A set of small chambers, of which no one exceeded forty-five feet in length and twenty-five feet in its greatest breadth, sufficed for the last Assyrian king, whose shrunken Court could no longer have filled the vast halls of his ancestors.

The Nimrud palace of Saracus seems to have covered less than one-half of the space occupied by any former palace upon the mound; it had no grand facade, no magnificent gateway; the rooms, curiously misshapen, as if taste had declined with power and wealth, were mostly small and inconvenient, running in suites which opened into one another without any approaches from courts or passages, roughly paved with limestone flags, and composed of sun-dried bricks faced with limestone and plaster.

That Saracus should have been reduced even to contemplate residing in this poor and mean dwelling is the strongest possible proof of Assyria's decline and decay at a period preceding the great war which led to her destruction.
It is possible that this edifice may not have been completed at the time of Saracus's death, and in that case we may suppose that its extreme rudeness would have received certain embellishments had he lived to finish the structure.

While it was being erected, he must have resided elsewhere.

Apparently, he held his court at Nineveh during this period; and was certainly there that he made his last arrangements for defence, and his final stand against the enemy, who took advantage of his weak condition to press forward the conquest of the empire.
The Medes, in their strong upland country, abounding in rocky hills, and running up in places into mountain-chains, had probably suffered much less from the ravages of the Scyths than the Assyrians in their comparatively defenceless plains.