152 
ANCIENT ASSYRIAN SCULPTURES, 
The neighbourhood of fountains seems to have been a fa¬ 
vourite spot with the ancients, for places of seclusion, or com¬ 
memorating erections, whether they were temples, or monuments 
of any kind; and the situation of this stream, so immediately 
under the great mutilated bas-relief on the rock, could not fail 
recalling to my recollection a similar spring that gushes over the 
sloping cliff which sustains the mysterious tablets of Gunj Nam- 
hal, in the bosom of Orontes. Mr. Macdonald Kinnier, in his 
valuable Geographical Memoir of the Persian Empire, makes an 
interesting notice of this fountain of the bas-relief, in remarking 
on the sculpture itself. On the authority of Diodorus Siculus, 
he seems inclined to attribute the gigantic remains over the 
spring, to so distant a time as that of Semiramis; and, accord¬ 
ingly, he observes, “ I shall confine myself to a few remarks 
which occurred to me whilst contemplating those wonderful 
monuments of antiquity. We are informed by Diodorus Siculus, 
that Semiramis, in her march to Ecbatana, encamped near a moun¬ 
tain called Bagistan, in Media, where she made a garden twelve 
furlongs in compass, in a plain champaign country, watered by a 
great fountain. Mount Bagistan was dedicated to Jupiter, (the 
Ormuzd of the East,) and towards one side of the garden, it had 
steep rocks, seventeen furlongs in height. She cut out a piece of the 
lower part of the rock, and caused her image to be car'ved upon it f 
and a hundred of her guard, that were lanceteers, standing round 
her. She wrote , likewise, in Assyrian letters on the rock, that Semi¬ 
ramis ascended from the plain to the top of the mountain, by laying 
the packs and fardles of the beasts that followed her, one upon 
another. This account (continues Mr. Macdonald Kinnier) will 
be found to answer the description of Be-Sitoon in many par¬ 
ticulars. It is situated in the road to Ecbatana; one side of the 
