The monumental history of Assyria really begins two centuries later, with the great buildings erected by Assurnazirpal at Calah (Nimroud), his favourite residence. Assyrian art then reached a level that, speaking generally, it never surpassed. In the following centuries it innovated, it became more complex and certainly more refined, but it produced nothing essentially nobler than certain Nimroud bas-reliefs, in which the king is seated among his great officers or before his gods, and always in the attitude of prayer and sacrifice. We have already given several examples of these reliefs (Vol. I. Fig. 4, and above, Figs. 15 and 64); we may here add one more (Fig. 113). Leaning on his bow with his left hand, the king, richly dressed, lifts in his right the patera whose contents he is about to pour as a libation to the deity. Facing him stands a gigantic eunuch, who waves over his master’s head one of those fly-flappers that, with the parasol, have always been among the insignia of Oriental royalty (see Plate X.). These figures are rather short in their proportions, and the muscular development of their arms, which alone are bare, is violently exaggerated, but yet as a whole the work has a certain grandeur and nobility. The lines are well balanced. Both the king and his attendant seem fully impressed with the gravity of the rite over which they are busy. There is dignity in their attitudes, but no stiffness; their gestures are easy and expressive without being too much accented. In our engraving we have only been able to include the two isolated figures, in the original there are several more all occupied over the same rite. Even the British Museum has only a few fragments from these vast compositions. For those who saw them in their original completeness, well lighted and distributed in their right order along the walls of spacious saloons, they must have seemed majestic enough.