of any other ancient people whose ideas are sufficiently
known to us.

NOTES:

[419] See _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. i. chapter 3.

[420] Upon the tombs found at Nimroud see LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. i. pp.
17-19 and p. 352; vol. ii. pp. 37, 38. Some funerary urns discovered at
Khorsabad are figured in BOTTA, _Monument_, &c. plate 165. There is one
necropolis in Assyria that, in the employment of terra-cotta coffins,
resembles the graveyards of Chaldaea; it is that of Kaleh-Shergat, which has
long been under process of rifling by the Arabs, who find cylinders,
engraved stones, and jewels among its graves. PLACE judges from the
appearance of the coffins and other objects found that this necropolis
dates from the Parthian times (_Ninive_, vol. ii. pp. 183-185). LAYARD is
of the same opinion (_Nineveh_, vol. ii. pp. 58, 154, 155). Mr. Rassam
found tombs at Kouyundjik, but much too late to be Assyrian (LOFTUS,
_Travels and Researches_, p. 198, note). Loftus found some bones in a
roughly-built vault some seventeen feet below the level of the
south-eastern palace at Nimroud, but he acknowledges he saw nothing to lead
him to assign these remains to the Assyrian epoch more than to any other
(_Travels and Researches_, p. 198). Layard was disposed to see in the long
and narrow gallery cleared by him at Nimroud (in the middle of the staged
tower that rises at the north-western corner of the mound) a sepulchral
vault in which the body of a king must once have been deposited
(_Discoveries_, pp. 126, 128), but he confesses that he found nothing in
it, neither human remains nor any trace of sepulchral furniture. His
conjecture is therefore entirely in the air, and he himself only puts it
forth under all reserve. The difficulty of this inquiry is increased by the
fact that the people of different religions by whom the Assyrians were
succeeded always chose by preference to bury their dead at high levels.
Even in our own day it is, as a rule, upon the heights studded over the
plains that Christians, Mussulmans, and Yezidis establish their cemeteries;
and these have become grave obstacles to the explorer in consequence of the
natural disinclination on the part of the peasantry to disturb what may be
the ashes of their ancestors. BENNDORF (_Gesichtshelme_, plate xiv. figs. 1
and 2) reproduces two golden masks similar to those found at Mycenae, which
were found, the one at Kouyundjik, the other at some unknown point in the
same district;