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The size and magnificence of Asshur-izir-pal's buildings, the artistic excellence of their ornamentation, the pomp and splendor which they set before us as familiar to the king who raised them, the skill in various useful arts which they display or imply, have excited the admiration of Europe, which has seen with astonishment that many of its inventions were anticipated, and that its luxury was almost equalled, by an Asiatic people nine centuries before the Christian era.
Asshur-izir-pal's eighth campaign was nearly in the same quarter; but its exact scene lay, apparently, somewhat higher up the Euphrates. Hazilu, the king of the Laki, who escaped capture in the preceding expedition, had owed his safety to the refuge given him by the people of Beth-Adina.
The character of Asshur-izir-pal's sculptures has been sufficiently described in an earlier chapter. They have great spirit, boldness, and force; occasionally they show real merit in the design; but they are clumsy in the drawing and somewhat coarse in the execution.
It will be our pleasing task at this point of the history, after briefly sketching Asshur-izir-pal's wars, to give such an account of the great works which he constructed as will convey to the reader at least a general idea of the civilization and refinement of the Assyrians at the period to which we are now come.
Two thousand five hundred prisoners were carried off and settled at Calah. The most interesting of Asshur-izir-pal's campaigns is the ninth, which was against Syria.
It was in the course of this expedition that, having ascended to the sources of the Tsupnat river, or Eastern Tigris, Asshur-izir-pal set up his memorial side by side with monuments previously erected on the same site by Tiglath-Pileser and by the first or second Tiglathi-Nin. Asshur-izir-pal's fourth campaign was towards the south-east.
Two gigantic winged bulls, partly destroyed, served to show that the grand portals of the chambers were similar in character and design to those of the earlier monarch, while from a number of sculptured fragments it was sufficiently plain that the walls had been adorned with bas-reliefs of the style used in Asshur-izir-pal's edifice.
A notice of Asshur-izir-pal's seems to imply that Babylon, during the period in question, enlarged her territories at the expense of Assyria, and another in Macrobius, makes it probable that she held communications with Egypt.
Asshur-izir-pal's sculptures show that the pursuit of the wild bull was one of his favorite occupations; and as the animals were scarce in Assyria, he may have found it expedient to import them. Asshur-izir-pal appears, however, to have possessed a menagerie park in the neighborhood of Nineveh, in which were maintained a variety of strange and curious animals.
Asshur-izir-pal's first campaign was in north-western Kurdistan and in the adjoining parts of Armenia. It does not present any very remarkable features, though he claims to have penetrated to a region "never approached by the kings his fathers."
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