ASSYRIAN ANTIQUITIES.

NIMRÚD SCULPTURES.

BEFORE we proceed to give an account of the Antiquities deposited in the Nimrúd Room, we must state concisely what excavations have been made in ancient Assyria and Babylonia. The first great commencement in the investigations of those districts was made by Mr. Rich, who, during the time that he filled the office of Resident at Baghdad, undertook more than one journey to what were called the Ruins of Babylon, near the modern town of Hillah, on the Euphrates, and made several excavations into the ancient mounds still existing on the Eastern bank of that river. The results of his inquiries did not, however, lead to many important results; and beyond the examination of the Birs-i-Nimrúd, which was then supposed to be the ruins of the Tower of Babel, little was effected towards arriving at any knowledge of the ancient state of the country. Mr. Rich, indeed, procured thence a black stone, now in the Museum, which was covered with Cuneiform characters, and surmounted by rude representations of astronomical symbols, but sadly imperfect, together with a considerable number of unbaked bricks. On the presumed site of ancient Nineveh, near Mosul, Mr. Rich also made some, though slight, excavations, and obtained a few inscribed stones, which have been lately published by the Museum, with other Cuneiform inscriptions. Till within the last four years, “a case scarcely three feet square enclosed," as Mr. Layard has justly remarked, "all that remained, not only of the great city Nineveh, but of Babylon itself!”

Nor were other European collections much more rich. Mr. Layard adds with truth, "Other museums in Europe contained a few cylinders and gems which came from Assyria and Babylonia, but they were not

classified, nor could it be determined to what epoch they belonged. Of Assyrian art nothing was known even by analogy."

In 1843, however, a new æra arose; M. Botta having, in the spring of that year, been appointed the French Consul at Mosul, and having set to work, almost immediately after his arrival there, to examine the antiquities in the neighbourhood. In his first attempts on the mound of Koyunjik, near Mosul, he was not, indeed, very successful; but, shortly afterwards, he was induced to make further excavations in another mound called Khorsabád, about sixteen miles N.E. of Mosul, and the splendid collection of Assyrian Antiquities in the Louvre, at Paris, is the result of his two years' labour. In 1845, Mr. Layard commenced his works on the mounds of Nimrúd, and was rewarded by the discovery of even finer remains than those which M. Botta had exhumed. The whole of Mr. Layard's discoveries are, or will be, preserved in the British Museum, and will form a national collection unsurpassed even by that of Paris. It is right to add, that the same liberal hand which has procured for the public the remains of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and which has been always ready for the furtherance of every object by which the reputation of England could be advanced in the East, was the first to assist Mr. Layard in his discoveries at Nimrúd. But for the personal liberality of Sir Stratford Canning, who advanced from his own purse the first funds in aid of Mr. Layard's excavations, and subsequently presented the sculptures so discovered to the British nation, it is almost certain that much less would have been done, and many interesting objects now the property of the nation would either not have been excavated, or would have passed into other hands.

It is not easy to arrange the description of the Assyrian sculptures now in the Museum so that the spectator may view them in succession as they were originally placed in the Assyrian edifices, as several of the slabs which Mr. Layard has found are not yet in England, and no running number can yet be placed upon them. We propose, therefore, to describe very briefly the separate slabs, noting, especially, a few of the more remarkable; and grouping them, as far as possible, according to their presumed relative date, and according as Mr. Layard states that they were found in the N.W., S.W., or Centre edifices in the mound at Nimrúd. At the same time it must be borne in mind, that it is not necessarily to be inferred that because a monument was found in either the Centre or the S.W. palace, therefore it was not older than the construction of those edifices. Mr. Layard shows that many of the slabs which had adorned the N.W. and oldest palace had been removed by subsequent Kings to decorate

later palaces. We intend simply to indicate in what part of the mound Mr. Layard himself says that he found the several pieces of sculpture we have to describe.

It is as well, also, briefly to mention, before we proceed to the sculptures themselves, the form and fashion of Assyrian buildings, that our readers may have a clearer idea of the character of the structures which these monuments once adorned. Mr. Layard has given a very clear account of the mode of building adopted by the ancient people, and of the course to be pursued in excavating their ruins. "The Assyrians," says he, "when about to build a palace or public edifice, appear to have first constructed a platform or solid mass of sun-dried bricks, about thirty or forty feet above the level of the plain. Upon it they raised the monument. When the building was destroyed, its ruins, already half-buried by the falling-in of the upper walls and roof, remained of course on the platform, and were, in process of time, completely covered up by the dust and sand carried about by the hot winds of summer. Consequently, in digging for its remains, the first step is to reach the platform of sundried bricks. When this is discovered, the trenches must be opened to the level of it, and not deeper; they should be continued in opposite directions, care being taken to keep along the platform. By these means, if there be any ruins, they must necessarily be discovered, supposing the trenches to be long enough, for the chambers of the Assyrian edifices are generally narrow, and their walls or the slabs which cased them, if fallen, must sooner or later be reached."

The Assyrian sculptures, in the Nimrúd Room, may be divided into

I. THOSE FROM THE N.W. PALACE.

I. THOSE FROM THE N.W. PALACE.

They belong to two classes-alti and bassi-rilievi. Of these, the Museum possesses but few of the class of alti-rilievi; the only specimens which have yet come to England being the Bull and the Lion; themselves, perhaps, the finest specimens of Assyrian workmanship which have yet been discovered. They are both nearly of the same size, the bull being rather the largest, and about