FLOOR.] 
ASSYRIAN GALLERIES. 
69 
British Museum. 8. Kouyunjik, still indicated by local tradi- 
tion as tlie site of Nineveh, nearly opposite Mosul, on the Tigris. 
This classification of the localities, which correspond broadly 
with three successive periods in Assyrian history, forms the 
basis of the arrangement adopted for the sculptures, 
(1.) The monuments from Mmroud, which may be approxi- 
mately described as ranging from B.C. 930 to B.C. 74i7, occupy 
the Nimroud Central Saloon, in which the visitor, entering from 
the Greek Galleries, first finds himself; the long apartment 
immediately to the South, called the Nimroud Gallery ; and 
the western compartment of the adjoining Assyrian Transept. 
(2.) The sculptures from Khorsabad, executed under a 
monarch who is believed to have reigned about B.C. 747-721, 
are collected in the eastern compartment of the Assyrian Tran- 
sept, a position not properly corresponding with their chrono- 
logical sequence, but unavoidably adopted from the deficiency 
of space in apartments not originally constructed for this class 
of antiquities. 
(3.) The monuments obtained by Layard from Kou- 
yunjik, which may (with due allowance for the uncertainty 
of all Assyrian chronology) be placed between B.C. 721 and 
B.C. 625 — the supposed era of the destruction of Nineveh — 
are arranged in the long room distinguished as the Kouyrmjik 
Gallery. The additional collections excavated by Mr. Eassam 
and Mr, Loftus, principally at Kouyunjik, and provisionally- 
arranged in the basement, may be regarded as supplementary 
to that contained in the last-mentioned gaUery. 
Besides the series of sculptures, the Assyrian collection in- 
cludes a variety of smaller, but highly curious and instructive 
objects, discovered at Nimroud and Kouyimjik. These are 
now exhibited in table-cases in the two long galleries. 
In the Kouyunjik Gallery is also a table-case containing 
various small articles from Babylonia and Susiana. These 
far-famed regions have as yet yielded to modern researches no 
large sculptured monuments, nor any artistic remains commen- 
surate with the wealth and power of the Empfres of wliicli 
they were the seat. The principal Babylonian sites which 
have hitherto been more or less explored are — 1. The scat- 
tered mounds of Warka, Tel-Sifr near Sinkara, Abu-Shahrein, 
