Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/72

54 heap; of the old men's heads I built a tower. I exposed their heads as a trophy in front of their city. The male children and the female children I burned in the flames."

Royal Sports.—The Assyrian king gloried in being, like the great Nimrod, "a mighty hunter before the Lord." The monuments are covered with sculptures that represent the king engaged in the favorite royal sport. Asshur-izer-pal had at Nineveh a menagerie, or hunting-park, filled with various animals, many of which were sent him as tribute by vassal princes.

Remains of Assyrian Cities.—Enormous grass-grown mounds, enclosed by crumbled ramparts, alone mark the sites of the great cities of the Assyrian kings. The character of the remains arises from the nature of the building material. City walls, palaces, and temples were constructed chiefly of sun-dried bricks, so that the generation that raised them had scarcely passed away before they began to sink down into heaps of rubbish. The rains of many centuries have beaten down and deeply furrowed these mounds, while the grass has crept over them and made green alike the palaces of the kings and the temples of the gods.