neveh was overthrown by the
Medes when they destroyed the Assyrian empire." The exaggerations in which
Ctesias indulged may here be recognized. It is impossible to take seriously
statements which make the tomb of Ninus some 5,500 feet high and 6,100 in
diameter. The history of Ninus and Semiramis as Ctesias tells it, is no
more than a romantic tale like those of the _Shah-Nameh_. All that we may
surely gather from the passage in question is that, at the time of
Ctesias, and perhaps a little later, the remains of a great staged-tower
were to be seen among the ruins of Nineveh. The popular imagination had
dubbed this the tomb of Ninus, just as one of the great heaps of debris
that now mark the site is called the tomb of Jonah.

All that has hitherto been recovered in the way of Mesopotamian tomb
architecture is of little importance so far as beauty is concerned, and we
may perhaps be blamed for dwelling upon these remains at such length in a
history of art. But we had our reasons for endeavouring to reunite and
interpret the scanty facts by which some light is thrown on the subject. Of
all the creations of man, his tomb is that, perhaps, which enables us to
penetrate farthest into his inner self; there is no work of his hands into
which he puts more of his true soul, in which he speaks more naively and
with a more complete acknowledgment of his real beliefs and the bases of
his hopes. To pass over the Chaldaean tomb in silence because it is a
mediocre work of art would be to turn a blind eye to the whole of one side
of the life of a great people, a people whose _role_ in the development of
the ancient civilization was such as to demand that we should leave no
stone unturned to make ourselves masters of their every thought.

NOTES:

[444] LOFTUS, _Travels_, &c., pp. 203-4. The British Museum possesses
several fine specimens of these glazed-ware coffins. The details given by
LOFTUS (chapter xx.), upon the necropolis of Sinkara may be read with
interest.

[445] See above, p. 158, and fig. 49.

[446] M. Stanislas GUYARD published a translation of this passage in the
_Journal asiatique_, for May-June, 1880, p. 514; some terms which had
remained doubtful, were explained by M. AMIAUD, in the same journal for
August-September, 1881, p. 237.

[447] HERODOTUS, i. 187.

[448] LOFTUS, _Travels_, &c., pp. 248-9.

[449] ARRIAN, _Anabasis_, vii. 22.

[450] DIODORUS, ii. 7, 1-2.

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CHAPTER IV.

RELIG