80 
DEPARTMENT OF ANTIQUITIES. [GROUND 
chase, bearing on their shoulders dead lions. Another exhibits mules 
and men, each carrying nets for large animals. 
Several slabs, divided horizontally into two or three tiers of small 
figures, are remarkable both for the beauty of their execution, and their 
nearly perfect preservation. Some represent hunting scenes, the pur- 
suit of lions, of wild horses, asses, deer, and goats ; another shows the 
king, Ashurbanipal, pouring a libation over four dead lions, before an 
altar. Another small slab, in the same style, presents the king with 
his queen at a banquet under a bower of vines. On another are my- 
thological figures, one of which is a leonine centaur. 
Of martial subjects a considerable collection has been added, which 
cannot at present be described in detail. Amongst the series, however, 
are two slabs, with highly-interesting representations of architecture, 
military and civil ; including a large fortress, with an inner building, 
decorated with columns resting on the backs of lions and winged bulls ; 
a temple with pilasters and columns, whose capitals resemble the 
Greek Ionic ; in front of the temple, on a terrace, an arched monument 
and altar, precisely similar to those of Sardanapalus in the Assyrian 
Transept ; and a bridge or viaduct resting on piers, with openings re- 
sembling in form, tliough not in construction, the Gothic pointed arch. 
Eeturning up the staircase, and passing again through the 
Nimroud Gallery, the visitor reaches the 
ASSYRIAN TRANSEPT. 
The first, or Western Compartment, contains the remainder 
of the monuments of Sardanapalus the Great, of which the 
principal part has been described in the Nimroud Gallery. 
In the middle is a high arched slab, having in front a bas-relief of 
the king, with various sacred symbols, and on the sides and back 
an invocation to the Assyrian Gods, and a chronicle of the king's con- 
quests. Before it stands a triangular altar, which originally was so 
placed, at the entrance to the temple of the " God of War." 
At the sides stand a pair of colossal human-headed lions, winged, 
and triple-horned, which originally flanked a doorway in the North-west 
edifice. With these terminates the series from Nimroud. 
On the East side of this Transept, is the Khorsabad Com- 
partment, containing monuments from the palace of Sargina, 
the founder of the later Assyrian dynasty, about B.C. 747. 
Two colossal human-headed bulls, corresponding exactly in dimen- 
sions and style with the pair now in the Louvre at Paris, are placed as 
at the entrance of a chamber, and beside these, two colossal figures of 
mythological character. This entire group was obtained from Khorsa- 
bad by Sir H. C. Rawlinson, K.C.B., in 1849. 
Within the recess thus formed are several bas-reliefs procured from 
the same place in 1847 by Mr. Hector, a merchant residing at 
