Syrian
desert to the Lebanon and the coast cities of Phoenicia. The first princes
whose figured monuments--in contradistinction to mere inscriptions--have
come down to us, belonged to those days. The oldest of all was
ASSURNAZIRPAL, whose residence was at CALACH (_Nimroud_). The bas-reliefs
with which his palace was decorated are now in the Louvre and the British
Museum, most of them in the latter.[67] They may be recognized at once by
the band of inscription which passes across the figures and reproduces one
text again and again (Fig. 4). To Assurnazirpal's son SHALMANESER III.
belongs the obelisk of basalt which also stands in the British Museum. Its
four faces are adorned with reliefs and with a running commentary engraved
with extreme care.[68]

[Illustration: FIG. 4.--Genius in the attitude of adoration. From the
North-west Palace at Nimroud. Louvre. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

Shalmaneser was an intrepid man of war. The inscriptions on his obelisk
recall the events of thirty-one campaigns waged against the neighbouring
peoples under the leadership of the king himself. He was always victorious,
but the nations whom he crushed never accepted defeat. As soon as his back
was well turned they flew to arms, and again drew him from his repose in
the great palace which he had built at Calach, close to that of his
father.[69]

Under the immediate successors of Shalmaneser the Assyrian _prestige_ was
maintained at a high level by dint of the same lavish bloodshed and
truculent energy; but towards the eighth century it began to decline. There
was then a period of languor and decadence, some echo of which, and of its
accompanying disasters, seems to have been embodied by the Greeks in the
romantic tale of Sardanapalus. No shadow of confirmation for the story of a
first destruction of Nineveh is to be found in the inscriptions, and, in
the middle of the same century, we again find the Assyrian arms triumphant
under the leadership of TIGLATH PILESER II., a king modelled after the
great warriors of the earlier days. This prince seems to have carried his
victorious arms as far east as the Indus, and west as the frontiers of
Egypt.

And yet it was only under his second successor, SARYOUKIN, or, to give him
his popular name, SARGON, the founder of a new dynasty, that Syria, with
the exception of Tyre, was brought into complete submission after a great
victory over the Egyptians (721-704).[70] In the intervals of his campaign