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The explorers of Khorsabad encountered numberless fragments of these bricks and some whole ones in the heaps of rubbish at the foot of the external walls. This method of crowning a wall may seem poor when compared to the Greek cornice, or even to that of Egypt, but in view of the materials with which he had to work, it does honour to the architect.
Shortly afterwards a rival claimant started up in the regions further to the north. Excavations carried on at the village of Khorsabad showed that a magnificent palace and a considerable town had existed in Assyrian times at that site.
The friezes on this gate of Ishtar are among the finest examples of enamelled brickwork that have been uncovered and take their place beside "the Lion Frieze" from Sargon's palace at Khorsabad and the still more famous "Frieze of Arches of King Darius" in the Paris Louvre. The German party have already established the claim of Herodotus as to the thickness of the walls of the city.
The evidence of Hindostan is however outweighed by that obtainable from the antiquities of Western Asia, concerning some of which Sir A. H. Layard wrote: "The crux ansata, the tau or sign of life, is found in the sculptures of Khorsabad, on the ivories of Nimroud which as I have shown are of the same age carried too by an Assyrian King."
In the palace of Asshur-izir-pal at Nimrud, the earliest of the discovered edifices, the great hall was 160 feet long by nearly 40 broad. In Sargon's palace at Khorsabad the size of no single room was so great; but the number of halls was remarkable, there being no fewer than five of nearly equal dimensions. The largest was 116 feet long, and 33 wide; the smallest 87 feet long, and 25 wide.
Judging, however, from the ruins and from the usual proportions of height and width in the voids of Assyrian buildings, the doors at Khorsabad must have risen to a height of between fifteen and twenty-two feet.
We have a curious example of the use of these bronze sheaths in the remains of gilded palm-trees found by M. Place in front of the harem at Khorsabad. He there encountered a cedar trunk lying upon the ground and incased in a brass coat on which all the roughnesses of cedar bark were imitated. The leaves of doors were also protected by metallic bands, which were often decorated with bas-reliefs.
In Khorsabad a glazed brick frieze has been found in which the horizontal member became an arch over the door. The new thing was the putting it on pillars ranged before the façade, which he thinks was probably done at Seleucia on the Tigris.
It is true that the Khorsabad relief whence we copy this peculiar arrangement deals with the capture of an Armenian city, Mousasir, called in the narrative of Sargon's conquests "the dwelling of the god Haldia," whose temple must be here figured by the sculptor.
In order to vary the framework of our restorations and to show Assyrian architecture in as many aspects as possible, we have placed this temple within a fortified wall, like that of Khorsabad. Within a kind of bastion towards the left of the plate we have introduced one of those small temples of which remains have been found at Khorsabad and Nimroud.
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