of the country.  In vain Assur, Calah, or Nineveh thrust themselves into the foremost rank, and by a strenuous effort made their princes rulers of Babylon; in a short time Babylon replenished her treasury, found allies, soldiers, and leaders, and in spite of reverses of fortune soon regained the upper hand.  The only treatment which could effectually destroy her ascendency was that of leaving in her not one brick upon another, thus preventing her from being re-peopled for several generations, since a new city could not at once spring up from the ashes of the old; until she had been utterly destroyed her conquerors had still reason to fear her.  This fact Sennacherib, or his councillors, knew well.  If he merits any reproach, it is not for having seized the opportunity of destroying the city which Babylon offered him, but rather for not having persevered in his design to the end, and reduced her to a mere name.

In the midst of these costly and absorbing wars, we may well wonder how Sennacherib found time and means to build villas or temples; yet he is nevertheless, among the kings of Assyria, the monarch who has left us the largest number of monuments.  He restored a shrine of Nergal in the small town of Tarbizi; he fortified the village of Alshi; and in 704 B.C. he founded a royal residence in the fortress of Kakzi, which defended the approach to Calah from the south-east.  He did not reside much at Dur-Sharrukin, neither did he complete the decoration of his father’s palace there:  his pride as a victorious warrior suffered when his surroundings reminded him of a more successful conqueror than himself, and Calah itself was too full of memories of Tiglath-pileser III. and the sovereigns of the eighth century for him to desire to establish his court there.  He preferred to reside at Nineveh, which had been much neglected by his predecessors, and where the crumbling edifices merely recalled the memory of long-vanished splendours.

[Illustration:  063.jpg THE MOUNDS OF NINEVEH SEEN FROM THE TERRACE OF A HOUSE IN MOSUL]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a lithograph in Layard.

He selected this city as his residence at the very beginning of his reign, perhaps while he was still only crown prince, and began by repairing its ancient fortifications; later on, when the success of his earlier campaigns had furnished him with a sufficient supply of prisoners, he undertook the restoration of the whole city, with its avenues, streets, canals, quays, gardens, and aqueducts:  the labour of all the captives brought together from different quarters of his empire was pressed into the execution of his plans—­the Kalda, the Aramaeans, the Mannai, the people of Kui, the Cilicians, the Philistines, and the iyrians; the provinces vied with each other in furnishing him with materials without stint,—­precious woods were procured from Syria, marbles from Kapri-dargila, alabaster from Balad, while Bit-Yakin provided the rushes to be laid between the courses of brickwork.