194 
but the whole structure was panelled by rude limestone slabs 
about 3J feet high. The upper part of the walls, built of 
sun-dried bricks, was simply plastered over with lime — a mode 
of decoration which the Sassanians employed in their buildings 
after the destruction of the Babylonian monarchy. Below this 
I discovered the remains of a more ancient edifice, containing 
a few sculptures which had been brought from the centre 
palace, belonging to the time of Tiglath-pileser, or Shalman- 
eser, with a stone tablet or stele representing thereon the king 
of the time, supposed to be the grandson of Esarhaddon ; and 
also two detached statues dedicated to the god Nebo, all of 
which are now in the British Museum. 
27. Last year I discovered, not far from the north-west 
palace at Nimroud, a temple built by the same founder, but the 
destroying enemy had managed to make so thorough a wreck 
of the whole structure that there was no trace left of the actual 
walls; and even the beautiful, enamelled tiles which must have 
adorned the ceiling were so broken and scattered about in 
different directions that, though more than a dozen large 
baskets were filled with the pieces found, I was not able to 
complete even a single one for the British Museum. The only 
objects that I found whole and standing in their original posi- 
tion were a marble altar and what seemed to me a vessel let in 
the floor of the room to receive the blood of the sacrifice. I 
also found marble seats for the ministering priests to sit on, or 
use for some other purpose. Besides these there w r ere pieces 
of a very handsome tripod, round and square pillars of marble, 
and stone, with hundreds of inscribed bricks scattered all over 
the place, with about twelve marble platforms ; some of them 
contain inscriptions which w T ere so much damaged that no one 
has as yet been able to read them. These platforms I believe to 
have been dedicated to different gods for sacrificial purposes ; 
and I trust when the Assyrian scholars manage to decipher the 
inscriptions some valuable acquisition may be added to history. 
28. At the mound of Khorsabad, where excavations were 
carried on for the Louvre bv the French Government, under 
the superintendence of MM. Botta and Place, the late 
French consuls at Mossul, a fine but a ruined palace was dis- 
covered, which is said to have been erected by Sargon, the 
father of Sennacherib. 
29. At Koyunjik, which I consider to be the city of Nineveh, 
Sir Henry Layard discovered the grand palace of the last- 
named monarch, where it is supposed he was slain by his sons, 
Adrammelech and Sharezer. At the northern corner of the 
same mound I discovered, in 1854, another palace built by the 
