
much as ten centuries in their dates according to Mr. Layard, show how
insufficient were the materials upon which they pretended to found
histories. Where was the site of Babylon? where that of the renowned
Nineveh? These questions were often mooted by antiquaries. Mounds of
earth were long observed by travellers in Assyria and Babylonia; and
one of these, which was formed by a mass of ruined brickwork, was
heralded to the world as the remains of the tower of Babel! But the
ruins of the great Assyrian capital were for a long time unobserved.
For many years had travellers to modern Mosul looked with wondering
eyes at gigantic mounds of earth that lay opposite the city. The first
traveller who did more than take a cursory view of these mysterious
hillocks was Mr. Rich, who, on his way from Kurdistan to Baghdad in
1820, crossed the river, and arrived at the mounds; visited what the
inhabitants asserted to be Jonah's tomb on the summit of one of them;
saw inscribed relics in the houses of the adjacent village. Among the
fragments on the largest mound he picked up some bricks with
cuneiform[8] characters upon them, and fragments of pottery; and on a
subsequent occasion he found a small stone chair. He left these mounds
without suspecting that he had been treading above the palaces of the
ancient Assyrian monarchs--that he had been over ancient Nineveh. But
the ground was too fruitful in remote traditions to remain altogether
unexplored in this century. The lands watered by the Tigris and the
Euphrates, where the early Asiatic colonies of Scripture were founded,
and where Nimrod, the grandson of Ham, flourished and founded Babel,
and whence, according to Scripture, Asshur went forth to build
Nineveh, are interesting ground. Of these great Assyrian towns it was
natural to seek some ruins. Of all these cities, however, founded so
far back before authentic history begins, only Nineveh, which
flourished many centuries later, and of which we have always had more
authentic histories than those of any other Assyrian city, attained to
a comparatively modern prosperity and renown. The records of this
magnificent city, from which historians have derived their
information, describe its walls as reaching no less than two hundred
feet in height, and broad enough to be a chariot-way. These walls were
sixty miles in circumference, and guarded by fifteen hundred towers;
and in the eighth century before the Christian era the city is
estimated to have included a population of more than half a million
souls. But many centuries before this, Nineveh was a wonderful city,
of which the great monarch Ninus was king, and of which his celebrated
wife, Semiramis, was afterwards queen. Ninus is the reputed founder of
the Assyrian empire, and to him the magnificence of the capital is
chiefly attributed. He is the Sesostris of Assyrian history, and is
supposed to have flourished about twelve centuries before our era. The
names of many Assyrian monarchs occur in the Sacred Writings:
Sennacherib, who, seven centuries before our era, besieged Jerusalem
and invaded Judea; and Shalmanasaar, who carried away the ten tribes
of Israel. Later, the sovereignty of the Assyrian nation was
transferred to Babylon by Nebuchadonosor; and afterwards the Medes and
Babylonians laid the magnificent Nineveh in ruins, over which, many
centuries afterwards, Herodotus wandered wonderingly, and endeavoured
to glean from the pitiful wreck an idea of the bygone glory. The
centre of the ancient Assyrian empire was the present Turkish province
of Mosul; and hereabouts the researches of travellers have therefore
been concentrated. Opposite Mosul, the capital of the province, are
the two mounds which Mr. Rich hastily explored in 1820. These mounds
have long formed the subject of animated controversies; but it was not
before the year 1842 that any serious attempt was made to penetrate
beneath the grass that covered them. In this year M. Botta, the French
consul at Mosul, made some insignificant opening, but without
discovering any remarkable remains; and rumours having reached him
from Khorsabad, a few miles off, of some remains there, he caused some
vigorous excavations to be made there, and, aided by his government,
contrived to lodge an excellent collection of Assyrian sculptures in
the Louvre. About this time Mr. Layard was travelling through the
Turkish Asiatic provinces; and in the course of his wanderings paid
considerable attention to the mounds situated at Nimroud and near
Mosul. Convinced that under these hillocks lay precious relics of
antiquity, he procured an official letter to the Pasha of Mosul, and
in 1845 repaired to Nimroud, and hired Arabs to make excavations in
the mounds there. Even the first day's search disclosed valuable slabs
ornamented with bas-reliefs and inscriptions in the cuneiform
character, of the remotest antiquity, dating so far back as nineteen
centuries before our era, and conjectured to be part of the ruins of
the chief palace of Nimroud, destroyed about twelve centuries before
our era. If so, this point was the original centre of the great city
of Nineveh--that part said to have been built by Asshur; while the
surrounding mounds of Mosul, Khorsabad, and Kouyunjik, cover ruins of
a later date. Of Mr. Layard's discoveries in Assyria, that room, which
the visitor should now enter (called the NIMROUD ROOM), is full. The
room, as the visitor will at once perceive, is divided into eleven
compartments--the first being that to the left on entering. Here he
will begin his inspection of