Like his father, Shalmanesar resided at Chalah. On the terrace of this city, to the south-east of the palace of his father, he built a dwelling-place for himself, and in this set up the obelisk, the inscriptions on which give a brief account of each year of his reign. In the ruins of this house two bulls also have been discovered, which are covered with inscriptions, which, together with the inscription of Kurkh on the Tigris, supplement or extend the statements of the obelisk. More considerable remains have come down to us of another building of Shalmanesar. Assurnasirpal had erected at Chalah two temples to the north of his palace. To the larger (western) of these two temples on the north-west corner of the terrace Shalmanesar added a tower, the ruins of which in the form of a pyramidal hill still overtop the uniform heap of the ruined palaces. On the foundation of the natural rock of the bank of the Tigris lies a square substructure (each of the sides measures over 150 feet) of 20 feet in height, built of brick and cased with stone. On this base rises a tower of several diminishing stories. In the first of these stories, immediately upon the platform, is a passage 100 feet long, 12 feet high, and 6 feet in breadth, which divides the storey exactly in the middle from east to west. Two centuries after the fall of the Assyrian kingdom, Xenophon, marching up the Tigris with the 10,000, reached the ruins of Chalah. After crossing the Zapatus, _i.e._ the Greater Zab, he came to a large deserted city on the Tigris, the name of which sounded to him like Larissa (Chalah); it was surrounded by a wall about seven and a-half miles long. This wall had a substructure of stone masonry about 20 feet high; on this it rose, 25 feet in thickness, and built of bricks, to the height of 100 feet. Beside the city was a pyramid of stone, a plethron (100 feet) broad and two plethra high; to these many of the neighbouring hamlets fled for refuge.[591] Shalmanesar's tower was broken, and by the fall of the upper parts had become changed into a pyramid. The sides of the tower Xenophon put at almost half their real size; the height of the ruins is still about 140 feet. That Shalmanesar also stayed at Nineveh is proved by the inscriptions; that he possessed a palace in the ancient city of Asshur is proved by the stamp of the tiles at Kileh Shergat.[592]