the last representative of the old national dynasty, this Semiramis, associated as she was in the exercise, or at least in the show, of sovereign power both in Assyria and Chaldæa, would not be forgotten by her countrymen, and the population of Babylon would be especially likely to magnify the part she had played. There is nothing fabulous in the tradition as Herodotus gives it, although it may, perhaps, go beyond the truth here and there. Ctesias, however, goes much farther. He brings together and amplifies tales which had already received many additions in the half century that separated him from Herodotus, and he thus creates the type of that Semiramis, the wife of Ninus and the conqueror of all Asia, who so long held an undeserved place in ancient history.[243] The last Calah prince who has left us anything is Tiglath-Pileser II. (745–727). We have already described how his palace was destroyed by Esarhaddon, who employed its materials for his own purposes.[244] At the British Museum there are a few fragments which have been recognized by their inscriptions as belonging to his work (Vol. I. Fig. 26)[245]; they are quite similar to those of his immediate predecessors. With the new dynasty founded by Sargon at the end of the eighth century taste changed fast enough. In those bas-reliefs in the Khorsabad palace which represent that king’s campaigns, many details are treated in a spirit very different from that of former days. Trees, for instance, are no longer abstract signs standing for no one kind of vegetation more than another; the sculptor begins to notice their distinguishing features and to give their proper physiognomy to the different countries overrun by the Assyrians. But these landscape backgrounds are not to be found in all the bas-reliefs of Khorsabad.[246]