nation, not even Rome, has equalled Egypt in the size and solemn
grandeur of its buildings. But, except in this one respect, the great
African kingdom must be regarded as inferior to her Asiatic rival--which
was indeed "a cedar in Lebanon, exalted above all the trees of the
field--fair in greatness and in the length of his branches--so that all
the trees that were in the garden of God envied him, and not one was
like unto him in his beauty."




CHAPTER IV.

THE CAPITAL.

"Fuit et Ninus, imposita Tigri, ad solis occasum spectans, quondam
clarissima."--PLIN. H. N. vi. 13.

The site of the great capital of Assyria had generally been regarded as
fixed with sufficient certainty to the tract immediately opposite Mosul,
alike by local tradition and by the statements of ancient writers, when
the discovery by modern travellers of architectural remains of great
magnificence at some considerable distance from this position, threw a
doubt upon the generally received belief, and made the true situation of
the ancient Nineveh once more a matter of controversy. When the noble
sculptures and vast palaces of Nimrud were first uncovered, it was
natural to suppose that they marked the real site; for it seemed
unlikely that any mere provincial city should have been adorned by a
long series of monarchs with buildings at once on so grand a scale and
so richly ornamented. A passage of Strabo, and another of Ptolemy, were