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Updated: May 17, 2025
Convoy of prisoners. Kouyundjik. When we have completed our examination of Assyrian sculpture, so rich in some respects, so poor in others, we shall understand the rapidity with which silence and oblivion overtook so much glory and power; we shall understand how some two centuries after the victory of Nabopolassar and the final triumph of Babylon and her allies, Xenophon and his Greeks could mount the Tigris and gaze upon the still formidable walls of the deserted cities of Mespila and Larissa without even hearing the name of Nineveh pronounced.
Bas-relief of Tiglath Pileser II.; from Nimroud. British Museum. Height 44 inches. Feast of Assurbanipal; from Kouyundjik. British Museum. Height 20-3/4 inches. Feast of Assurbanipal, continued. No. 2, The king and queen at table. The moral character of the people is shown with no less clearness. The ferocity they preserved amid all the luxurious appliances of their civilization is commemorated.
Of the four examples in the British Museum, three are of basalt and one only of limestone. Rock-cut Stele from Kouyundjik. Another type of stele in frequent employment was that with an arched top and inclosing an image of the king. When we come to speak of Assyrian sculpture we shall have to reproduce some of them. A hunting scene is carved on a wall of rock at the top of a hill.
This divan is protected from rain by the semi-dome, and from the sun by curtains or mats hung across the arched opening. This arrangement may very well be dictated by ancient tradition. It is well suited to the climate, a consideration which never fails to exercise a decisive influence over architecture." Royal Tent, Kouyundjik. Tent, Kouyundjik.
The outlines of the ornament are now hardly more than distinguishable, while the colour is no more than a pale reflection. LOFTUS believes that the external faces of Assyrian walls were not, as a rule, cased in enamelled bricks. He disengaged three sides of the northern palace at Kouyundjik without finding any traces of polychromatic decoration.
We again encounter this same base with its opposing curves in a curious monument discovered at Kouyundjik by Mr. George Smith. This is a small and carefully executed model, in yellowstone, of a winged human-headed bull, supporting on his back a vase or base similar in design to that figured above. This little object must have served as a model for the carvers engaged upon the palace walls.
The three or four cities which rose successively to be capitals of Assyria were all in that region, and are now represented by the ruins of Khorsabad, of Kouyundjik with Nebbi-Younas, of Nimroud, and of Kaleh-Shergat.
It includes a modified kind of portico, the pillars of which are suggested or rather demanded by the necessity for supporting the ceiling. View of a Town and its Palaces. Kouyundjik. Supposing such an arrangement to have obtained in Mesopotamia, of what material were the piers or columns composed?
You will then have some idea of the part, at once obscure and preponderant, that the more intelligent among these miserable creatures were able to play in the households of the great conquerors and unwearied hunters by whom the palaces at Khorsabad, Kouyundjik, and Nimroud, were successively occupied. The King Sargon and his Grand Vizier. Bas-relief from Khorsabad; in the Louvre. Alabaster.
This relief is reproduced in PLACE, Ninive, vol. iii. plate 40, fig. 6. British Museum; Kouyundjik Gallery, Nos. 34-43. See also LAYARD'S Monuments, plates 8 and 9. PLACE, Ninive, vol. i. pp. 306, 307. PLACE, Ninive, vol. i. p. 140.
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