This Assur began building, on the banks of the Tigris, the
great city of Nineveh, one of the mightiest in all the world, and the
first to be ruined. It was enclosed by a huge wall, so wide that three
chariots could drive side by side on the top, and built of bricks made
of the clay of the country, dried in the sun and cemented with bitumen,
guarded at the base by a plinth fifty feet in height, and with immense
ditches round it, about sixty miles in circumference. Within were huge
palaces, built of the same bricks, faced with alabaster, and the rooms
decked with cedar, gilding, and ivory, and raised upon terraces whence
broad flights of steps led down to courts guarded by giant stone figures
of bulls and lions, with eagles' wings and human faces, as if some
notion of the mysterious Cherubim around the Throne in Heaven had
floated to these Assyrians. The slabs against the walls were carved with
representations of battles, hunts, sacrifices, triumphs, and all the
scenes in the kings' histories, nay, in the building of the city; and
there were explanations in the wedge-shaped letters of the old Assyrian
alphabet.
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