In this limestone sarcophagus (coffin) lay the body of an Assyrian king buried here twenty-eight hundred years ago, in the ninth century B.C. Above this sun-dried-brick vault in which he was buried rose the palace of Assur. The German excavators found here five such vaults under the floor of the palace. The dead Assyrian king was thus buried under his dwelling like ordinary Assyrians or Babylonians (Fig. 81). These are the first royal tombs ever found in Assyria. They had been broken open and robbed, the bodies of the kings scattered, and the coffins mostly shattered to pieces, over two thousand years ago, by the Parthians (§ 1023), and they were found empty by the excavators.