These Nimroud monuments belong,—according to the opinion of the best archæologists,—most of them, to the eighth, some of them, however, to the earlier part of the seventh centuries _B.C._ They now occupy the most central of the Assyrian Galleries in the British Museum. The monuments of Kouyunjik and of Khorsabad are probably but little anterior to the supposed date (625 _B.C._) of the destruction of Nineveh. These are exhibited in galleries adjacent to the ‘Nimroud Central Saloon.’ To describe only a few of them in connection with the interesting circumstances of their respective disclosures would demand another chapter. A word or two, however, must be given to one among the earlier discoveries (October, 1846), and to one among the latest of those made (in the spring of 1851), whilst Mr. LAYARD himself remained in the neighbourhood of Mósul. [Sidenote: DISCOVERY OF THE BLACK-MARBLE OBELISK, 1846, October (found in centre of the great mound).] At Nimroud many trenches had, in those early days, been opened unprofitably. Mr. LAYARD doubted whether he ought to carry them further. Half inclined to cease, in this direction, he resolved, finally, that he would not abandon a cutting on which so much money and toil had been spent, until the result of yet another day’s work was shown. [Sidenote: _Nineveh and its Remains_, vol. i, p. 345. (1849 edit.)] ‘I mounted my horse,’ he says—to ride into Mósul—‘but had scarcely left the mound when a corner of black marble was uncovered, lying on the very edge of the trench.’ It was part of an obelisk seven feet high, lying about ten feet below the surface. Its top was cut into three gradines, covered with wedge-shaped inscriptions. Beneath the gradines were five tiers of sculpture in low-relief, continued on all sides. Between every two tiers of sculpture ran a line of inscription. Beneath the five tiers, the unsculptured surface was covered with inscriptions. These, as subsequent researches have shown, contain the Annals of SHALMANESER, King of Assyria, during thirty-one years towards the close of the ninth century before our Lord. The tributaries of the great monarch are seen in long procession, bearing their offerings. In the appended cuneiform record of these tributaries are mentioned JEHU, ‘of the House of OMRI,’ and his contemporary HAZAEL, King of Syria. [Sidenote: _Ibid._, 346.] Well may the proud discoverer call his trophy a ‘precious relic.’