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Layard encountered them at Nimroud and Kouyundjik, but it was at Khorsabad that they were found in the best condition and most carefully studied. We shall make use chiefly of the observations of MM. Place and Thomas in our explanation of a curious system of sewers that does, perhaps, more honour to the Ninevite builder than any other part of his work.
But as Colenso remarks, his reasoning is very loose. His date, however, is antecedent to the supposed time of the building of Babel, and according to his own chronology the latter may have been a tradition of the former. Add to this that the ruins of Birs Nimroud are extant, while there is no vestige of the ruins of Babel.
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."
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.
If we may judge from the texts and the existing ruins, the religious buildings of Assyria were smaller than those of Chaldæa. When the Ten Thousand traversed the valley of the Tigris in their famous retreat, they passed close to a large abandoned city, which Xenophon calls Larissa. The tower cleared by Layard at Nimroud is perhaps the very one seen by Xenophon.
The beams of the door before the oracles have been overlaid with silver ... the pivot of the door into the woman's chamber I have covered with silver." Among the fragments of tiles brought from Nimroud by Mr. George Smith, and now in the British Museum, there are two like those reproduced above, to which bosses or knobs of the same material glazed earthenware are attached.
In one of his inscriptions Esarhaddon boasts of having built ten palaces and thirty-six temples in Assyria and Chaldæa. Some traces of one of these palaces have been found within the enceinte of Nineveh, at Nebbi-Younas; but it was chiefly upon Nimroud that Esarhaddon left marks of his magnificence.
Although Thomas's restoration is, as he himself confesses, entirely conjectural, we have no serious motive for pronouncing the building to have been a temple. On the other hand, Layard seems to have had good reasons for recognizing small temples in the structures he cleared near the great staged tower at Nimroud.
Rich visited the spot; he obtained a few square sun-dried bricks with inscriptions, and some other slight remains; and we can all remember the profound impression made upon the public mind, even by these cursory memorials of Nineveh and Babylon." "During the winter, Mr. Longworth, and two other English travelers, visited me at Nimroud. Mr.
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