patterns. They may have been merely guard-rooms, since they
appear to have formed a portion of a high tower. The palace at Nebbi
Ynnus was probably a more important work; but the superstitious regard
of the natives for the supposed tomb of Jonah has hitherto frustrated
all attempts made by Europeans to explore that mass of ruins.

Among all the monuments recovered by recent researches, the only works
of art assignable to the reign of Vul-lush are two rude statues of the
god Nebo, almost exactly resembling one another. From the representation
of one of them, given on a former page of this volume, the reader will
see that the figures in question have scarcely any artistic merit. The
head is disproportionately large, the features, so far as they can be
traced, are coarse and heavy, the arms and hands are poorly modelled,
and the lower part is more like a pillar than the figure of a man. We
cannot suppose that Assyrian art was incapable, under the third
Vul-lush, of a higher flight than these statues indicate; we must
therefore regard them as conventional forms, reproduced from old models,
which the artist was bound to follow. It would seem, indeed, that while
in the representation of animals and of men of inferior rank, Assyrian
artists were untrammelled by precedent, and might aim at the highest
possible perfection, in religious subjects, and in the representation of
kings and nobles, they were limited, by law or custom, to certain
ancient forms and modes of expression, which we find repeated from the
earliest to the latest times with monotonous uniformity.

If these statues, however, are valueless as works of art, they have yet
a peculiar interest for the historian, as containing the only mention
which the disentombed remains have furnished of one of the most
celebrated names of antiquity--a name which for many ages vindicated to
itself a leading place, not only in the history of Assyria, but in that
of the world. To the Greeks and Romans Semiramis was the foremost of
women, the greatest queen who had ever held a sceptre, the most
extraordinary conqueror that the East had ever produced. Beautiful as
Helen or Cleopatra, brave as Tomyris, lustful as Messalina, she had the
virtues and vices of a man rather than a woman, and performed deeds
scarcely inferior to those of Cyrus or Alexander the Great. It is an
ungrateful task to dispel illusions, more especially such as are at once
harmless and venerable for their antiquity;