must have been at least 250 feet long and 150 feet wide. The palace of
Sennacherib at Koyunjik, a much larger edifice than the palace of
Sargon, has also three courts, which are respectively 93 feet by 84, 124
feet by 90, and 154 feet by 125. Esarhaddon's palace at Nimrud has a
court 220 feet long and 100 wide. These courts were all paved either
with baked bricks of large size, or with stone slabs, which were
frequently patterned. Sometimes the courts were surrounded with
buildings; sometimes they abutted upon the edge of the platform: in this
latter case they were protected by a stone parapet, which (at least in
places) was six feet high.

The grand halls of the Assyrian palaces constitute their most remarkable
feature. Each palace has commonly several. They are apartments narrow
for their length, measuring from three to five times their own width,
and thus having always somewhat the appearance of galleries. The scale
upon which they are built is, commonly, magnificent. In the palace of
Asshur-izir-pal at Nimrud, the earliest of the discovered edifices, the
great hall was 160 feet long by nearly 40 broad. In Sargon's palace at
Khorsabad the size of no single room was so great; but the number of
halls was remarkable, there being no fewer than five of nearly equal
dimensions. The largest was 116 feet long, and 33 wide; the smallest 87
feet long, and 25 wide. The palace of Sennacherib at Koyuhjik contained
the most spacious apartment yet exhumed. It was immediately inside the
great portal, and extended in length 180 feet, with a uniform width of
forty feet. In one instance only, so far as appears, was an attempt made
to exceed this width. In the palace of Esarhaddon, the son of
Sennacherib, a hall was designed intended to surpass all former ones.
[PLATE XLIII., Fig. 2.] Its length was to be 165 feet, and its width 62;
consequently it would have been nearly one-third larger than the great
hall of Sennacherib, its area exceeding 10,000 square feet. But the