When Asshur "went forth out of the land of Shinar," it was to build cities, one of which is expressly called "a great city." When the Armenians had to give an account of the palaces and other vast structures in their country, they ascribed their erection to the Assyrians.Similarly.when the Greeks sought to trace the civilization of Asia to its source, they carried it back to Ninus and Semiramis, whom they made the founders, respectively, of Nineveh and Babylon, the two chief cities of the early world.
Among the architectural works of the Assyrians, the first place is challenged by their palaces.

Less religious, or more servile, than the Egyptians and the Greeks, they make their temples insignificant in comparison with the dwellings of their kings, to which indeed the temple is most commonly a sort of appendage.

In the palace their art culminates--there every effort is made, every ornament lavished.

If the architecture of the Assyrian palaces be fully considered, very little need be said on the subject of their other buildings.
The Assyrian palace stood uniformly on an artificial platform.

Commonly this platform was composed of sun-dried-bricks in regular layers; but occasionally the material used was merely earth or rubbish, excepting towards the exposed parts--the sides and the surface which were always either of brick or of stone.