[374] Sir H. LAYARD noticed this at the very beginning of his explorations: "Between the bulls and the lions forming the entrances in different parts of the palace were invariably found a large collection of baked bricks, elaborately painted with figures of animals and flowers, and with cuneiform characters" (_Nineveh_, vol. ii. p. 13). [375] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 234; vol. iii. plates 9 and 17. [376] _Ibid._ vol. iii. plate 14. We should have reproduced this composition in colour had the size of our page allowed us to do so on a proper scale. M. Place was unable to give it all even in a double-page plate of his huge folio. [377] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii. plates 23-31. [378] Layard, _Monuments_, 2nd series, plates 53, 54. Elsewhere (_Discoveries_, pp. 166-168) Layard has given a catalogue and summary description of all these fragments, of which only a part were reproduced in the plates of his great collection. [379] _Ibid._ plate 55. [380] GEO. SMITH, _Assyrian Discoveries_, p. 79. [381] Botta gives examples of some of these bricks (_Monument de Ninive_, plates 155, 156). Among the motives there reproduced there is one that we have already seen in the bas-reliefs (fig. 67). It is a goat standing in the collected attitude he would take on a point of rock. The head of the ibex is also a not uncommon motive (LAYARD, _Monuments_, first series, plate 87, fig. 2; see also BOTTA). [382] Fig. 1 of our Plate XIV. reproduces the same design, but with a more simple colouration. [383] J. E. TAYLOR, _Notes on Abou-Sharein_, p. 407 (in the _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. xv.). [384] PHILOSTRATUS, _Life of Apollonius_, i. 25. Cf. DIONYSIUS PERIEGETES, who says of Semiramis (v. 1007, 1008): autar ep' akropolei megan domon eisato Beloi chrusoi t' ed' elephanti kai aguroi askesasa. [385] HERODOTUS, i. 98. [386] See above, p. 202. [387] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. ii. p. 264, note 1. Frequent allusions to this use of metal are to be found in the wedges. In M. LENORMANT'S translation of the London inscription (_Histoire ancienne_, vol. ii. p. 233, 3rd edition) in which Nebuchadnezzar enumerates the great works he had done at Borsippa, I find the following words: "I have covered the roof of Nebo's place of repose with gold. The beams of the door before the oracles have been overlaid with silver ... the pivot of the door into the woman's chamber I have covered with silver." [388] Among the fragments of tiles brought from Nimroud by Mr. George Smith, and now in the British Museum, there are two like those reproduced above, to which bosses or knobs of the same material--glazed earthenware--are attached. The necks of these bosses are pierced with holes apparently to receive the chain of a hanging lamp, and are surrounded at their base with inscriptions of Assurnazirpal stating that they formed part of the decoration of a temple at Calah.--ED. [389] The size of our engraving is slightly above that of the object itself.