While war thus raged around him, Sargon still found time for works of a peaceful character. He set himself to remodel and complete the system of irrigation in the Assyrian plain; he repaired the dykes, and cleaned out and made good the beds of the canals which had been neglected during the troublous times of the last generation. He erected buildings at Calah* and at Nineveh, but in these cities everything seemed to recall too vividly the memory of the sovereigns who had gone before him: he wished for a capital which should belong to himself alone, where he would not be reminded of a past in which he had no part. After meditating day and night, his choice fell upon the village of Maganubba, a little to the north-east of Nineveh, in a wide plain which extends from the banks of the Khuzur to the hills of Muzri, and by a single decree he expropriated all its inhabitants. He then built on the land which he had purchased from them a city of unrivalled magnificence, which he called by his own name, Dur-Sharrukin.** * At Calah, he lived in an old palace of Assur-nazir-pal restored and adapted for his use, as shown by the inscription published by Layard. ** In most of the texts the village of Maganubba is not named; it is mentioned in the _Cylinder Inscription_, and this document is the only one which furnishes details of the expropriation, etc. The modern name of the place is Khorsabad, _the city of Khosroes_, but the name of its founder was still associated with its ruins, in the time of Yakut, who mentions him under the name of Sarghun. It was first explored in 1843 by Botta, then by Place and Oppert. The antiquities collected there by Botta and Place constitute the bulk of the Assyrian Museum in the Louvre; unfortunately, a part of the objects collected by Place went to the bottom of the Tigris with the lighter which was carrying them. The ground plan of it is of rectangular shape, the sides being about 1900 yards long by 1800 yards wide, each corner exactly facing one of the four points of the compass. Its walls rest on a limestone sub-structure some three feet six inches high, and rise fifty-seven feet above the ground; they are strengthened, every thirty yards or so, by battlemented towers which project thirteen feet from the face of the wall and stand sixteen feet higher than the ramparts.* * Place reckoned the height of the wall at 75 feet, a measurement adopted by Perrot and Chipiez; Dieulafoy has shown that the height of the wall must be reduced to 47 feet, and that of the towers about 65 feet. [Illustration: 398.jpg PLAN OF THE ROYAL CITY OF DUR-SHARRUKIN] Reduction by Faucher-Gudin, from the plan published in Place.