Although I had read with exceeding interest, shortly after their publication, Andræ’s superbly illustrated reports of his careful and methodical excavations at Kalah Sherghat, I was not fully prepared for the wonderful ruins which greeted my vision when I first surveyed them from one of the imposing zigurats of the great temple of Anu and Adad, which was rebuilt by Salmanassar III, nearly nine centuries before our era.[388] As reconstructed by Andræ this temple was, in its day, one of the architectural wonders of western Asia. But the city of Assur was more than a thousand years old when Salmanassar placed in the great temple enclosure a record of his work on it and an account of its completion. For fully twenty centuries, B. C., Assyria, from Assur as a center, had begun to extend her dominions northwards and to lay the foundations of that mighty empire which was for so many generations the admiration and the dread of the ancient world. Besides uncovering the temples and palaces of Assur, Dr. Andræ and his colleagues unearthed a part of its residential quarter. In so doing they made discoveries of the greatest interest regarding the domestic life of its inhabitants and their care for the sanitary condition of their homes. Every house, however small, had suitable sewer connections, while all the larger homes had rooms for domestics and dependents. But to many students of Assyriology the most notable discovery made here by the German expedition took place not in the temples and palaces of the venerable city but in the space between its interior and exterior walls. This consisted in unearthing a large number of tombs and nearly a hundred and fifty stelae, some of which were made of sandstone and limestone, while others were fashioned out of basalt and alabaster. From the inscriptions on these stelae it was evident that no fewer than thirty-five of them were erected to the memory of rulers of Assyria. Among the royal tombs were those of Ashbelkala, Ashurnasirpal III, and Shamsi-Adad V. The massive sarcophagus of the first-named king was found to be in almost perfect condition. Commenting on this remarkable find Dr. Rogers writes: This discovery of these royal tombs appeals most strongly to the imagination. Before this, Assyriology had seemed so poor in comparison with Egyptology which has from the beginning been able to point to its long series of royal tombs, nay, even to the mummied remains of the greatest of Egyptian Kings. There is no probability that Assyrian discoveries will ever be able to match these, but the reproach that neither Assyria nor Babylonia had even one royal tomb has been taken away.[389]