FLOOR.] 
ASSYRIAN GALLERIES. 
93 
the western compartment of the adjoining Assyrian Tran- 
sept. 
(2.) The sculptures from Khorsabad, executed under a 
monarch who is believed to have reigned about B.C. 721, are 
collected in the eastern compartment of the Assyrian Transept, 
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 Mr. Layard from Kou- 
yunjik, which may (with clue allowance for the uncertainty 
of 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 Kouyunjik 
Gallery. The additional collections excavated by Mr. Rassam 
and Mr. Loftus, principally at Kouyunjik, and placed in the 
Assyrian basement, may be regarded as supplementary to 
that contained in the last-mentioned gallery. 
Besides the series of sculptures, the Assyrian collection in- 
cludes a variety of smaller, but highly curious and instructive 
objects, discovered at Nimroud and Kouyunjik. These are 
now exhibited in Table Cases in the 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 Empires of which 
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, 
and Muqueyer, all dating from the most remote antiquit} 7 -, 
and the last supposed to represent the Biblical u Ur of the 
Chaldees." 2. The Birs-i-Nimrud, commonly regarded as the 
remains of the Tower of Babel, but more probably the site 
of the ancient fortress of Borsippa, the earliest portion of which 
was erected by an ancient king of Babylonia, though it 
was entirely rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar. 3. The mounds of 
Babylon itself, which contain no monuments earlier than the 
reic:n of Nebuchadnezzar. 
