it was removed by the hands of modern Arabs, and it is now
preserved in the British Museum, where the characters of the inscription
may be seen to be as sharp and uninjured as on the day when the Assyrian
graver inscribed them by order of the king.

In the account of his first campaign, which is preserved upon
the memorial tablet, it is stated that the peoples conquered by
Tukulti-Ninib brought their yearly tribute to the city of Ashur. This
fact is of considerable interest, for it proves that Tukulti-Ninib
restored the capital of Assyria to the city of Ashur, removing it from
Calah, whither it had been transferred by his father Shalmaneser I. The
city of Calah had been founded and built by Shalmaneser I in the same
way that his son Tukulti-Ninib built the city of Kar-Tukulti-Ninib, and
the building of both cities is striking evidence of the rapid growth
of Assyria and her need of expansion around fresh centres prepared for
administration and defence. The shifting of the Assyrian capital to
Calah by Shalmaneser I was also due to the extension of Assyrian power
in the north, in consequence of which there was need of having the
capital nearer the centre of the country so enlarged. Ashur's recovery
of her old position under Tukulti-Ninib I was only a temporary check to
this movement northwards, and, so long as Babylon remained a conquered
province of the Assyrian empire, obviously the need for a capital
farther north than Ashur would not have been pressing.

[Illustration 409.jpg THE ZIGGURAT, OR TEMPLE TOWER, OF THE ASSYRIAN
CITY OF CALAH.]

But with Tukulti-Ninib's death Babylon regained her independence and
freed herself from Assyrian control, and the centre of the northern
kingdom was once more subject to the influences which eventually
resulted in the permanent transference of her capital to Nineveh. To the
comparative neglect into which Ashur and Calah consequently fell, we
may probably trace the extensive remains of buildings belonging to the
earlier periods of Assyrian history which have been recovered and still
remain to be found, in the mounds that mark their sites.

We have given some account of the results already achieved from the
excavations carried out during the last two years at Sherghat, the site
of the city of Ashur. That much remains to be done on the site of Calah,
the other early capital of Assyria, is evident from even a cursory
examination of the present condition of the mounds that mark the
lo