The most curious of the discoveries made during the examination of this building, was the existence in its interior of a species of chamber or gallery, the true object of which still re-mains wholly unexplained.  This gallery was 100 feet long, 12 feet high, and no more than 6 feet broad.  It was arched or vaulted at top, both the side walls and the vaulting being of sun-dried brick. [PLATE LIV., Fig. 2.] Its position was exactly half-way between the tower’s northern and southern faces, and with these it ran parallel, its height in the tower being such that its floor was exactly on a level with the top of the stone masonry, which again was level with the terrace or platform whereupon the Nimrud palaces stood.  There was no trace of any way by which the gallery was intended to be entered; its walls showed no signs of inscription, sculpture, or other ornament; and absolutely nothing was found in it.  Mr. Layard, prepossessed with an opinion derived from several confused notices in the classical writers, believed the tower to be a sepulchral monument, and the gallery to be the tomb in which was originally deposited “the embalmed body of the king.”  To account for the complete disappearance, not only of the body, but of all the ornaments and vessels found commonly in the Mesopotamian tombs, he suggested that the gallery had been rifled in times long anterior to his visit; and he thought that he found traces, both internally and externally, of the tunnel by which it had been entered.  But certainly, if this long and narrow vault was intended to receive a body, it is most extraordinarily shaped for the purpose.  What other sepulchral chamber is there anywhere of so enormous a, length?  Without pretending to say what the real object of the gallery was, we may feel tolerably sure that it was not a tomb.  The building which contained it was a temple tower, and it is not likely that the religious feelings of the Assyrians would have allowed the application of a religious edifice to so utilitarian a purpose.

[Illustration:  PLATE 54]

Besides the ziggerat or tower, which may commonly have been surmounted by a chapel or shrine, an Assyrian temple had always a number of basement chambers, in one of which was the principal shrine of the god. [PLATE LIV.,Fig. 1.] This was a square or slightly oblong recess at the end of an oblong apartment, raised somewhat above its level; it was paved (sometimes, if not always) with a single slab, the weight of which must occasionally have been as much as thirty tons.  One or two small closets opened out from the shrine, in which it is likely that the priests kept the sacerdotal garments and the sacrificial utensils.  Sometimes the cell of the temple or chamber into which the shrine opened was reached through another apartment, corresponding to the Greek pronaos.  In such a case, care seems to have been taken so to arrange the outer and inner doorways of the vestibule that persons passing by the outer doorway should not be able to catch a sight of the shrine.  Where there was no vestibule, the entrance into the cell or body of the temple seems to have been placed at the side, instead of at the end, probably with the same object.  Besides these main parts of a temple, a certain number of chambers are always found, which appear to have been priests’ apartments.