ornament having probably been executed in silver or gold. He is bearded, and wears the usual Royal head dress, a square-topped cap with a long fillet which falls down his back, and bears traces of original red paint. The King wears a very rich robe, which extends to his feet, and sandals, still, like the fillet, retaining evident marks of paint. To the left and fronting the King stands a beautiful figure, raising his open right hand, as though addressing him; his left rests on the hilt of a plain and straight sword. His dress is less rich than that of the King, but he wears a fillet round his uncovered head. The next figure is that of an eunuch standing to the left, with his hands crossed in the Oriental attitude of attention; his dress is plain, and he has no fillet, but a sword similar to that of the last figure. Besides these, the most important of the Khorsabád collection, are some smaller pieces of sculpture; one, an archer with a bent bow in his left and two arrows in his right hand; a man carrying what is probably a wine-skin on his shoulders; two figures facing different ways, and carrying in their right hands a flower resembling the poppy; three fragments containing horses' heads, and eleven detached heads, five of them bearded, the rest those of eunuchs. All these were obtained for the Museum by Mr. Hector, and were the earliest Assyrian remains deposited in the National Collection. There is also a remarkable fragment procured by Mr. Layard, and originally one of the Khorsabád slabs. It is that of the head,

shoulders, and right arm of a Man leading Two Horses, the heads and necks of which alone have been preserved. The heads of the horses have a very rich ornament, not unlike that which we are in the habit of placing upon our funeral horses. This fragment, from the depth of its cuttings and the beauty of its execution, is one of the most effective of the Assyrian sculptures.

KOYUNJIK.

The Museum at present possesses only three slabs from these ruins, but we may hope that many more relics of this once magnificent pile of buildings may be procured by Mr. Layard, ere he leaves the country. The first and second form one continuous subject, which Mr. Layard has considered to represent the passage of troops through a mountain country; we, however, are inclined to believe that jungle, or copse, is intended by this singular representation. It will be observed that a tree or plant with long flat leaves is pourtrayed on the upper portion of the slab; this plant has a very great resemblance to the banana, which only grows in low and marshy districts. Four warriors are represented on the slabs, on foot and leading two horses. The inscription bears the name of Khorsabád. The third slab is an attack upon some place by slingers. It is curious that another subject, apparently almost identical with that at present on this slab, has formerly been sculptured upon it, and that for some reason it has been erased, and the present substituted. This slab has been once considerably larger, and has been shortened, to the injury of its sculptures, probably to fit some other building.

KALAH SHERGHÁT.

Kalah Sherghát, in the Desert, is one of the most celebrated ruins in Assyria, and like Nimrúd, Koyunjik, and other Assyrian sites, is a large square mound surmounted at one end by a cone or pyramid. Long lines of smaller mounds enclose a quadrangle, which may perhaps have been once occupied by houses, or unimportant buildings. At this place Mr. Layard has also opened trenches; but with the exception of the figure we are about to describe, he has found little there as yet to reward his labours. Subsequent excavations have not yielded anything of importance; there were indeed many walls, but probably recent ones, about the ruins; and there were tombs and sarcophagi above the walls, as at Nimrúd. As the platform in which the building, whatever it was, must have stood, was not reached, Mr. Layard considered that the ruins had not been satisfactorily exposed. The Seated Figure in black basalt is much mutilated. The head and

hands have been destroyed, and the character therefore of the countenance cannot now be determined. The square stool on which the figure sits is covered on three sides with Cuneiform character. Unlike all the other sculptures as yet discovered in Assyria, this figure is full, and not in relief. Part of the beard is still preserved; the hands appear to have rested on the knees, and a long robe, fringed with tassels, to have reached to the ankles. There is a great resemblance between the character of this, the only Assyrian statue yet discovered, and the Egyptian style of workmanship.

EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES.

INTRODUCTION.

BEFORE we proceed to the separate description of the Monuments which have been procured from Egypt, and which now enrich the National Collection at the British Museum, we propose briefly to lay before our readers an outline of the nature of the celebrated country in which these, the earliest remains of ancient art, have been discovered, with some account of its most celebrated cities and buildings now wholly ruined. It seems, indeed, hardly possible thoroughly to appreciate the remains of ancient art without some knowledge of the peculiarities of the lands which they once adorned and illustrated. Thus a knowledge of the religious creed of a nation or a race, the language they spoke, the ordinary life they led, are almost essential requisites in tracing out the course of their artistic history. On sculptured monuments, alike in Egypt and in other lands, we observe the forms of animals and of plants which were subservient to their daily and domestic use, or honoured for some real or supposed virtues-while in the geological character of the natural productions of their country we discern and test the ability and the judgment with which they handled the materials they had at their command.

From the earliest Antiquity Egypt has been called the gift of the Nile: to that noble river it owes at once the peculiar formation and growth of its territory, and the fertility of its soil. But for the Nile, Egypt would have shared the fate of the rest of Central Africa, and would have been a sandy waste or a stony desert. Scarcely any country exists of which the natural limits are so narrow, and which yet affords so much internal variety, the richest fertility

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