by columns of cypress wood, ornamented and strengthened with rings of silver and of iron; the portals were guarded by stone bulls and lions; and the gates were made of ebony and cypress ornamented with iron, silver, and ivory.  There was, of course, the usual adornment of the walls by means of sculptured slabs and enamelled bricks.  If the prejudices of the Mahometans against the possible disturbance of their dead, and against the violation by infidel hands of the supposed tomb of Jonah, should hereafter be dispelled, and excavations be freely allowed in the Nebbi Yunus mound, we may look to obtain very precious relics of Assyrian art from the palace of Esar-haddon, now lying buried beneath the village or the tombs which share between them this most important site.

Of Esar-haddon’s Babylonian palace nothing is at present known, beyond the mere fact of its existence; but if the mounds at Hillah should ever be thoroughly explored, we may expect to recover at least its ground-plan, if not its sculptures and other ornaments.  The Sherif Khan palace has been examined pretty completely.  It was very much inferior to the ordinary palatial edifices of the Assyrians, being in fact only a house which Esar-haddon built as a dwelling for his eldest son during his own lifetime.  Like the more imposing buildings of this king, it was probably unfinished at his decease.  At any rate its remains add nothing to our knowledge of the state of art in Esar-haddon’s time, or to our estimate of that monarch’s genius as a builder.

After a reign of thirteen years, Esar-haddon, “king of Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Meroe, and Ethiopia,” as he styles himself in his later inscriptions, died, leaving his crown to his eldest son, Asshur-bani-pal, whom he had already associated in the government.  Asshur-bani-pal ascended the throne in B.C. 668, or very early in B.C. 667; and his first act seems to have been to appoint as viceroy of Babylon his younger brother Saul-Mugina, who appears as Sam-mughes in Polyhistor, and as Saosduchinus in the Canon of Ptolemy.

The first war in which Asshur-bani-pal engaged was most probably with Egypt.  Late in the reign of Esar-haddon, Tirhakah (as already stated 619) had descended from the upper country, had recovered Thebes, Memphis, and most of the other Egyptian cities, and expelled from them the princes and governors appointed by Esar-haddon upon his conquest.  Asshur-bani-pal, shortly after his accession, collected his forces, and marched through Syria into Egypt, where he defeated the army sent against him by Tirhakah in a great battle near the city of Kar-banit.  Tirhakah, who was at Memphis, hearing of the disaster that had befallen his army, abandoned Lower Egypt, and sailed up the Nile to Thebes, whither the forces of Asshur-bani-pal followed him; but the nimble Ethiopian retreated still further up the Nile valley, leaving all Egypt from Thebes downwards to his adversary.  Asshur-bani-pal, upon this, reinstated in their former governments the various princes and rulers whom his lather had originally appointed, and whom Tirhakah had expelled; and then, having rested and refreshed his army by a short stay in Thebes, returned victoriously by way of Syria to Nineveh.