NINEVEH, ARCHITECTURE OF. Until the year 1843, the very sites of the great cities of the mighty Assyrian empire were little more than matter of conjecture. Rude mounds of earth, and huge heaps of unburat brickwork, served to stimulate the wonder of travellers and the curiosity of archaeologists; but the most searching investigations of travellers like Rich and Niebuhr did not suffice to remove the obscurity which involved the question of where stood Nineveh and Babylon, and what was the character of their buildings ? The wond rous extent of the cities, and the magnificence of their architecture, were attested alike by the Old Testament scriptures, and by Greek historians and geographers [NwEvEit, in Gsoe. Div.], but neither the one nor the other supplied the means of reproducing with the faintest approach to certainty, any of these vast edifices. The explorations of Messrs. Botta and Layard, in 1843 and following years, and of those who succeeded them in their labours, however, brought to light sufficient to prove the accuracy of the contemporary accounts of the splendour of the Assyrian palaces, and to enable the accomplished architect to reproduce with tolerable distinctness the buildings themselves.
The excavations which yielded such marvellous and unexpected results, wore carried on chiefly at Nimroud, Khorsabad, and Kouyunjik, situated on the east bank of the Tigris nearly opposite Mosul, and within a district about 30' miles in length ; and, as Mr. Layard, the great authority on the subject, believes, all forming at one time portions of the same great city : "the numerous royal residences, surrounded by gardens and parks, and enclosed by fortified walls, each being a distinct quarter known by a different name, formed together the great city of Nineveh," though by others they are rather regarded as separate cities. In all ten great buildings have been discovered, and all of them have precisely the game character, being palaces, or rather palaces and temples combined, the king having a sacred character, and being chief priest as well as governor. Nineveh was founded some 200o years B.C. ; but the oldest building yet discovered appears, from
inscriptions on it, to have been built in the reign of Sardanapalus, B.C. 030, the latest was hardly finished at the destruction of the city, B.o.
625 ; the architectural examples therefore extend over a period of 300 years, but leave the archaic period unillustrated.
The palace-temples of Nineveh yet discovered were all built on an artificial mound or platform raised 30 or 40 feet above the level of the ground. These mounds or terraces were of vast extent ; that of the palace of Sennacherib at Kouyunjik was a mile and a half in circum ference. They were partly of earth and rubbish, and partly, or, as at Khorsabad, wholly of regular layers of sun-dried bricks cemented together with clay, faced with slabs of stone, and supported by solid masonry. The object in raising these costly substructures was probably, as Mr. Layard suggests, to secure a certain amount of cool ness during the summer heats, as well as to impart dignity to the building, and afford a means of defence. The process of raising these mounds, and of erecting the buildings, is minutely depicted in the marble slabs brought from the buildings themselves, and now deposited in the British Museum and the Louvre.
The buildings appear to have consisted of a series of chambers invariably rectangular, and usually oblong, placed side by side, and with studious symmetry around great halls or square open courts. These chambers occur from one to two hundred feet in length, and from twenty to forty in breadth. From this great central block suites of smaller rooms project as wings, the rooms decreasing in size and richness as they recede from the centre. In some of the palaces long galleries connect the several parts. The great halls and courts, with some of the chief apartments, appear to have been devoted to purposes of state and ceremony; while other portions were, as Mr. Fergusson has shown, set apart in accordance with eastern habits for the use of the females, or, as it would now be termed, the harem.