As a Semitic people we should hardly expect to find any tombs among them, and indeed, unless the pyramid at the north-west angle of the Nimroud mound is the tomb of Sardanapalus, mentioned by the Greeks,[87] it is not clear that a single Assyrian sepulchre has yet been discovered. Those that crowd and choke the ruins of Wurka and Mugheyr and other cities of Babylonia are the remains of a Turanian people who always respected their dead, and paid especial attention to the preservation of their bodies. The pyramid at Nimroud seems to have been explored with sufficient care to enable us to affirm that no stairs or inclined plane led to its summit, and without these it certainly was not one of those observatory temples before alluded to. Still, it is so singular to have one monument, and one only, of its class, that it is difficult to form a satisfactory opinion on the subject. It stands at the north-west angle of the mound, and measures 167 ft. each way; its base, 30 ft. in height, is composed of beautiful stone masonry, ornamented by buttresses and offsets, above which the wall was continued perpendicularly in brickwork. In the centre of the building, and on the level of the base or terrace, a long vaulted gallery or tunnel was discovered, but it contained no clue to the destination of the building. [Illustration: 80. Sacred Symbolic Tree of the Assyrians. (From Lord Aberdeen’s Black Stone.)] [Illustration: 81. Obelisk of Divanubara. (From Layard’s ‘Nineveh.’)] The whole now rises to a height of about 120 ft. from the plain, and is composed of sun-dried bricks, with courses of kiln-burnt bricks between them, at certain intervals towards the summit, which render it probable that it originally was not a pyramid in the usual sense of the term, but a square tower, rising in three or four storeys, each less than the lower one, as in the traditional temple of Belus at Babylon, or like the summit of the obelisk represented in the woodcut (No. 81), which most probably is a monolithic reproduction of such a sepulchral tower as this, rather than an obelisk like those of Egypt. Other obelisks have since been discovered, some of which look even more like miniature models of structural buildings than this one does. Till further information is obtained, it will hardly be possible to say much that is satisfactory with regard to either the tombs, temples, or minor antiquities of the Assyrian people. Their architecture was essentially Palatial—as that of the Greeks was Templar—and to that alone our remarks might almost be confined. Fortunately, however, sculpture was another art to which they were specially addicted, and to their passion for this we owe most of our knowledge of their manners and customs. To this art also we are indebted for our ability to restore many details of their palaces and buildings, which without its aid would have been altogether unintelligible.