Assur-nazir-pal had resided at Nineveh from the time of his accession to the throne; from thence he had set out on four successive campaigns, and thither he had returned at the head of his triumphant troops, there he had received the kings who came to pay him homage, and the governors who implored his help against foreign attacks; thither he had sent rebel chiefs, and there, after they had marched in ignominy through the streets, he had put them to torture and to death before the eyes of the crowd, and their skins were perchance still hanging nailed to the battlements when he decided to change the seat of his capital.  The ancient capital no longer suited his present state as a conqueror; the accommodation was too restricted, the decoration too poor, and probably the number of apartments was insufficient to house the troops of women and slaves brought back from his wars by its royal master.  Built on the very bank of the Tebilti, one of the tributaries of the Khusur, and hemmed in by three temples, there was no possibility of its enlargement—­a difficulty which often occurs in ancient cities.  The necessary space for new buildings could only have been obtained by altering the course of the stream, and sacrificing a large part of the adjoining quarters of the city:  Assur-nazir-pal therefore preferred to abandon the place and to select a new site where he would have ample space at his disposal.

[Illustration:  067.jpg THE MOUNDS OF CALAH]

     Drawn by Boudier, from Layard.  The pointed mound on the left
     near the centre of the picture represents the ziggurat of
     the great temple.

He found what he required close at hand in the half-ruined city of Calah, where many of his most illustrious predecessors had in times past sought refuge from the heat of Assur.  It was now merely an obscure and sleepy town about twelve miles south of Nineveh, on the right bank of the Tigris, and almost at the angle made by the junction of this river with the Greater Zab.  The place contained a palace built by Shalmaneser I., which, owing to many years’ neglect, had become uninhabitable.  Assur-nazir-pal not only razed to the ground the palaces and temples, but also levelled the mound on which they had been built; he then cleared away the soil down to the water level, and threw up an immense and almost rectangular terrace on which to lay out his new buildings.

[Illustration:  068.jpg STELE OF ASSUR-NAZIR-PAL AT CALAH]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Mansell.

The king chose Ninip, the god of war, as the patron of the city, and dedicated to him, at the north-west corner of the terrace, a ziggurat with its usual temple precincts.  Here the god was represented as a bull with a man’s head and bust in gilded alabaster, and two yearly feasts were instituted in his honour, one in the month Sebat, the other in the month Ulul.  The ziggurat was a little over two hundred feet high,