In the Room recently added to the North end of the Elgin Room, are a colossal lion, discovered at Cnidus in 1858 (see Newton, Hist. of Discoveries II., Part 2, p. 480), a sculptured drum of a column from the temple of Diana at Ephesus, a fragment of a similar drum, an Ionic capital and a base of a column with part of lowermost drum from the same building. The lion originally surmounted a Doric tomb. which stood on a promontory a little to the east of Cnidus, and which originally consisted of a square basement surrounded by a Doric peristyle, with engaged columns, and surmounted by a pyramid, the apex of which was crowned by the lion. Inside the tomb was a beehive-shaped chamber with Egyptian vaulting, similar to that of the Treasury of Athens, at Mycenæ, and with eleven smaller cells radiating from its circumference. This tomb was evidently a public monument of the class called polyandrion, and from its position on a promontory, must have been a conspicuous sea-mark. Hence it has been conjectured, with probability, that it was intended to commemorate the naval victory gained over the Lacedæmonians by the Athenian admiral, Conon, B.C. 394.

The door on the East side leads into the

HELLENIC ROOM.

The marbles exhibited in this room have been brought, at different times, from various parts of Greece and its colonies. With them are also exhibited plaster casts of some important monuments of the period preceding that of the marbles. The description commences with the casts.

One of the earliest stages of development in the art of sculpture is represented by four casts, attached to the Western wall, which were taken from metopes of one of the ruined temples at Selinus, in Sicily. The subjects of the sculpture, which is in very high relief, are mythological.

Next in chronological order should be noticed the restorations, placed on each side of the room, of the Eastern and Western pediments of a Doric temple in the island of Egina, erected probably about B.C. 500-478, and dedicated to Athene. The figures in these pedi ments are casts from the original marbles, which were discovered in 1811 amongst the ruins of the temple, and are now preserved in the Museum of Sculpture at Munich. The group in the Western

pediment, here placed on the North side of the room, represents the death of Achilles; the imperfect group in the pediment opposite is thought to represent an incident of the expedition of Herakles and Telamon against Troy.

The following are the marbles exhibited in this room :

First in importance is a collection of marbles discovered in 1812 amongst the ruins of the temple of Apollo Epicurius near the ancient Phigalia in Arcadia. This edifice was erected by Iktinos, the architect of the Parthenon at Athens, in commemoration of the delivery of the Phigalians from the plague, B.C. 430.

The most important part of this collection consists of twenty-three sculptured slabs, originally belonging to a frieze in the interior of the cella of the temple, and now arranged on both sides of the room. Eleven of them (Nos. 1-11) represent, in high relief, the contest between the Centaurs and Greeks, which has been noticed in describing the metopes of the Parthenon. The other twelve represent the invasion of Greece by the Amazons.

Underneath the frieze are several architectural and sculptural fragments from the same temple, including part of a Doric capital from the outer colonnade, and part of an Ionic capital from one of the columns within the cella, the external and internal architecture of the building having been of different orders.

In the Southern half of the room is an archaic draped female torso from a temple at Rhamnos, in Attica; an archaic figure of Apollo, brought from the Levant by Percy Clinton, Viscount Strangford; and a statue of Apollo of a somewhat later period, formerly in the Choiseul Gouffier Collection.

In the Northern half of the Room are two statues representing a youth winding a diadem round his head. It is probable that the original from which both these figures were derived was the celebrated Diadumenos by Polykleitos, the contemporary of Phidias.

On the East side is a mutilated figure of a Triton, in alto-rilievo, from Delos; a bust of Pericles; four terminal heads of Hermes and Dionysos; and an ancient copy of an archaic bronze head of Apollo.

On the North side of the room, an oblong sculptured monument of uncertain use, with a bas-relief representing apparently an offering to Juno, from Cape Sigeum, near Troy.

On one side of the Western door a bust of Eschines; on the opposite side, the bust of an unknown philosopher.

In this room are also provisionally placed four small Etruscan cists in freestone, found at Chiusi. They are ornamented with friezes in very low relief representing banquets, hunting scenes, and dancers, in an archaic style, bearing some resemblance to Assyrian sculptures.

C. T. NEWTON.

The East side of the Hellenic Room room opens into the

ASSYRIAN GALLERIES.

A suite of three long and narrow apartments, running North and South to a length exceeding 300 feet, with an additional room or transept, crossing from their Southern extremity, contains the collection of sculptures excavated, chiefly by Mr. Layard, in the years 1847-1850, on the site, or in the vicinity, of ancient Nineveh. To these has been added a further collection from the same region, excavated in 1853-55, by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam and Mr. W. K. Loftus, under the direction of Sir H. C. Rawlinson, K.C.B., at that time Her Majesty's Consul-General at Baghdad, and another excavated or obtained by Mr. G. Smith, in a mission to Mescpotamia, undertaken by the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph, and presented by them to the Museum.

This latter collection is arranged, partly in a small room adjoining one of the long galleries, and partly in the Assyrian Basement Room.

These discoveries were for the most part made in extensive mounds, formed by the natural accumulation of the soil over the débris of ruined edifices, in the three following localities:1. Nimroud, believed to be the ancient Calah of Scripture, on the banks of the Tigris, about twenty miles below the modern Mosul. 2. Khorsabad, a site about ten miles to the Northeast of Mosul, which was excavated for the French Government by M. Botta, and from which was procured the greater part of the valuable collection now in the Louvre, though a few specimens of sculpture have also been obtained for the British Museum. 3. Kouyunjik, still indicated by local tradition as the site of Nineveh, nearly opposite Mosul, on the Tigris. This classification of the localities, which correspond broadly with three successive periods in Assyrian history, forms the basis of the arrangement adopted for the sculptures.

(1.) The monuments from Nimroud, which may be approximately described as ranging from B.C. 880 to B.C. 630, occupy the Nimroud Central Saloon, in which the visitor, entering from the Greek Galleries, first finds himself; the long apartment immediately to the South, called the Nimroud Gal

lery; and the western compartment of the adjoining Assyrian Transept.

(2.) The sculptures from Khorsabad, executed under a monarch who is believed to have reigned about B.C. 721, are collected in the eastern compartment of the Assyrian Transept, a position not properly corresponding with their chronological sequence, but unavoidably adopted from the deficiency of space in apartments not originally constructed for this class of antiquities.

(3.) The monuments obtained by Mr. Layard from Kouyunjik, which may (with due allowance for the uncertainty of all Assyrian chronology) be placed between B.C. 721 and B.C. 625 the supposed era of the destruction of Ninevehare arranged in the long room distinguished as the Kouyunjik Gallery. The additional collections excavated by Mr. Rassam and Mr. Loftus, principally at Kouyunjik, and placed in the Assyrian basement, may be regarded as supplementary to that contained in the last-mentioned gallery.

Besides the series of sculptures, the Assyrian collection includes a variety of smaller, but highly curious and instructive objects, discovered at Nimroud and Kouyunjik. These are now exhibited in Table Cases in the galleries.

In the Kouyunjik Gallery is also a Table Case containing various small articles from Babylonia and Susiana. These far-famed regions have as yet yielded to modern researches no large sculptured monuments, nor any artistic remains commensurate with the wealth and power of the Empires of which they were the seat. The principal Babylonian sites which have hitherto been more or less explored are-1. The scattered mounds of Warka, Tel-Sifr near Sinkara, Abu-Shahrein, and Muqueyer, all dating from the most remote antiquity, and the last supposed to represent the Biblical "Ur of the Chaldees." 2. The Birs-i-Nimrúd, commonly regarded as the remains of the Tower of Babel, but more probably the site of the ancient fortress of Borsippa, the earliest portion of which was erected by an ancient king of Babylonia, though it was entirely rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar. 3. The mounds of Babylon itself, which contain no monuments earlier than the reign of Nebuchadnezzar.

In accordance with the system here pursued, under which the visitor to the Sculpture Galleries is conducted, as far as possible, continuously from the later monuments to the earlier, it is necessary, after quitting the Greek collection, to pass through the Nimroud Central Saloon, by its North door, to the

KOUYUNJIK GALLERY.

The Collection of bas-reliefs in this room was procured by Mr. Layard, in 1849 and 1850, from the remains of a very extensive Assyrian edifice at Kouyunjik, which appears, from the inscriptions remaining on many of its sculptures, to have been the palace of Sennacherib, who is supposed to have commenced his reign about B.C. 700. It was subsequently occupied by his grandson Assurbanipal, who reigned towards the middle of the seventh century B.C. Monuments of both these kings are included in the collection. Those of Sennacherib are sculptured generally in gypsum or alabaster, those of Assurbanipal in a harder limestone. Most of the sculptures were split and shattered by the action of fire, the palace having apparently been burnt, probably at the destruction of Nineveh indeed, many single slabs reached this country in 300 or 400 pieces. These have been simply rejoined, without attempt at restoration. To the left on entering is

No. 1. A cast from a bas-relief cut in the rock, at the mouth of the Nahr-el-Kelb River, near Beyrout, in Syria, close to the immemorial highway between Egypt and Asia Minor. It represents Esarhaddon standing in the conventional attitude of worship, with sacred or symbolical emblems of deities above him, and is covered with a cuneiform inscription. In the rock, adjoining the original relief, are six similar Assyrian tablets, and three Egyptian bas-reliefs, with hieroglyphic inscriptions, bearing the name of Rameses II., who at an earlier period is supposed to have passed through Palestine.

The sculptures on the left, or West side of the Gallery, are all of the period of Sennacherib, and illustrate the wars he carried on, and the tributes he received. They are, for the most part, fragments of more extensive works.

teresting subjects are as follows:

The most in