Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/24

 A History of Art in Ciialrka and Assyria. himself in the dwelling which had seen the death of his predecessor would have seemed an invitation to misfortune, and his pride would have been wounded at seeing the walls of his house eiven up to celebrating the exploits of any one but himself. Finally, each king hoped to surpass all those who had gone before in the extent and luxury of the edifice to which his name would be thenceforward attached. Sometimes he took dressed masonry from abandoned seragli >s ; sometimes he raised at his doors winged bulls which had already done duty elsewhere, changing, of course, their inscriptions ; sometimes he lined his chambers with alabaster slabs bearing reliefs in which the conquests of his fathers were narrated ; in that case he turned the sculptured side to the wall, and caused his own prowess to be celebrated upon the new surface thus cheaply won. 1 Whether old materials were used or new, the palace was always personal to the king who built it. Thus it is that the remains of some ten palaces have been found in the mounds already attacked, although that of Khorsabad is the only one that has been completely explored. We cannot attempt to describe the ruins of so many palaces. No one of them is an exact copy of any other ; their dimensions, and many of their arrangements have much variety, but neverthe- less, we may say that they all follow the same general plan. The only way to avoid continual repetition is to take, as a type of all, the example that has been most completely studied. Our choice of such a type is soon made. The palace of Sargon, at Khorsabad, may be neither the largest of the Assyrian palaces nor that in which the best sculptors were employed upon the decorations, but it is certainly that in which the excavations have been most systematically carried on. Except at a few points the explorers have only held their hands when the flat summit of the mound was reached. The whole has been cleared except the centres of some of the quadrangles and a few unimportant outbuildings. Nowhere else can the general arrangement be so clearly followed, or the guiding spirit of an Assyrian plan so easily grasped. 1 Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 38. Esarhaddon was the chief offender in this respect.