We have already spoken of the bas-relief of Korkhar;[264] it is about three hundred miles from Nineveh, but the Assyrian conquerors left traces of their passage even farther from the capital than that, in the famous pass of the Lycos, for instance, near modern Beyrout, and now called _Nahr-el-Kelb_, or _river of the dog_. A rock-cut road passes through it, which has been followed from the remotest times by armies advancing from the north upon Egypt, or from the latter country towards Damascus and the fords of the Euphrates. Following the Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty, Esarhaddon caused his own image and royal titles to be cut in this defile; they may still be seen there, on rocks whose feet stand in the bed of the torrent (Fig. 122).[265] Without going so far as northern Syria we might find, if we may believe the natives of the country, plenty of sculptures in the valleys that open upon the Assyrian plain if they were carefully explored. Near Ghunduk, a village about forty-five miles north-west of Mossoul, Layard noticed two reliefs of the kind, one representing a hunt, the other a religious sacrifice.[266] But after Bavian the most important of all these remains yet discovered is that at Malthaï. This village is about seventy-five miles north of Mossoul, in a valley forming one of the natural gateways of Kurdistan. The road by which the traveller reaches Armenia and Lake Van runs through the valley.[267] There, in the fertile stretch of country that lies between two spurs standing out from the main chain, stands a _tell_, or mound, which seems to have been raised by the hand of man. Place opened trenches in it without result, but he himself confesses that his explorations were not carried far enough, and, the beauty of the site and other things being considered, he persists in believing that the kings of Assyria must have had a palace, or at least a country lodge, in the valley. However this may be, the bas-reliefs, of which Place was the first to make an exact copy, suffice to prove that this site attracted particular attention from the Assyrians (see Fig. 123). They are to be found on the mountain side, at about two-thirds of its total height, or some thousand feet above the level of the valley. In former days they must have been inaccessible without artificial aids. It is only by successive falls of rock that the rough zig-zag path by which we can now approach them has been formed. The figures, larger than nature, are arranged in a long row and in a single plane. Place was obliged, by the size and shape of his page, to give them in two instalments in the plate of which our Fig. 123 is a copy. In the absence of a protecting edge they have suffered more than the figures at Bavian. They have, indeed, a slight projection or cornice above, but its salience is hardly greater than that of the figures themselves. [Illustration: FIG. 123.--The bas-reliefs of Malthaï; from Place. About one forty-fifth of actual size.]