DISCOVEEIES IN MESOPOTAMIA. 537 



and gates of the city of Sargon, with gigantic winged bulls, and com- 

 pleted the excavation of the palace, penetrating to the cellar, where the 

 wine jars, with a reddish sediment in the bottom, were still standing 

 in long rows. An Assyrian king, concerning whom until then only 

 a simple brief notice in the Old Testament (Isaiah XX, 1) gave infor- 

 mation, suddenly rose before our eyes as a live, tangible personage, 

 and we now know as much about his wars and victories, his buildings 

 and hunts, about the conditions of the civilization of the Assyrian 

 Empire and the contemporaneous history of the neighboring states, as 

 we know about any epoch of ancient Greece or Rome. 



It may be readily imagined that the glorious achievements accom- 

 plished by French pluck, energy, and perseverance, which turned the 

 eyes of the whole civilized world to the Assyrian collections in the 

 Louvre, would not long leave the English idle spectators. Sir Austen 

 Henry Layard, afterwards minister of Great Britain in Madrid and 

 am])assador to Constantinople, had already visited those regions 

 in 1840, and had shown the most lively interest in the work of 

 Botta. It was not long before the English ambassador at Constan- 

 tinople, Sir Stratford Canning, succeeded in securing for LaA'ard 

 the firman permitting excavations and the necessary funds. Layard 

 immediateh' began excavations on a grand scale, receiving the cordial 

 aid of the native population, for not only was Layard an adept in 

 winning the love and gratitude of the natives everywhere, but he had 

 also in Hormuzd Rassam the most ideal companion, who, fully familiar 

 with the Arabic character, could, as Layard acknowledged, secure the 

 good will of the most savage with whom he came in contact. 



On November 28, 1845, Layard commenced his labors in Nimrud, 

 situated a few kilometers south of Nineveh, and the first four months 

 of 1846 l)rought to light the entire northwest palace of Shalmaneser I 

 (1300 B. C), the palace of Assurnazirpal, of the Biblical Tiglathpileser 

 and Esarhaddon, and, especially with the palace of Assurnazirpal, a 

 large number of sculptures and inscriptions of various kinds. Not 

 less successful were the excavations at Nineveh, which Layard carried 

 on after 1849 at the expense of the British Museum. Like the Ba))y- 

 lonians, their masters, the Assyrian kings built their temples and pal- 

 aces upon raised artificial terraces, from whose airy heights they Jiot 

 only enjoyed a purer and cooler atmosphere but escaped the fever, the 

 inundations, and the mosquito swarms of the river flats. King Sen- 

 nacherib erected such an elevated terrace of bricks, and his grandson, 

 Assurbanipal, the Greek Sardanapalus, extended it. Both of tiiese 

 rulers built there magnificent palaces, surrounded by large parks, 

 rivulets, and ponds, on whose isles water birds nested. And all this 

 splendor and glory, covered by the mighty mound of ruins of Kuyun- 

 jik, were uncovered by the two English explorers. In the southwest 

 corner of the mound Layard laid open the palace of Sennacherib, 



