.
23.}
24. Helmet.
25. Round shield such as was borne by foot soldiers.
26. Breastplate of a knight of high degree.
27. Parasol found at Nimroud. (Now in British Museum.)
28. Ear-ring of gold.
29.}
30.}
31.} Bracelets of gold.
32.}
33.{
34.{ Diadems.
35. Wall painting representing lions.]

Most of the sculptures discovered in this hall and group of chambers
have been deposited in the British Museum.

For the more recent collection of sculptures which have been brought
to light, we are indebted to Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, a native of Mosul,
and a friend and colleague of Layard; and to Mr. William Kennet
Loftus, the agent of the Assyrian excavation fund. In 1852, Mr. Rassam
was appointed by the Trustees of the British Museum to take charge of
the excavations at Nineveh. For more than a year his researches were
nearly fruitless, when, at length, just as his appointment was about
to terminate, he turned again to a previously-abandoned trench in the
north side of the mound, and was almost immediately rewarded by the
discovery of numerous chambers and passages, covered with a variety of
bas-reliefs in an excellent state of preservation, having suffered
less injury from fire than those of the other palaces. In one room was
a lion hunt, in a continuous series of twenty-three slabs, with but
one interval. The other slabs represented exteriors of palaces,
gardens, battles, sieges, processions, etc., the whole forming the
decorations of what must have been a splendid palace.

Subsequently, in 1854, at the instance of Sir Henry Rawlinson, Mr.
Loftus and his coadjutor, Mr. Boutcher, transferred their operations
from South Babylonia to Nineveh. At first Mr. Loftus' excavations were
unsuccessful, but about the beginning of August he discovered the
remains of a building on a level twenty feet lower than the palace
that Mr. Rassam was exploring, and which proved to be a lower terrace
of the same building, even more highly elaborated and in better
preservation than those previously discovered in the ruins. At the
entrance of an ascending passage there was also found a "mass of
solid masonry--apparently the pier of an arch--the springing of which
is formed by projecting horizontal layers of limestone."

Mr. Loftus, in his Report of the 9th of October, observes: "The
excavations carried on at the western angle of the North Palace,
Kouyunjik, continue to reveal many interestin