at, besides antelopes of all sorts, which he took and sent to Asshur,
he captured and destroyed the following animals:--lions, wild sheep, red
deer, fallow-deer, wild goats or ibexes, leopards large and small,
bears, wolves, jackals, wild boars, ostriches, foxes, hyaenas, wild
asses, and a few kinds which have not been identified. From another
inscription we learn that, in the course of another expedition, which
seems to have been in the Mesopotamian desert, he destroyed 360 large
lions, 257 large wild cattle, and thirty buffaloes, while he took and
sent to Calah fifteen full-grown lions, fifty young lions, some
leopards, several pairs of wild buffaloes and wild cattle, together with
ostriches, wolves, red deer, bears, cheetas, and hyeenas. Thus in his
peaceful hours he was still actively employed, and in the chase of many
dangerous beasts was able to exercise the same qualities of courage,
coolness, and skill in the use of weapons which procured him in his wars
such frequent and such great successes.

[Illustration: PLATE 145]

Thus distinguished, both as a hunter and as a warrior, Asshur-izir-pal,
nevertheless, excelled his predecessors most remarkably in the grandeur
of his public buildings and the free use which he made of the mimetic
and other arts in their ornamentation. The constructions of the earlier
kings at Asshur (or Kileh-Sherghat), whatever merit they may have had,
were beyond a doubt far inferior to those which, from the time of
Asshur-izir-pal, were raised in rapid succession at Calah, Nineveh, and
Beth-Sargina by that monarch and his successors upon the throne. The
mounds of Kileh-Sherghat have yielded no bas-reliefs, nor do they show
any traces of buildings on the scale of those which, at Nimrud,
Koyunjik, and Khorsabad, provoke the admiration of the traveller. The
great palace of Asshur-izir-pal was at Calah, which he first raised from
a provincial town to be the metropolis of the empire. [PLATE CXLV., Fig.
1.] It was a building 360 feet long by 300 broad, consisting of seven or
eight large halls, and a far greater number of small chambers, grouped
round a central court 130 feet long and nearly 100 wide. The longest of
the halls, which faced towards the north, and was the first room entered
by one who approached from the town, was in length 154 and in breadth 33
feet. The others varied between a size little short of this, and a
length of 65 with a breadth of less than 20 feet. The chambers were
gener