The palace of Assurnasirpal at Chalah was a building about 360 feet in length and 300 feet in breadth. Two great portals guarded by winged lions with bearded human heads, the images or symbols of the god Nergal, led from the north to a long and proportionately narrow portico of 154 feet in length and 35 feet in breadth. In the south wall of this portico a broad door, by which stand two winged human-headed bulls, images of the god Adar, and hewn out of yellow limestone, opens into a hall 100 feet long and 25 broad. On the east and south sides also of the central court (the west side is entirely destroyed) lie two longer halls, and a considerable number of larger and smaller chambers. The height of the rooms appears to have been from 16 to 18 feet.[565] The walls of the northern portico were covered with slabs of alabaster to a height of 10 or 12 feet, on which were reliefs of the martial exploits of the king, his battles, his sieges, his hunting--he claims to have killed no fewer than 370 mighty lions, and to have taken 75 alive. The reliefs on the slabs of the second hall, which abuts on this, exhibit colossal forms with eagle heads. Above the slabs the masonry of the walls was concealed by tiles coloured and glazed, or by painted arabesques. Beside the fragments of this building a statue of the builder, Assurnasirpal, was discovered. On a simple base of square stone stands a figure in an attitude of serious repose, in a long robe, without any covering to the head, with long hair and strong beard, holding a sort of sickle in the right hand, and a short staff in the left.[566] On the breast we read, "Assurnasirpal, the great king, the mighty king, the king of the nations, the king of Asshur, the son of Tiglath Adar, king of Asshur, the son of Bin-nirar, king of Asshur. Victorious from the Tigris to the land of Labnana (Lebanon), to the great sea, he subjugated all lands from the rising to the setting of the sun."[567] An image in relief at the entrance of the west of the two temples which this king built, to the north of his palace, on the terrace of Chalah (at the entrance to the first are two colossal winged lions with the throats open, and at the entrance of the second two wingless lions), exhibits the king with the Kidaris on his head, and his hand upraised; before the base of the relief stands a small sacrificial altar.[568] We have already mentioned the image of Assurnasirpal which he had engraved near Kurkh, and which is preserved there. According to inscriptions lately discovered, and not yet published, Assurnasirpal built a palace at Niniveh also, and restored the ancient temple of Istar, which Samsi-Bin formerly erected there (p. 31).[569]