The scope of Layard's excavations exceeded, therefore, those of Botta; and to the one palace at Khorsabad, he added three at Nimrud and two at Koyunjik, besides finding traces of a temple and other buildings. The construction of these edifices was of the same order as the one unearthed by Botta; and as at the latter, there was a large yield of sculptures, inscriptions, and miscellaneous objects. A new feature, however, of Layard's excavations was the finding of several rooms filled with fragments of small and large clay tablets closely inscribed on both sides in the cuneiform characters. These tablets, about 30,000 of which found their way to the British Museum, proved to be the remains of a royal library. Their contents ranged over all departments of thought,--hymns, incantations, prayers, epics, history, legends, mythology, mathematics, astronomy constituting some of the chief divisions. In the corners of the palaces, the foundation records were also found, containing in each case more or less extended annals of the events that occurred during the reign of the monarch whose official residence was thus brought to light. Through Layard, the foundations were laid for the Assyrian and Babylonian collections of the British Museum, the parts of which exhibited to the public now fill six large halls. Fresh sources of a direct character were thus added for the study, not only of the historical unfolding of the Assyrian empire, but through the tablets of the royal library, for the religion of ancient Mesopotamia as well.