Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/80

62 A History of Art in Ciialo.ka and Assyria. All the travellers who have visited the neighbourhood of Mossoul are agreed that, on the left bank of the Tigris, there is no trace of any wall but that which forms a rather irreeular parallelogram and embraces the two mounds of Nebbi-Yonnas and Kouyundjik (Fig. 18). 1 According to M. Oppert this wall was about ten thousand metres (nearly 6 miles) in circumference, which would make it cover about one-eleventh of the ground covered by modern Paris. There is nothing here that is not in accord with our ideas as to the character and importance of Nineveh. If we add to the town inclosed within such a wall suburbs stretching along the right bank of the river on the site of modern Mossoul, we shall have a city capable of holding perhaps two or three hundred thousand people. In the northern part of the inclosure, not far from the north- western angle, Sir Henry Layard made some excavations that brought one of the principal gates of ancient Nineveh to light. 2 The passage was probably vaulted, but its upper part had dis- appeared. The gateway, which was built by Sennacherib, had a pair of winged bulls looking towards the city and another pair looking towards the country outside. The limestone pavement in the entrance still bears the mark of wheels. Two great chambers are hollowed out of the thickness of the walls and open into the entrance passage. The walls must be hereabout 116 feet thick, judging from the proportion, in Layard's plan, 3 between them and one of the two chambers, which has a diameter, as we are told by its finder, of 23 feet. We need say no more of this doorway. The town attached to the palace of Khorsabad will give us a better opportunity for the study of a city gate. The " town of Sargon," Dour-Saryoukin or Hisr-Sargon, according as we follow one or the other method of transcribing the Assyrian name, was far smaller than Babylon, was smaller even than Nineveh. It formed a parallelogram two sides of which were about 1,950 yards, the other two about 1,870 yards long, which would give a surface of considerably more than a square mile. This city is interesting not for the part it played in history, for of 1 Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 21. Oppert, Expedition, vol. i. p. 292. Layard, vol. ii. p. 243. The English explorers have found traces of some external works and of a ditch which is now filled with the waters of the Khausser. Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. pp. 2 59-2 6 t. 2 Layard, Discoveries, pp. 120-122. 3 It has no scale.