as arched or vaulted at top, both the side walls and the
vaulting being of sun-dried brick. [PLATE LIV., Fig. 2.] Its position
was exactly half-way between the tower's northern and southern faces,
and with these it ran parallel, its height in the tower being such that
its floor was exactly on a level with the top of the stone masonry,
which again was level with the terrace or platform whereupon the Nimrud
palaces stood. There was no trace of any way by which the gallery was
intended to be entered; its walls showed no signs of inscription,
sculpture, or other ornament; and absolutely nothing was found in it.
Mr. Layard, prepossessed with an opinion derived from several confused
notices in the classical writers, believed the tower to be a sepulchral
monument, and the gallery to be the tomb in which was originally
deposited "the embalmed body of the king." To account for the complete
disappearance, not only of the body, but of all the ornaments and
vessels found commonly in the Mesopotamian tombs, he suggested that the
gallery had been rifled in times long anterior to his visit; and he
thought that he found traces, both internally and externally, of the
tunnel by which it had been entered. But certainly, if this long and
narrow vault was intended to receive a body, it is most extraordinarily
shaped for the purpose. What other sepulchral chamber is there anywhere
of so enormous a, length? Without pretending to say what the real object
of the gallery was, we may feel tolerably sure that it was not a tomb.
The building which contained it was a temple tower, and it is not likely
that the religious feelings of the Assyrians would have allowed the
application of a religious edifice to so utilitarian a purpose.

[Illustration: PLATE 54]

Besides the ziggerat or tower, which may commonly have been surmounted
by a chapel or shrine, an Assyrian temple had always a number of
basement chambers, in one of which was the principal shrine of the god.
[PLATE LIV.,Fig. 1.] This was a square or slightly oblong recess at the
end of an oblong apartment, raised somewhat above its level; it was
paved (sometimes, if not always) with a single slab, the weight of which
must occasionally have been as much as thirty tons. One or two small
closets opened out from the shrine, in which it is likely that the
priests kept the sacerdotal garments and the sacrificial utensils.
Sometimes the cell of the temple or chamber into which the shrine opened
was rea