top. A road leads straight up to this royal tablet, and in this road
within a little distance of the king stands an altar. The temple
occupies the top of a mound, which is covered with trees of two
different kinds, and watered by rivulets. On the right is a "hanging
garden," artificially elevated to the level of the temple by means of
masonry supported on an arcade, the arch here used being not the round
arch but a pointed one. No. VI. [PLATE L.] is unfortunately very
imperfect, the entire upper portion having been lost. Even, however, in
its present mutilated state it represents by far the most magnificent
building that has yet been found upon the bas-reliefs. The facade, as it
now stands, exhibits four broad pilasters and four pillars, alternating
in pairs, excepting that, as in the smaller temples, pilasters occupy
both corners. In two cases, the base of the pilaster is carved into the
figure of a winged bull, closely resembling the bulls which commonly
guarded the outer gates of palaces. In the other two the base is
plain--a piece of negligence, probably, on the part of the artist. The
four pillars all exhibit a rounded base, nearly though not quite similar
to that of the pillars in No. V.; and this rounded base in every case
rests upon the back of a walking lion. We might perhaps have imagined
that this was a mere fanciful or mythological device of the artist's, on
a par with the representations at Bavian, where figures, supposed to be
Assyrian deities, stand upon the backs of animals resembling dogs. But
one of M. Place's architectural discoveries seems to make it possible,
or even probable, that a real feature in Assyrian building is here
represented M. Place found the arch of the town gateway which he exhumed
at Khorsabad to spring from the backs of the two bulls which guarded it
on either side. Thus the lions at the base of the pillars may be real
architectural forms, as well as the winged bulls which support the
pilasters. The lion was undoubtedly a sacred animal, emblematic of
divine power, and especially assigned to Nergal, the Assyrian Mars, the