erials thrown down from its summit, among them a
great number of planks or beams, which seem to suggest that timber was
freely employed in the upper works of an Assyrian wall. If this was so, the
pointed battlements in the reliefs may very well represent those in which
timber was used, and the stepped ones their brick imitations. Both forms
were used as decorations in places where no real battlements could have
existed, as, for instance, on the tent of Sennacherib, in the well-known
bas-relief of the siege of Lachish (see fig. 56).--ED.

[319] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. ii. p. 85.

[320] There is an altar almost exactly similar to this in the British
Museum. It was found in front of the temple of the War God, Nimroud.--ED.

[321] Upon some other monuments brought from the same place by Mr. Hormuzd
Rassam, and also exhibited in the Nimroud central saloon, we may read by
the side of Rammanu-nirari's name that of his spouse Sammuramat, who seems
to have been associated with him in the government, and to have been the
recipient of particular honours. The name of this princess has caused some
to recognize in her the fabulous Semiramis of the Greek writers. In
consequence of facts that have escaped us she may well have furnished the
first idea for the romantic legends whose echo has come down to our times.

[322] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 96; vol. ii. pp. 71-73.

[323] Besides the obelisk of Shalmaneser II., which is in a marvellous
state of preservation, the British Museum possesses three other objects of
the same kind. Two of these were made for Assurnazirpal; the third, the
most ancient of all, dates from the time of Tiglath Pileser I.; unhappily
only fragments of it remain.

[324] See also BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, vol. i. plate 64. We here find
an instance of one of these arched steles erected before a fortress.

[325] ?--ED.

Sec. 7.--_Decoration._

Mesopotamia was no exception to the general rule that decoration is
governed by construction. To take only one example, and that from an art we
have already studied, the Egyptian temple was entirely of stone, and its
decoration formed a part of the very substance of what we may call the
flesh and blood of the edifice. The elements of that rich and brilliant
decoration are furnished by those mouldings which make up in vigour what
they lack in variety, by the slight relief or the hardly perceptible
intaglio of the shadowless figures cut by the sculptor in stone, and