stands on a mound of its own, unmixed with other edifices, has been most
carefully examined, and most excellently represented and described, and
which, though not completely excavated, has been excavated with a nearer
approach to completeness than any other edifice in Assyria. The
Khorsabad building--which is believed to be a palace built by Sargon,
the son of Sennacherib--will therefore be selected for minute
description in this place, as the palace most favorably circumstanced,
and the one of which we have, on the whole, the most complete and exact
knowledge. [PLATE XLIV.]

[Illustration: PLATE 44]

The situation of the town, whereof the palace of Sargon formed a part,
has been already described in a former part of this volume. The shape,
it has been noted, was square, the angles facing the four cardinal
points. Almost exactly in the centre of the north-west wall occurs the
palace platform, a huge mass of crude brick, from 20 to 30 feet high,
shaped like a T, the upper limb lying within the city walls, and the
lower limb (which is at a higher elevation) projecting beyond the line
of the walls to a distance of at least 500 feet. At present there is a
considerable space between the ends of the wall and the palace mound;
but anciently it is provable that they either abutted on the mound, or
were separated from it merely by gateways. The mound, or at any rate the
part of it which projected beyond the walls, was faced with hewn stone,
carried perpendicularly from the plain to the top of the platform, and
even beyond, so as to form a parapet protecting the edge of the
platform. On the more elevated portion of the mound--that which
projected beyond the walls stood the palace, consisting of three groups
of buildings, the principal group lying towards the mound's northern
angle. On the lower portion of the platform were several detached