The source of this uncorrected OCR text may be viewed as a digital facsimile at: http://fax.libs.uga.edu/ B8 1920 v.2 umVkRSlTY OF GEORGIA LIBRARIES THE LIBRARIES THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA Donated in Memory of Elizabeth A. Chancy by Mrs. Donald W. Turner DATE DUE DEMCO 38-297 BY NILE AND TIGRIS VOLUME II. /BY NILE AND TIGRIS/ A NARRATIVE OF JOURNEYS IN EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA ON BEHALF OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM BETWEEN THE YEARS 1886 AND 1913. BY SIR E. A. WALLIS BUDGE, KT., M.A. AND LITT.D. CAMBRIDGE, M.A. AND D.LITT. OXFORD, D.LiT. DURHAM, F.S.A. SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AND TYRWHITT HEBREW SCHOLAR. KEEPER OF THE EGYPTIAN AND ASSYRIAN ANTIQUITIES, BRITISH MUSEUM. VOLUME II. With numerous illustrations. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1920. <-, CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. PAGE NINEVEH AND THE EXCAVATION OF ITS RUINS ... ... ... i AL-MAWSIL, OR M&SUL ... ... ... ... ... ... 30 LIFE IN MOSUL. EXCAVATIONS AT KUYUNJIK. VISIT TO TALL KEF. VISIT TO BAIBUKH AND KHORSABAD. VISIT TO TALL BALAWAT ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 50 M&SUL TO BAGHDAD BY RAFT. HAMMAM 'ALt, THE RUINS ' OF CALAH AT NIMRI>D. THE RUINS OF THE CITY OF ASHUR AT KAL'AT SHARKAT. TAKRIT. SAMARRA AND THE MALWIYAH. KADISIYAH AND OPIS ... ... ... ... 86 BAGHDAD TO LONDON ... ... ... ... ... ... 121 FOURTH MISSION, 1890-91. LONDON TO BAGHDAD, VIA EGYPT, BER—ry yj, the old name of the city which in the seventh century B.C. developed into the great capital of Assyria. About the meaning of this old name "Ni-na,"1 which is not necessarily Semitic, there is some doubt. The second part of it, " na," seems to mean something like " dwelling-place " or " resting-place," 2 and if this be so we may assume that the city was regarded as the abode of some deity, and that " Ni " (or whatever may be the true reading of 5f in this place) represents that deity's name. The ideogram for the city's name is tj?II NINA ki,3 which means " House [of the] Fish," and as this is also the name of a goddess * who was the daughter of Ea it has been thought that Nineveh was a centre, perhaps the chief centre, of her cult. At a comparatively early period Ishtar was the great goddess of Nineveh, and the city enjoyed her peculiar favour and protection, and was called " Naram Ishtar," the " beloved of Ishtar." Her cult spread northwards into Mitani, and Tushratta, King of Mitani, and his father, prompted by the goddess, made vigorous attempts to induce the 1 The variants (alu) NI-NU-U -^y J^f *j- < and (alii) NI-NU-A >-^y Jff *j- fy also exist. (Rawlinson, Cuneiform Inscrip., iii, pis. 48, 3, 8 ; i, pi. IQ, Is. 93, 101.) 1 Delitzsch, Wo lag, p. 260. 3 Rawlinson, op. cit., i, pi. 39, 1. 39. See also Rawlinson, op. cit., v, pi. 23, 1. 6, where ^y >~/~y yj is equivalent to and Briinnow, Classified Lists, Leyden, 1889, Nos. 4800-4805. 4 Delitzsch, Wo lag, p. 260. b 2 Size of Nineveh Exaggerated. i Egyptians to worship " Ishtar of Ni-i-na-a, the Lady of the World."1 Thanks to writers who lacked exact information on the subject, the size and extent of Nineveh have been greatly exaggerated. Strabo says (xvi, i, section 3) that the city of Nineveh was " much larger than Babylon (TTO\V [Ltitfav rqs BafivXansos), and was situated in the plain of Aturia,"* i.e., Assyria. When Jonah spoke of " an exceeding great city of three days' journey" (iiii 3), he must have been speaking of Nineveh and its suburbs, in which he probably included Nimrud (i.e., Calah), about 20 miles south of Kuyunjik, and Khorsabad, about 30 miles from Nimrud, and 15 miles from Kuyunjik, besides Nineveh itself. According to Diodorus (ii, 3), the city of Nineveh had the form of an oblong rectangle, the longer sides being 150 stadia (about 16^ miles) in length, and the shorter sides 90 stadia (10 miles). The walls were 100 feet high, and were wide enough for three chariots to drive side by side on them ; the towers which flanked the wall were 200 feet high, and were in number 1500. In size and magnificence no other city could com pare with it. Ninus, its founder, determined to build a city which had never been equalled, and should never be surpassed, and according to Diodorus he did so. No walls of such height and length, and no towers of such height can ever have existed at Nineveh, and no city of the size described by Diodorus was ever built on the Tigris. It is likely enough that the land along the river bank for many miles to the north and south of Nineveh was re garded as a part of Nineveh by careless writers and thinkers, but about the size of the Nineveh of Senna cherib there can be no doubt whatever. The fact that Diodorus places Nineveh on the Euphrates should warn us not to put too much confidence in his figures. The 1 Hh -VT £T4 £TT £«• -t ^4 I? 1HT V V- See Bezold and Budge, The Tell el-Amarna Tablets in the British Museum, No. 10, obv. 1. 13 (p. 24). r 2 I.e., ToivK-, Atliftr, the name which Syrian writers give both to Assyria and to the town of Mosul, which Bar Bahlul says was built by Sapor. The Euphrates and Tigris Confounded. 3 mistake itself is not surprising, for, as Felix Jones says, " at the present day the Tigris is confounded with the Euphrates by half the population of the district." And I PLAN OF NINEVEH by Felix Jones have met Turkish officials of high rank who thought that the " Baghdad river " was the Euphrates, and that Bagh dad stood on one of its banks and Babylon on the other ! The ruins at Kuyunjik prove that Nineveh proper was 4 The Plain of Nineveh. a comparatively small city. But outside the walls large vegetable gardens must have extended in all directions, and the whole region round about must have been filled with villages of various sizes, and if all these were regarded by ancient writers as parts of Nineveh, it is easy to under stand their statements. In fact, Jonah, Strabo and others confused the suburbs of Nineveh with the city of Nineveh. The region on the east bank of the Tigris, which may properly be regarded as the greater Nineveh, was well defined by Felix Jones in 1852.* It is the plain, a somewhat irregular parallelogram in shape. 25 miles by 15 miles in extent, lying between the river Khusur, which falls into the Tigris just opposite Mosul, and the Upper Zab, which flows into the Tigris in latitude 35° 59' N. On this " highly arable plain " are most of the Assyrian sites with which we are acquainted. It has a gradual inclination westward from Jabal Maklub and the hill of 'Ain as-Safra, and is protected by these and the Gomel river on the north-east and east, and by the Zab and the Tigris on the west, south, and south-east, and by the Khusur stream on the north and north-west. The whole of this plain is capable of tillage, and it has always afforded abundant pasture for flocks and herds at most seasons of the year. It is crossed by many watercourses, the dews which fall upon it are frequent and heavy, and in the winter it receives heavy rain and snow. One of the most fertile parts of this plain lies near the junction of the Khusur stream' (which flowed through the city of Nineveh) with the Tigris. Here the primitive inhabitants or conquerors of Assyria, who do not seem to have been Semites, established on the east bank of the Tigris, close to the river, a frontier market and trade centre. Exactly why they settled there cannot be said, but whatever was their reason for doing so, it was suffi ciently important and permanent to make their descend ants build city after city on the same site for three thousand years at least. Both Arab and Persian 1 Notes on the Topography of Nineveh (Records of Bombay Govern ment, No. XLIII), p. 404 ff. • In Assyrian (naru) Khu-zu-ur f{ j£j Hfl. ^TT I3Mf- Early History of Nineveh. 5 merchants have told me that, provided the Tigris flowed close by it as in ancient times, and not a mile and a half from it as at present, Nineveh would be a far more convenient place for a frontier market than Mosul. Indeed, it is probable that the development of Western Nineveh into the large town which Sapor I called " Mawsil," was due to the fact that the Tigris removed itself from the west wall of the city further to the west, or that one of the arms of the river flowing parallel with it became the main stream. The date of the founding of Nineveh is unknown, but it is probable that a town or city always occupied both banks of the Khusur river near its junction with the Tigris. At a very early period some ruler of Babylonia took possession of the primitive town and enlarged it, and arrogated to himself the title of " founder of Nineveh." There is little doubt that the city of Nineveh is older than the city of Ashur. As more than one great Babylonian ruler (e.g., Gudea and Dungi) restored temples at Nineveh between 3000 and 2500 B.C., the city must have possessed considerable importance at that early period. A little before or after 2000 B.C. the great Babylonian lawgiver, King Khammurabi, carried out works of restoration in " Ni-nu-a ki," as he calls the city in the introduction to his Code of Laws,1 and brought the country of Assyria under his domination. In the fifteenth century before Christ the goddess Ishtar of Nineveh declared her inten tion of going to Egypt, the land that she loved, and Tushratta, King of Mitani, sent a statue of her to Amen- hetep III, and entreated the goddess to protect himself and the King of Egypt for a hundred thousand years.2 Shalmaneser I, about B.C. 1300, rebuilt Ishtar's temple at Nineveh, and we may assume that during the next six centuries the kings of Assyria maintained it. The shrine of the goddess seems to have been the one important thing in the city. About 1080 B.C. Ashur-bel-kala, a son of 4 I} 44^> col- iv. line 60 (ed. de Morgan, Paris, 1902, pis. 4, 5 ; ed. Harper, pi. 6). 2 See Tell el-Amarna Tablets in the British Museum, p. xlii. 6 Sennacherib Rebuilds Nineveh. Tiglath Pileser I, made Nineveh his capital, and built a temple to Ishtar, and dedicated to the goddess an alabaster statue of a naked woman.1 At the beginning of the seventh century before Christ the great King Sennacherib (B.C. 705-681) carried out vast building operations in the city, and fortified it with mighty walk. The circuit of the city which he found there was 9,300 cubits, and he added to it 12,515 cubits, making its total 21,815 cubits. He built an inner and an outer wall about the city, the former being 40 cubits thick and 180 lipki in height; the outer wall was im mensely strong, and built upon a stone foundation, and faced with slabs of stone up to the coping. Sennacherib's walls had fifteen gates, seven in the south and east walls, three in the north wall, and five in the west wall. Senna cherib greatly improved the water-supply of the town, building a reservoir near some springs to the north-east of Nineveh, and bringing water from it, by means of an aqueduct, into the city. He also dug a canal, and made a system of channels, whereby his gardens and orchards were watered. In one section of the city he laid out a park with ornamental waters, and he planted it with trees of all kinds, which were brought there from various parts of the country, and from foreign lands. Among these were the " trees that produced wool (i.e., cotton), which men picked and made into apparel." Into this park the king turned wild boars and other animals. The trees afforded a home for various kinds of rare birds, which nested in their branches, and the reeds of the lake sheltered various kinds of water-fowl.1 Under the strong hand of Sennacherib Nineveh became the true capital of Assyria, and it was greatly enriched by the vast amount of spoil which the king brought back from his successful expeditions. The works which he carried out in connec tion with his alteration of the course of the river Tebiltu were a marvellous feat of hydraulic engineering.3 His 1 This statue is in the British Museum (No. 849). * See Cuneiform Texts, part xxv (ed. L. W. King), London, 1909. 5 In the great cylinder inscription of Sennacherib, B.M. No. 103,000, the king states (col. v, 1. 79 ff.) that the river Tebiltu, which To face p. 6, vol. ii. British Cavalry (isth Hussars) passing the mounds of Kuyunjik. Excavation of stones from the foundations of Sennacherib's wall between Kuyunjik and Nabi Yunis. The Medes Capture Nineveh. 7 son, Esarhaddon, and his grandson, Ashur-bani-pal, maintained its fame and splendour, and added to its wealth. Very little is known about events in Assyria after the reign of Ashur-bani-pal, but it seems that his sons, Ashur-etil-ilani and Sin-shar-ishkun,1 were unable to protect themselves and their country against the enemies who banded themselves together against them, and little by little the great kingdom of Assyria began to break up. The most bitter enemy of the overlordship of Assyria at this time was Nabopolassar, the Assyrian Governor of Babylon. After Ashur-bani-pal's death in 625 he was, to all intents and purposes, king of all Babylonia. He came to an understanding with the Medes, and it is tolerably certain that their chiefs, or kings, knew that in the event of their making an attack upon Nineveh, Nabopolassar would send no help to the Assyrians. Some think that the Babylonians actually took part with the Medes in their assault on the city, but whether this be so or not is of little importance, for Nineveh fell either in 608-7 or 607-6, and the Medes took all the northern part of the Assyrian kingdom, and the King of Babylon all the southern. No details of the capture of Nineveh are extant, but it is quite probable that the palaces and other important buildings were destroyed by fire, and the state of the remains of many of the chambers at Kuyunjik proves that parts of Ashur-bani-pal's palace, at least, were burnt with fire. It is possible that Sin-shar-ishkun, the last King of Assyria, did, as Abydenus" says, set fire to his palace, and then cast himself with his wives and family into the flames, but of this tragedy the cuneiform inscriptions make no mention. The flooding of the Tigris appears to have played a prominent part in the downfall of the city. flowed through Nineveh, was a strong, swift stream, that its waters reached the palace, and that its heavy floods had destroyed the foundations of the building to such an extent that he pulled down the little palace completely. He then changed the course of the Tebiltu and made it discharge its waters outside the city into an artificial lake or swamp. 1 The Sarakos of the Greeks. 3 Quoted by Eusebius, i, 9, p. 25; and the Syncellus, p. 210. 8 Nineveh a " Pool of Water." In those days the Tigris flowed close to the west wall of the city, and the river Khusur flowed into it through an opening specially formed for that. Rain, coupled with a very sudden thaw, would create a flood in both rivers, which would rise to an abnormal height, and their waters would cover a very large portion of the area of the city.1 Moreover, the enemy would be able to float their batter ing rams close up to the walls of the city, and to sail their boats into the heart of Nineveh. It is possible that allusions to such a flood are contained in the Book of Nahum (ii, 8), when the prophet says, " Nineveh of old [is] like a pool of water," and " the gates of the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved" (ii, 6). But though the destruction wrought in the city of Nineveh by the Medes and their allies must have been very great, the huge walls with their massive stone founda tions, and the palaces and other great buildings which were lined with slabs of alabaster, prevented it from being utterly wiped out. Its enemies, having looted the temples and palaces and houses of the nobles, no doubt smashed and burnt everything that could be smashed and burnt, but they found it beyond their power to raze the walls to the ground, as the ruins of them testify even after the lapse of twenty-five centuries. It is quite clear that Nineveh lost all its importance after its fall, but it is incorrect to say that its site was unknown. Though the city was destroyed, nothing could affect the value of its site as a market and trading centre, and nothing could kill the trade which had made Nineveh's merchants rich. This being so it was impossible for its site to be forgotten, and there is abundant proof that it was not. Ammianus, who died shortly before 400, calls Nineveh "an important city of the province of Adiabene" (xviii, 7), and though the city to which he referred was probably Mosul, his words show that he connected both cities in his mind. The works of Arab writers all agree in identifying the mounds on the east bank of the Tigris opposite Mosul 1 See page 7. The Site of Nineveh Never Forgotten. 9 with the ruins of Nineveh. Mas'udi says (ii, 92) that Ninawi (Nineveh) was opposite Mosul, and that in his time (A.H. 332 = A.D. 943) it consisted of heaps of ruins, among which were villages and cultivated lands. Ibn Hawkal speaks of the Rustah of Ninawi (ed. de Goeje, p. 145), where of old stood the city on the east of the Tigris facing Mosul, to which Jonah was sent, and says the ruins of its walls are still visible.1 Mukaddasi (ed. de Goeje, p. 146) says that the ruins of the ancient city of Nineveh are close by the Mosque of Jonah. Abu'1-Fida (p. 285) says that the ruined Ninawi to which Jonah was sent is opposite Mosul. Yakut (iv, 870) identifies Ninawi with the village of Yunis bin Mattai, and says (iv, 682) that Mosul, " the Gate of 'Irak," and the " Key of Khurasan," is a very old city on the banks of the Tigris, and that opposite to it, on the east bank, is Ninawi. Ibn Batutah (ii, 137) says that the ruins near Nabi Yunis are those of the famous city of Ninawi. In the seventh century there must have been some strong fort on or close to the site of Nineveh, for Biladhuri, in his Fatuh al-Buldan (ed. de Goeje, p. 331), says that when 'Amr ibn al-Khattab 'Utba had taken Mosul (A.H. 20 = A.D. 640), he attacked the people of Ninawi, and captured its fortress on the east bank. Ibn al- Athir (ed. Tornberg, ii, p. 418) also mentions this fortress, for in speaking of the Fortresses of Ninawi and Mosul, he says that the former was the Eastern Fortress and the latter the Western. Among the Syrian Christians there has never been any doubt about the site of Nineveh, and some of their greatest writers speak of Mosul and Athur and Nineveh as if they were one and the same place. From the days of Benjamin of Tudela (1173) downwards, all the great European travellers who visited Mosul never doubted that the miles of long low mounds which they saw on the eastern bank of the Tigris represented the 1 Ibn Jubayr describes the " great ruin " of Ninawi, the city of Yunis, which he himself saw, and mentions the line of its walls, and the places of its gates, and the mounds of earth of its lofty towers. fravels of Ibn Jubayr, ed. Wright, p. 238. lo Rich Examines the Ruins of Nineveh, walls of the " Potent Town of Nineveh."1 The only exception was Niebuhr, who actually rode over Nineveh, and did not know it until the natives told him where he was! The mounds containing the ruins of the walls he regarded as a row of hills, and did not find out his mistake until it was pointed out to him.2 The Kala'at Nunya, or " Castle of Nineveh," which he mentions, was probably the mass of ruins about one of the gateways in the north wall. It is interesting to note that the village of "Koinds- jug," i.e., Kuyunjik, was in existence in his time. The first systematic examination of the ruins of Nine veh was made by C. J. Rich, British Consul at Baghdad, during the four visits which he paid to Mosul between 1808 and i82o.5 According to him the area of Nineveh is from ii to 2 miles broad, and 4 miles long. On the north, south, and west sides are the remains of only one wall, but on the east side are the remains of three. The greatest height of the mound of Nabi Yunis is about 50 feet, and in front of this mound the west wall ran. The mound of Kuyunjik is of irregular form, its sides are very steep, and its top is nearly flat. Its perpendicular height is 43 feet, and its total circumference 7,691 feet. The ruins at Nineveh all belong to the same period, and the area enclosed within walls only represented a very small portion of Nineveh. Whether Rich actually made excava tions at Nineveh is doubtful, but it is quite clear that he deduced sufficient evidence from the diggings of the natives, who were searching for stones and bricks and alabaster slabs to burn, to convince him that the remains of great buildings lay buried in the mounds of Kuyunjik 1 Rauwolf, Travels, i, p. 204. 2 "Ich erfuhr es nicht eher dass ich an einem so merkwiirdigen Orte war, als nahe am Flusse . . . zeigte man nur auch noch die Walle von Ninive die ich auf meiner Durchreise nicht bemerkt, sondern fur eine Reihe Hugel gehalten hatte." Reisebeschreibung, tome ii, p. 353. 5 See Residence in Koorditfan, vol. ii, p. 34 ff. Kinneir examined the mounds opposite Mosul in November, 1810, and he describes the area of Nineveh as an oblong square not four miles in compass. See his Geographical Memoir, London, 1813, p. 258, and his Journey through Asia Minor, Armenia and Koordistan in the years 1813 and 1814, London, 1818, pp. 461, 462. and the Palaces under the Mosque of Jonah. u and Nabi Yunis; and it is equally clear from the anti quities which he collected, and his remarks about them, that he realized their general importance. At Nabi Yunis he saw men digging up hewn stones which had been laid in bitumen, and recognized that they formed part of the substructure of a building, and he was present when Husen Aga found a square stone slab with a cunei form inscription in the wall of a house there; he secured it for his collection. The natives of Nabi Yunis showed him underground chambers and corridors near the so- called Tomb of Jonah, and through his " curiosity hunter," Belli Samaan, he acquired many objects from the mound close to it, including whole bricks and frag ments of slabs covered with cuneiform inscriptions. The greatest treasure which he obtained from Nabi Yunis was a baked clay hollow cylinder, fourteen inches long, inscribed with a cuneiform text describing the building operations which Sennacherib (B.C. 705-681) carried out on that site during the first two years of his reign.1 At Kuyunjik he obtained several fragments of inscribed tablets, and these must have been dug up by the natives 1 This is presumably the famous "Bellino Cylinder" now in the British Museum (No. 22502). A very accurate copy of the text, made by Mr. Bellino, was sent by Rich to Grotefend, who published it in the " Abhandlungen " of the Academy of Sciences at Gottingen. Another copy of it was published by Layard, Inscriptions in the Cunei form Character, London, 1851, plates 63 and 64, but according to Fox Talbot, Bellino's copy is the more accurate, and is the " most wonderful instance of patient accuracy which is to be found in the whole range of archaeological science." See the prefatory remarks of Fox Talbot to his translation of the cylinder in Jnl. Roy. Asiatic Soc., vol. xviii, 1861, p. 76 ff. Bellino was a friend and companion of several of the English travellers in Mesopotamia, and he possessed naturally the faculty for copying cuneiform inscriptions accurately. Ker Porter says that he is indebted to his learned and persevering friend, Mr. Bellino, for the scrupulous accuracy of copies of texts which he publishes (vol. ii, p. 394). Bellino is mentioned several times by Buckingham (e.g.. vol. ii, pp. 233, 251), and in Rich's Residence, vol. ii, p. 126, he is described as a "young man of a singu larly affectionate disposition, whom no one could know and not love," and as Mr. Rich's "amiable and accomplished young friend." He was attacked by fever during a journey to Hamadan, and he died at M&sul in November, 1820. 12 The Importance of Rich's Labours. from the floor of one of the buildings there in their search for stones and alabaster slabs. Besides the nine frag ments which are mentioned in the manuscript copy of the Catalogue of the Rich Collection of Antiquities acquired by the British Museum, four others are known, viz., a fragment of a duplicate text of Eponym Canon I, referring to the years 794-768 B.C., a fragment of an omen tablet, a fragment of a tablet of forecasts, and a fragment of a private contract tablet.1 We owe to Rich the first detailed notices of Nineveh and Babylon ever published, and it was the publica tion of his " Residence in Koordistan " by his widow, in 1836, which drew the attention of the learned world to the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, and caused the French Government to employ Botta (Consul at Mosul) in making excavations at Kuyunjik, and Stratford Canning to employ Layard at Nimrud ; and, as Felix Jones rightly remarks, " Rich was the first real labourer in Assyrian fields."2 The researches which Rich made at Nineveh were also of great importance from the collector's point of view. By buying fragments of inscribed tablets, " barrel-cylinders," seal-cylinders, bricks bearing inscrip tions, etc., he taught the natives of Kuyunjik and Nabi Yunis that such things had pecuniary value, and that they were objects for which travellers were ready to pay money. As soon as the natives found this out they began to take care of everything that had an inscription upon it, and to search through the earth which they threw up whilst digging for stones for building purposes, with 1 These were given by Mrs. Rich after her husband's death to Miss Hay Erskine, who in turn gave them to Miss A. Holmes, who presented them to the British Museum in 1895. 2 Jnl. R. As. Soc., vol. xv, p. 330: "Nothing, indeed, is wanting in his descriptions, though he was but a passer-by ; and for labour in detail, where he had opportunities of survey, he cannot be sur passed. . . . Rich thirty years ago presaged the existence of Assyrian monuments in the mines from whence they have been exhumed. . . . At that time all that we knew of either Nimrud or Nineveh was from the pen and pencil of Rich, whose survey, engraved in the volumes edited by his widow, will be found as correct as the most diligent enthusiast can desire." Survey of Nineveh by Felix Jones. 13 the hope of finding a gem, or a fragment of a tablet to sell. In fact, Rich did for the tablets at Nineveh what the Abbe Beauchamp did for the cylinders of Nebuchadnezzar II from Babylon, i.e., he made it worth the while of the native to preserve " anticas." The next important survey of the ruins of Nineveh was made by Commander Felix Jones, I.N.,1 in 1852. He showed that the principal wall was on the east side of the city, and that it was 16,000 feet long, and that the north wall was 7,000 feet long. The west wall, close to which the Tigris flowed, was 13,600 feet long, and the south wall 3,000 feet long. He described the area of Nineveh as an irregular triangle, or trapezium, having its apex abruptly cut off to the south. Its total circuit was 13,200 yards, or j\ miles, which is not greatly in excess of the dimensions assigned to the city in Sennacherib's inscription, though Felix Jones was not aware of that. The area of Nineveh from the above measurements is 8,712,000 square yards, or 1,800 English acres of land. These facts disposed once and for all of the theories, both ancient and modern, which had been current about the size of the city of Nineveh. The principal mounds within the area of the city of Nineveh are Kuyunjik and Nabi Yunis, which are situated in the "north-west and south-west angles of the city respectively, and are close to its western wall. Kuyunjik is the larger mound, and is about one hundred acres in extent; the buildings on it were protected on the north-east and south sides by the river Khusur, and on the west side by the Tigris, which in ancient times flowed close to the great city wall. Felix Jones regarded the mound as the Acropolis of Nineveh. During the Middle Ages it was commonly called "Kal'at Ninawi," or the " Castle of Nineveh," and a fortress or stronghold of some kind stood on it for many centuries. The shape of Kuyunjik is that of an irregular oval, somewhat elongated at its north-eastern extremity, which rises ninety-six feet above the Khusur near its junction with the Tigris.2 1 Topography of Nineveh, p. 404, and Jnl. R. A. S., vol. xv, p. 297. E Topography of Nineveh, p. 436. 14 Botta: The First Excavator of Nineveh. The credit of beginning archaeological research at Kuyunjik belongs to Botta, whom the French Government appointed Consul at Mosul in 1841-2. Before he left Paris to take up his duties he had several interviews with Mohl, the eminent Orientalist, who pointed out to him that Mosul was the centre of a district of great historical and archaeological importance, and urged him to make good use of the splendid opportunity which he would enjoy for collecting antiquities, and even for making excavations on his own account. Mohl had read Rich's works, and realized clearly that the author had found the exact site of the ruins of Nineveh, and he felt that price less archaeological treasures lay buried there1 ; and it was said that Botta's appointment as Consul at Mosul was due entirely to the influence and activity of Mohl, who persuaded the Government and the learned Societies of Paris that a French Consul at Mosul could do what a British Consul at Baghdad had done, i.e., make large collections ot Oriental manuscripts, cuneiform tablets, etc. Be this as it may, Botta arrived in Mosul early in 1842, and tried to collect antiquities, but there was very little to be had, and Botta himself laments that Rich had swept up and carried off everything. He then turned his attention to excavating, and was anxious to make his first attempt at Nabi Yunus, where Rich had seen so much ancient building and sculpture, and acquired so many antiquities. But the Pasha of Mosul and the authorities of the Mosque of Jonah would not allow any part of that mound to be disturbed, and Botta decided to begin work at Kuyunjik. He started digging in December, 1842, and worked steadily for six weeks, but the results he obtained were few, and besides inscribed 1 Victor Place says : " Les recits de Rich avaient donne une sorte d'intuition de la verite a M. Mohl, qui engagea M. Botta a pratiquer des fouilles dans I'un des monticules epars sur la rive gauche du Tigre, et d'ou les habitants du pays avaient, disait on, extrait de grandes pierres sculptees pour les reduire en chaux. Le conseil fut suivi, et la decouverte eut lieu." Ninive et I'Assyrie, tome i. Preface, Paris, 1867 (3 vols.). His Excavations at Khorsabad. 15 bricks and some small and unimportant objects, he found nothing. He carried on his excavations at his own expense, and as his means were small he began to wonder if it were worth while continuing the work. Whilst his men were digging they were watched by many people from the town and country round about, and they all wondered at the care with which every brick and fragment of alabaster were set aside to be kept. One day, when Botta was examining a number of such fragments, a Christian from the village of Khorsabad, by trade a dyer, asked him why he preserved such things. When the dyer heard that he was digging for alabaster slabs with figures sculptured upon them, he told Botta that he ought to come to his village, where they frequently dug up such things. In no very hopeful spirit Botta sent two or three men to dig at Khorsabad on March 2oth, 1843, and three days later they came upon the top of a wall, one side of which was covered with sculptured alabaster bas-reliefs. A week's work showed Botta that he had discovered the remains of a huge Assyrian palace, •containing a large number of chambers and corridors, all the walls of which were lined with slabs bearing sculptured representations of gods and kings, and battles, and religious ceremonies. Side by side with these repre sentations were long inscriptions in the cuneiform char acter. Botta sent despatch after despatch to his patron Mohl, and, thinking that he had discovered Nineveh, he announced to him that "Ninive etait retrouvee." It was not Nineveh that he had discovered, but the palace of Sargon II, King of Assyria, B.C. 721-705. Before the end of May Botta definitely abandoned Kuyunjik, and devoted all his energies to the excavations at Khorsabad. In 1845, having completely cleared out Khorsabad, he returned to France with a magnificent collection of Assyrian sculptures and cuneiform inscriptions. In 1845 Stratford Canning undertook to provide Layard with funds sufficient to begin excavating the great mound of Nimrud, which lies about twenty miles south of Mosul, and he further promised that if important sculptures were discovered there he would find the means 16 Ross's Excavations at Kuyunjik. for clearing out the site. Layard had visited Nimrud on two previous occasions, and contrary to the teaching of Arabian and Syrian historians and ancient local tradition, believed that the ruins of Nineveh were buried under the mound of Nimrud, and there he betook himself and began his remarkably successful excavation of the site. Though the works at Nimrud necessitated his constant supervision, he managed to watch the excavations which the new French Consul at Mosul, Botta's successor, was carrying on at Kuyunjik. Before Botta left Mosul in 1845 Layard had made an arrangement with him whereby he could excavate at Kuyunjik on behalf of Stratford Canning, but when he began work the new French Consul protested, and claimed to possess the sole right to exca vate the mound. In spite of this Layard continued to open trenches in the south side of the mound, and the French Consul went on digging little pits a few feet deep in another direction. Both excavators worked in this way for about a month, but neither found anything of importance, and Layard stopped digging at Kuyunjik temporarily, and went to Nimrud. During the years 1845-47 Layard succeeded in digging through a great many parts of the mound of Kuyunjik, and in the course of this work he discovered many fine sculptures.1 He was ably assisted by Mr. Ross, a British resident in Mosul, who, in spite of the opposition of the Pasha and the French Consul, managed to keep the excavation of Kuyunjik going during Layard's long absences. When Layard returned to England in 1847 the Trustees of the British Museum asked Mr. Ross to carry on the excava tions at Kuyunjik on a limited scale, and for nearly two years he did so with conspicuous success.8 When he 1 The chambers excavated by Layard in 1845-47 and 1849-51 are clearly marked on the plan published with Rassam's paper in Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., vol. vii, p. 37 ff. Mr. Ross's discoveries, acknowledged by Layard (Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii, p. 138 ff.), are not noticed in this plan. E We owe to Mr. Ross our earliest good general description of the sculptures of Sennacherib at Bavian, which lies about thirty miles north east of Mosul. The first European who visited them in modern times British Museum Excavations at Nimrdd. 17 left Mosul he (with the approval of the Trustees of the British Museum) handed over the excavations to the care of the British Vice-Consul, Mr. Christian Rassam, who was instructed to keep the works at Kuyunjik going on a small scale until Layard's return. Layard went back to Assyria in 1849, and at once devoted all his energies to Kuyunjik, where work went on steadily until he left the East finally in 1851. The buildings which he exca vated in the years 1849-51 are marked on Rassam's plan,1 and a good idea of the vast amount of work which he accomplished during this period in the palace of Senna cherib alone may be obtained from his own summary of it. He says : "In this magnificent edifice I had opened no less than seventy-one halls, chambers, and passages, whose walls, almost without an exception, had been panelled with slabs of sculptured alabaster. By a rough calculation, about 9,880 feet, or nearly two miles of seems to have been M. Rouet, the French Consul at Mosul, who was taken there by some natives in 1846 or 1847. Mr. Ross followed him in the winter of 1847-48, and drew up a description of the sculptures and inscribed tablets, which was printed by Layard in his " Nineveh and its Remains," vol. ii, pp. 142, 143. When Layard returned to Assyria in 1849 he went to Bavian, and spent two days there in copy ing the inscriptions and exploring the ruins (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 216); he travelled thither by Ross's route, via Bazaani and over the Maklub and Missuri hills. The sculptures are cut in relief on the side of a rocky ravine on the right bank of the river Gomel. They consist of a series of tablets of various sizes, three of which are in scribed, and some large figures of gods standing on the backs of dogs, with two kings before them, and a series of smaller figures of Senna cherib, with divine emblems above him. In the river at the foot of the limestone cliff are several other sculptures, some very badly broken. Sketches of the sculptures were published by Layard in Monuments of Nineveh, 2nd series, pi. 51, and in Nineveh and Babylon, p. 210 ff. The famous Bavian Inscription of Sennacherib was pub lished by Rawlinson, Cuneiform Inscriptions, vol. iii, pi. 14. A popular description of the sculptures is given by Wigram, Cradle of Mankind, p. 121-4. Bavian was next visited by Victor Place about 1851, and it was claimed in the French papers that it was he who had first discovered the sculptures, which consisted of complete series of bas-reliefs sculptured with portrait figures of all the Assyrian kings from Tiglath Pileser I to Sennacherib. 1 See Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., vol. vii, p. 37. 18 British Museum Excavations at Kuyunjik. bas-reliefs, with twenty-seven portals, formed by colossal winged bulls and lion-sphinxes, were uncovered in that part alone of the building explored during my researches. The greatest length of the excavation was about 720 feet, the greatest breadth about 600 feet."1 During the excavations which Layard made at Kuyunjik and Nimrud in 1845-47, he was assisted by H. Rassam, who was his honorary secretary and overseer of works. During his Second Mission (1849-51)11. Rassam again acted in the same capacities, and when Layard was absent, and travelling about the country in search of adventures, the responsibility for conducting the exca vations devolved upon him solely. In 1851 Layard abandoned the East, and Rawlinson took charge of the excavations. On Layard's recommendation the Trustees of the British Museum appointed H. Rassam to continue the excavations under the general control of Rawlinson, and at the end of 1852 he began work. Meanwhile, Victor Place had been sent out to Mosul by the French Government to renew excavations both at Kuyunjik and at Khorsabad, for the French claimed Kuyunjik as French property, because Botta was the first to excavate there, notwithstanding the fact that the Sultan had given to Stratford Canning a permit to dig in any part of Turkey in Asia he pleased. When Rawlinson took charge of the work, Place obtained from him permission to dig at Kuyunjik, and thus it fell out that when Rassam wanted to dig there he found that his chief had practically made it impossible. Rassam had always hankered to clear out the northern corner of Kuyunjik which remained untouched, and, using strategy, he began to work there by night, and on the third night discovered the ruins of the palace of Ashur-bani-pal, and the splendid set of sculptures which form the " Lion-hunt."2 In March, 1854, Rassam left Mosul for England, and as for private reasons he refused to return to Kuyunjik, Rawlinson recommended the Trustees of the British Museum to 1 Nineveh and Babylon, p. 589. 1 See his narrative of the discovery in Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., vol. viif p. 41 ff. George Smith's Excavations at Kuydnjik. 19 appoint Loftus1 to carry on further excavations with the new grant which they had obtained from the British Government. Loftus opened various parts of the mound of Kuyunjik, and discovered bricks, tablets, and a few slabs, but he seems to have done little more than to con tinue the clearing of trenches made by his predecessors. No further excavations were carried out at Kuyunjik until 1873. Between 1854 and that year scholars had had time to examine the mass of cuneiform tablets in the British Museum, to complete their system of decipher ment of the cuneiform inscriptions, and to begin the publication of Assyrian and Babylonian texts. George Smith had searched through the collections from Nineveh, and had managed to collect a series of fragments of the " Deluge Tablet " from among them, and to translate them. The publication of his paper on the " Chaldean Account of the Deluge " created world-wide interest, and everyone was anxious that further search should be made at Nineveh for the missing fragments of the Assyrian story of the Flood. The proprietors of the Daily Telegraph recognized the great value of Smith's discovery, and offered to spend one thousand guineas on excavations at Nineveh, provided that the Trustees of the British Museum would allow him to conduct the excavations, and to supply them from time to time with accounts of his journeys and discoveries. The Trustees accepted this generous offer, and gave Smith leave of absence for six months. He left London on January 2oth, 1873, and arrived in Mosul on March 2nd. As the Pasha prevented him from beginning work, he went by raft to Baghdad, and paid a visit to Babylon and Birs-i-Nimrud, and purchased 1 William Kennett Loftus, born about 1821, died 1858. He served as geologist on the staff of Sir W. Fenwick Williams's Turco- Persian Frontier Commission from 1849-1852. In 1853 he was sent out to Mesopotamia by the Assyrian Exploration Fund, and spent the two following years in excavating ancient sites in Babylonia and Assyria. He published the results of his Babylonian work in Travels and Researches in Chaldtza and Susiana, London, 1857. He resumed his work on the Frontier Commission in India in 1856, but overwork and ill-health compelled him to resign, and he died on his way to England. c 2 2O Smith's Second Mission. a collection of contract tablets. He returned to Mosul on April 2nd, and then went to Nimriid, where he exca vated the temple of Nebo and other sites until May 4th. He began work at Kuyunjik on May 7th, and on May i4th he discovered a fragment of the " Deluge Tablet," con taining " the greater portion of seventeen lines of inscrip tion belonging to the first column of the Chaldean account of the Deluge, and fitting into the only place where there was a serious blank in the story."1 He closed the works at Kuyunjik early the following month, and on June gth he left Mosul, and arrived in England on July igth. The tablets, etc., which he tried to bring with him were seized by the Customs' authorities at Alexandretta, and were only released by them some weeks later after a protest to the Porte by the British Ambassador. The permit from the Porte under which Smith had been working expired on the o,th or roth of March, 1874, and the results of his excavations were so important that the Trustees of the British Museum decided to send him to Nineveh on their own account. He therefore left London on November 25th, and arrived in Mosul on January ist, 1874. He confined his operations entirely to Kuyunjik, but even so the local authorities gave him a good deal of trouble, and his difficulties with them and with his workmen became so pronounced that he was obliged to close the excavations on March i2th. Before he left Mosul on April 4th the Pasha took from him, by order of the Porte, all the duplicates of his collection for the Imperial Ottoman Museum in Constantinople. The reasons for the obstruction which he encountered at Mosul, and the refusal of the authorities to let him carry off all his treasures, are things easily understood if they be looked at from the Turkish point of view. Smith's discoveries were " boomed " in the papers in England, and every small fragment which he brought from Nineveh was described as " priceless " and " unique." All such descriptions found their way into Continental papers, through which they reached the Porte, and the 1 Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, London, 1875, p. 97. Death of George Smith. 21 Government in Stambul believed that Smith and other excavators were carrying priceless treasures out of Turkey. Smith practically created the trade in antiquities in Mosul and Baghdad. He bought dated tablets of the Persian and Parthian Periods, a large boundary-stone/ the lion of Khian,8 etc., from the natives of Baghdad, and he purchased the famous memorial slab of Ramman-nirari I5 from M. Peretie, the French Consul at Mosul.4 Rumour exaggerated the prices paid for these things, and the Porte firmly believed that the Turks were losing a large revenue by allowing antiquities to leave their country. In 1876 the Trustees of the British Museum again sent Smith to the East, and he visited Mosul and Baghdad, where he bought further collections of tablets, etc. As, unfortunately, he died on his return journey, near Aleppo (see Vol. I., p. 387), details of his labours on this, his Third Mission, are wanting ; but from what I was told by natives at Aleppo and Mosul of the difficulties which he encountered through the opposition of the Turkish authorities, and through the dishonesty and revolt of his workmen, it seemed that his last excavation at Kuyunjik yielded very poor results. In 1877 H. Rassam6 returned to Mosul to continue excavations on behalf of the Trustees of the British Museum, and in November of that year he began to work both at Kuyunjik and Nimrud. Among the treasures which he found in the former place was the magnificent ten-sided cylinder of Ashur-bani-pal, now in the British Museum. He continued his excavations at both places until the winter of 1878-79, when he went to Babylonia, and began to dig at Babylon, Birs-i-Nimrud, Abu Habbah and other ancient sites. 1 Bought for the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph. Brit. Mus. No. 90,850. 2 Egyptian Gallery, No. 987. 8 Brit. Mus., No. 90,978. 4 Assyrian Discoveries, p. 47. According to Mr. H. Rassam (Asshur, p. 210), the French Consul bought the slab from a native for 30 piastres, and sold it to Smith for £70 ! 5 For a full account of his excavations at Kuyunjik see his Asshur and Land of Nimrod, pp. 7, 208, 222. 22 Further British Museum Excavations at Nineveh. As the result of the intensive study of the Kuyunjik tablets that went on among Assyriologists all over the world between 1872 and 1887, there was a demand for a further examination of the mound of Kuyunjik, and the Trustees of the British Museum decided to apply to the Porte for a permit to re-open the excavations there. The permit was, in due course, obtained, as I have already stated (seeVol. I., p. 360), and I found myself at Mosul in the middle of January, 1889, ready to begin work. I started with a limited number of men, which I increased up to two hundred. From what has been said above, it will be readily understood that there was small hope of making any great discovery in a mound which had been dug through by Botta, Ross, Layard, Rassam, Loftus and Smith, and from which so many bas-reliefs and other sculptures and cuneiform tablets had been extracted. My task was a humble one, and consisted chiefly in searching through the debris in the palaces of Senna cherib and Ashur-bani-pal, and the heaps of earth outside them. I should have liked to carry away to a distance all the debris in the chambers, and sift it carefully, but the materials for a light railway and the necessary plant were not available, and we therefore had to do all our work with shovels and baskets only. The work went on steadily from the third week in January until the end of June, 1889, and from November, 1890, until January, 1891, and from first to last we recovered from the mound about 590 tablets, fragments of tablets,1 and other objects. Twelve years later the Trustees of the British Museum decided to re-open the excavations at Kuyunjik, and they sent out one of their officials, Mr. L. W. King, to carry out the work. Mr. King left Constantinople on December 22nd, 1902, and arrived in Mosul on January 26th, 1903, and he dug from March 3rd to July i8th, and from Sep tember 9th of that year till April i8th, 1904. He was relieved by another official from the Museum, Mr. R. C. 1 Descriptions of these will be found in Bezold, Catalogue, vols. i-v, London, 1889-99. Discoveries at Nineveh by Natives. 23 Thompson, who arrived in Mosul on February 2gth, and took sole charge of the works there from June 22nd, 1904, to February nth, 1905, when the excavations were finally closed by the Trustees. Short of digging down and sifting the whole mound, it seemed that nothing more was to be found there.1 Two years later rumours reached London that further excavations had been carried on at Nineveh, but by whom and in what spot was not clear. A little later further rumours stated that some important " finds " had been made, and some of these having made their way to England were acquired by the British Museum in 1909-14. Among these were the fine cylinder of Sennacherib (No. 103,000"), dated in the eponymy of Ilu-ittia (B.C. 694), and several large pieces of other historical cylinders of the same king. There is no doubt that the cylinder was found in a chamber built in the wall (or perhaps it was sunk in the actual wall), close to one of the human-headed bulls of one of the gates of Nineveh, and the bull near which it was placed must have been removed before it could be extracted from the wall. There was only one bull left in situ when I was last at Kuyunjik (1891), and it was in a perfect state. When Mr. Parry saw it in 1892' its head had been hacked off and taken to mend a local mill. Subsequently, according to report, " the whole monument was sold for the sum of three shillings and sixpence by the Vali of Mosul, and burnt into lime by its purchaser."' It is. probable that cylinder No. 103,000 was discovered by the natives when they were breaking this bull to pieces,, and we must be thankful that they had sense enough to- realize that it would fetch more money complete than when broken into fragments. Brief mention must now be made of the other great 1 For descriptions of the tablets and fragments recovered from the mound by Messrs. King and Thompson, see L. W. King's Supplement (London, 1914) to Bezold's Catalogue. 2 King, Supplement, No. 3329, p. 222, and Cuneiform Texts> Pt. XXVI, London, 1909. 5 Six Months, p. 248. 4 W. A. Wigram, Cradle of Mankind, London, 1914, p. 84. 24 The Hill of Repentance at Nineveh. mound at Nineveh, namely, Tall Nabi Yunis, or the " Hill of Jonah the Prophet." The shape of this mound is irregular, and it has an area of about forty acres. It is practically divided into two parts by a gap or ravine ; on the western part stand the village of Nabi Yunis and the so-called Tomb of Jonah, and the eastern part con tains a large cemetery. The western side of the mound, which is rather steep, seems at one time to have been joined to the city wall. In spite of every effort made by Europeans the mound of Nabi Yunis has not been completely excavated, even though it is well known that palaces of Sennacherib and of Esarhaddon are buried in it. The great obstacle to its examination and excava tion has always been, and still is, the Tomb of Jonah, which rests on its summit within a mosque,1 called after the saint's name. A very ancient tradition asserts that Jonah stood upon this mound and preached repentance to the Ninevites, and several Arab writers (see above, pp. 9 and 32) call it " Tall at-Tawbah," i.e., the " Hill of Repentance."2 A local tradition, which was repeated to me several times, also associates with Jonah the spring or fountain about half a mile distant from Nabi Yunis. It rises from the limestone, through an opening in the western bank of what was the middle moat outside the east wall of the city of Nineveh. The water in Rich's time was " good and clear and pure," and it was so when I drank of it. Though it had no mineral taste that I could distinguish, the natives have always attributed to it most miraculous healing properties, due not in any way to the water itself, but to the fact that Jonah drank of it, and washed in it when he was in Nineveh. The penitent 1 The mosque is described by Rich, Narrative, ii, p. 32. Its peaked cone stands at a height of about 136 feet above the junction of the Khusur (in Assyrian JJ J-J -\]^ «rTT IfcJ) with the Tigris; see Felix Jones, Topography of Nineveh, p. 433. E Thevenot says that the Ninevites only abjured their evil works for forty years, and that after that period they returned to them. Therefore, " Dieu renversa la Ville sens dessus dessous, et les habitans aussi, qui furent enterrez sous les ruines, la teste en bas, et les pieds en haut." Suite du Voyage de Levant, p. 99. Annual Sacrifice at Jonah's Spring. 25 Ninevites also washed in it, and it removed all their material and spiritual infirmities, and to this day it is believed to do the same to every religious man — Jew, Christian, Arab, or Kurd — who goes to the spring in faith.1 Once a year the natives sacrifice a sheep there, and make a feast with singing and dancing, and this custom proves (to my mind) that the spring was a holy place long before Jonah preached at Nineveh. When Rich visited Nabi Yunis he acquired many antiquities, e.g., " written bricks," seal-cylinders, and a " curious little stone chair,"8 which had been found at Nabi Yunis. The foundation cylinder of Sennacherib,3 which he bought there, proves that even at that early period the natives must have dug their way down to the foundation of some important part of Sennacherib's palace. Another proof of this is the " Taylor Cylinder " of Sennacherib, a priceless document, recording the first eight campaigns of this king,4 which was obtained 1 The Turks call the spring " Damlamajah," M-^J. This is the " Thisbe's Well " of Rich's Narrative, and on one of its walls Captain Kefala cut the name of Mary Rich (Narrative, ii, p. 51). E Narrative, ii, pp. 38, 55. 5 The " Bellino Cylinder," Brit. Mus., K. 1680. Though included in the Kuyunjik Collection, there is no proof that this cylinder came from Kuyunjik, but if it did not the argument remains unchanged. It contains sixty-four lines of text, and describes the first two cam paigns of Sennacherib, and was written B.C. 702. The text was first published by Grotefend in the Abhandlungen of the Academy of Gottingen in 1850 ; for the literature see Bezold, Babylonisch-Assyrische Literatur, p. 97 ; and Bezold, Catalogue, p. 331. * Fox Talbot (Jnl. Roy. As. Soc., vol. xix, p. 135) says it was found at Kuyunjik, but this is impossible. The text of this cylinder was already injured in places in 1840, when Rawlinson made a paper " rubbing " of all its six sides ; from this rubbing a plaster facsimile of the cylinder was made by the late Mr. Robert Ready of the British Museum. The cylinder was lost sight of for several years, but at length it was recovered from Baghdad, and Rawlinson purchased it on behalf of the Trustees of the British Museum from Mrs. Taylor in July, 1855. The complete text (487 lines) was first published by Rawlinson, Cuneiform Inscriptions, vol. i, pis. 37-42. For the literature see Bezold, Bab.-Assyr. Lit., p. 96, and Bezold, Catalogue, p. 1620, where by some extraordinary oversight no mention is made of Smith's important work on the Annals of Sennacherib (ed. Sayce). 26 Nineveh Discovered by Lime Burners. (? purchased) at Nabi Yunis1 by Colonel J. Taylor, British Consul-General at Baghdad, in 1830. And yet another proof is the six-sided cylinder of Esarhaddon,a which Layard obtained from Nabi Yunis, and gave to the British Museum in 1848. When it first came into his possession he does not state, but he says that both it and the Taylor Cylinder were discovered, " he believed," in the mound of Nabi Yunis. It is quite clear that he did not excavate the cylinder himself, for he adds that it had been used " as a candlestick by a respectable Turcoman family living in the village on the mound of Nebbi Yunus, near the tomb of the prophet."5 The cylinder is hollow, and has a hole at each end, and the grease stains upon one end, which are still visible, show in which hole the tallow candle was placed. The Turco man who owned it must, judging by the grease stains, have had it in use for some time, and it is fortunate that the top of it, in which the candle was placed, is not more damaged than it is. Thus it is quite clear that the natives of Nabi Yunis had penetrated to the foundations of the palaces of Sennacherib and Esarhaddon many years before Botta and Layard began to dig at Nineveh. Another collector of tablets and antiquities at Nineveh was Maximilian Ryllo4 (born December 3ist, 1802, died at Khartum June i7th, 1848), a Jesuit Father, who brought to Rome a collection of antiquities,5 and 1 Layard (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 345) also states that this cylinder was discovered at Nabi Yunis. 8 It gives an account of his expedition against Sidon and the conquest of Northern Syria, etc., and describes the building of his palace at Nineveh. The text (358 lines) was first published by Layard (Inscriptions, pis. 20-29). F°r the literature see Bezold, Bab.-Assyr. Lit. p. 104; and Bezold, Catalogue, p. 1689. 3 Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii, p. 186. 4 A full account of his work in the Sudan and of the establishment of his Mission at Khartum will be found in G. Moroni's Dizionario di Erudizione, Venice, 1840-61, vol. xcviii, p. 278 ff. For his life and writings see the work quoted in the following note. 5 " Le P. Ryllo rapporta, en 1830 [sic] de Mossoul a Rome des moulages de debris de monuments ^Assyriens. Us furent deposes a la Vaticane." See Bibliotheque des Ecrivains de la Compagnie de Jesus* edited by de Backer and C. Sommervogel, ist ed., vol. iii, col. 442 (Louvain, 1876); 2nd ed., vol. vii, coll. 343, 344 (Paris, 1896). Ryllo, the Jesuit Father, at Nineveh. 27 presented them to Pope Gregory XVI in 1838 ; they are now in the Vatican.1 This collection was examined and described in 1903, and consists of (i) Part of a brick. (2) Fragment of a cylinder of Sennacherib. (3) A tablet of adoption, dated in the thirtieth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II. (4) A contract tablet (ninth year of Nabonidus or Darius). (5) Fragment of an alabaster vessel. (6) Fragment of a brick of Nebuchadnezzar II. (7) Layer of bitumen, with impression of a similar brick. (8 and 9) Fragments of two cylinders of Nebuchadnezzar II. (10) Babylonian seal with figures of Gilgamish and a bull, and Eabani and a lion, (n) Cylinder seal of Sharru-ili. (12) Large cylinder seal with figures of the Bull of Ishtar, Gilgamish, Eabani, etc. (13-18) Small cylinder seals. Without numbers are : (i) Object in lapis lazuli. (2-8) Seven small Sassanian gems. (9) A scarab, inscribed on the base. (10) Fragment of a vase.2 Now though Layard states that " to disturb a grave on Nebbi Yunis would cause a tumult which might lead to no agreeable results," he succeeded by artifice in finding out the contents of one part of the mound. Hear ing that the owner of one of the largest houses on the mound wanted to make underground chambers for the use of himself and kinsfolk in the summer, Layard pro posed to him, through his overseer, to excavate them for him, provided that any sculptures, inscribed stones, etc., should belong to Layard. The native agreed, and the overseer was rewarded by finding several inscriptions and bricks bearing the name and titles and genealogy of Esarhaddon3 (B.C. 681-668). Soon after Layard returned to England a native of Nabi Yunis, whilst digging the 1 The label over the cases reads: Gregorio XVI Pont. Max. | Musei Etrusci ac Aegyptiaci Conditori | sigilla et scripta gemmis lateribusque | ab Asiae gentibus vetustissimis insculpta | Maximilianus Ryllo Sodalis e Soc. Jesu | ab expeditione Babylonica redux | an. Christ. M. DCCC. XXXVIII. I owe this transcript to the great courtesy of Monsignor Giovanni Mercati. " See Peiser, in Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, Bd. vii, February I5th, 1904, p. 38 ff. * Nineveh and Babylon, p. 598. 28 Hilmi Pasha's Excavations at Nabi Ydnis. foundations of his house, discovered two colossal human- headed bulls, and two large slabs sculptured with figures of a king fighting with lions. The British Vice-Consul and Mr. Hodder, an artist who was sent to Nineveh by the Trustees of the British Museum, were informed of the discovery, but they did nothing to secure these treasures, and the Turkish authorities seized them, and they disappeared. Hilmi, the Wall Pasha of Mosul in 1851-52, was much more enlightened than any of his predecessors, and took an intelligent interest in the his tory of the country over which he was called to rule in (what the Muslims call) the " Jahiliyah," or the " Era of Ignorance," i.e., Pre-Islamic times. As soon as he heard of the native's discovery at Nabi Yunis, he collected a. gang of workmen from among the prisoners in gaol,1 and in April, 1854, dug into the mound at a place close by the Tomb of Jonah. He opened out several chambers, and discovered two splendid bulls, each about sixteen feet high, and a series of slabs covered with cuneiform inscriptions, and a large number of bricks of Senna cherib and Esarhaddon. But to have made a complete success of the work Hilmi Pasha would have been obliged to tunnel under the Tomb of Jonah, and when the inhabitants of the village saw this they raised such an outcry that the excavations had to be abandoned. Among the inscriptions discovered by Hilmi Pasha was one which has been called the "Constantinople Inscrip tion," and the " Memorial Tablet," and the " Nebbi Yunis Inscription" of Sennacherib. This important monument bears an inscription (in two columns, which contain fifty and forty-four lines respectively), giving an account of the great wars of this king, and a description of the "Bit Kutalli," or "Arsenal," which he built at Nabi Yunis.6 On the authority of Rawlinson, people have always believed it to be at Constantinople, but I 1 Jones, in Jnl. Roy. As. Soc., vol. xv, p. 327. 6 The text is published by Rawlinson, Cuneiform Inscriptions, vol. i, pis. 43, 44. I gave a rendering of the greater part of it in Records of the Past, vol. xi, p. 45 ff. (Old Series). Rassam's Attempt to Excavate Nabi Yunis. 29 never succeeded in finding it, and Hamdi Bey told me that he had never seen it. Nothing more was done at Nabi Yunis until 1879, when Mr. H. Rassam returned to Mosul. In that year some of the villagers offered to let him dig under their houses, and others offered to sell him their houses so that he might dig under them. As the owners of the houses could not sell them without the permission of the keepers of the Mosque, Rassam went to them, and told them that he proposed to buy certain houses, and they gave him authority to do so. He bought several houses, and began to dig under them, but a few days after he started some natives in the village said they objected to his excavations, and petitioned the local authorities to stop the works. The Wall Pasha inquired into the matter, and was prepared to allow the digging to go on, but when the Mutasarrif, or District Governor, called the attention of the Minister of Public Instruction at Stambul to the petition against the works, the Porte ordered them to be stopped, and the Wall was obliged to obey the order.1 1 See Rassam's account in Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., vol. viii, p. 195 ; and in Asshur and the Land of Nimrod, p. 292. AL-MAWSIL, OR MOSUL. 1 NINEVEH, the " exceeding great city of three days' journey " (Jonah iii, 3), was built on the left bank of the Tigris, just as Babylon was built on the left bank of the Euphrates, and as the city of Babylon grew and spread across to the right bank of the Euphrates, so, when Nineveh became great, it spread across to the right bank of the Tigris. Western Babylon developed in the course of centuries into Hillah, and Western Nineveh developed in the course of centuries into Al-Mawsil. Tt may be assumed that Western Nineveh suffered as severely as Nineveh itself when the Medes seized the capital and destroyed it. But its site was in all times most suitable for a market and trading centre, and on it or near it a town has always stood. Of the history of Western Nineveh in the earliest ages nothing seems to be known, but in Sassanian times the town which occupied part or all of its site was called " Budh Ardashir," and its masters were, of course, Sassanians. The name always given to the town by Muslim writers is " Al-Mawsil,"2 or " the junction," i.e., the town at the place where several streams of the Tigris join, and it seems to have been known by this name for about twelve hundred years.3 After the conquest of Mesopotamia by the Arabs the town soon became a thriving trading centre, and in the middle of the eighth century it was the capital of the Province of Jazirah, and the principal town of the district of Diar Rabi'ah.4 Muslim writers of the tenth century describe 1 This is the common native pronunciation, and I use it throughout. J^r*31. See Ibn IJawkal, ed. de Goeje, p. 143 ff.; Mukaddasi, ed. de Goeje, pp. 138, 139, 146; Abu'1 Fida, p. 54; Yakut, vol. iv, 684. 3 Mukaddasi (ed. de Goeje, p. 138, last line) says that Mdsul was called " Khawlan " w V- * Le Strange, Lands, p. 87. To face p. 30, vol. it. View of Mosul from the west uaiiK 01 the Tigris. The new bridge over the Tigris at i!6> Early History of Mosul. 31 Al-Mawsil, or Mosul, as a fine large town, with good markets, and surrounded with beautiful gardens. Soon after the Arabs became masters of Mosul they joined it by means of a bridge of boats to the town which had sprung up about the ruins of Nineveh on the eastern bank, and the town greatly prospered. Its houses were strong, and built of the grey alabaster which is brought from quarries in Jabal Maklub, and it was said to be about one-third of the size of Al-Basrah. The Mosque built on the river bank by Marwan II (about 749 ?) was a fine and decorative building, and the strong " square" Castle (Al-Murabba'ah) which stood on a slight elevation gave dignity as well as protection to the town. Benjamin of Tudela, who was in Mosul about 1173, says of it : "This city, which is mentioned in Scripture as ' Ashur the Great/ is situated on the confines of Persia, and is of great extent and very ancient. It stands on the banks of the Tigris, and is united by a bridge with Nineveh. There are 7,000 Jews in it. Although Nineveh lies in ruins, there are numerous inhabited villages and small townships on its site. Nineveh is distant one parasang from the town of Arbil, and stands on the Tigris. Mosul contains the synagogues of Obadiah, of Jonah ben Amithai, and of Nahum, the Elkoshite."1 At this time the town was protected by high walls, and a very deep moat, and its suburbs were populous, and possessed many mosques and religious houses of the Christians and was famous for its hospital. Ibn Batutah visited Mosul in the middle of the four teenth century, and he says that it was " ancient and rich." Its Castle was then called "Al-Hadba," i.e., the " humpbacked," because it was built on a rounded rise in the ground, and it was said to be impregnable by reason of its massive wall, flanked with towers. A large wide street ran between the government buildings and the town, and joined Upper and Lower Mosul. The town had two very thick, strong walls, with towers at frequent Itinerary of Rabbi Benjamin, ed. Asher, London, 1840, p. 91. 32 Ibn Batfitatis Description of Mosul. intervals, which resembled those of Delhi, in India. Mosques, baths, khans, and bazars were numerous, and he admired the famous iron railings that surrounded the mosque built by Marwan II, and the benches over looking the river. In the mosque built by Nur ad-Din was an octagonal marble fountain resting on a marble pillar, and the jet of water in it played to the height of a man. The Maristan, or hospital, was in front of this mosque. The bazar, or "Kaysariyah," had gates made of iron, and shops and rooms, one above the other, ran round all sides of it. Between the new mosque and the bridge gate was the little mosque containing the tomb of Saint George, who was revered by Muslims and Christians alike. " Across the river is Tall Yunis, on whom be peace ! and about one mile from it is the 'Ayn, or healing spring, which is called ' The Fountain of Yunis.' It is said that Jonah called upon the Ninevites to cleanse themselves in its waters, and that when they had done so they went up on the hill, and he prayed with them, and God averted the punishment from them which they deserved. On the Tall is a large building containing many chambers and halls, and places for ablutions, and fountains, and all these are shut in by a single door. In the middle of this building is a chamber with a silk curtain over it, and it has a door inlaid with precious stones. It is said that Yunis used to live in this place, and that the Mihrab of the shrine which was in this building is the place where he used to pray. Near Tall Yunis is a large village, and close by it is a mass of ruins which is said to be the site of the well-known city of Nineveh, the city of Yunis, on whom be peace! The remains of the wall which encircled the city are visible, and the places where the gates were in it can be plainly seen."1 Mukaddasi, who wrote in the latter half of the tenth century, calls' Jonah's Hill' the ' Hill of Repentance ' (Tall at-Tawbah), and says that " Jonah's Fountain is half a parasang distant, and that by it are a mosque and the ' place of the gourd plant of Yunis' (Shajarah al-Yaktin)."2 It is interesting 1 Ibn Batutah, Voyages, iv, p. 135 ff. B Mukaddasi, p. 146. Rauwolf's Description of Mosul. 33 to note that Ibn Batutah seems to have seen no trace of the damage which Changiz Khan did to the town of Mosul when he captured it (A.H. 654 = A.D. 1256), and when he is said to have put to death between seven and eight hundred thousand of its inhabitants. The town suffered greatly at the hands of Timur-i-Leng (A.H. 796 = A.D. 1393), who practically left it a heap of ruins. The Persians held it in the early years of the sixteenth century, but the Turks, under Salim, took it in 1516. and from that time the trade and importance of the town declined. In Rauwolf's time (died 1596) the town was still of importance. He says: " We went into the famous City Mossul (sic) . . . over a Bridge made of Boats. This is situated in the Country of the Curters (Kurds). ... It belongeth to the Turkish Emperour, as all the rest hereabout. There are some very good Buildings and Streets in it, and it is pretty large ; but very ill provided with Walls and Ditches, as I did observe from the top of our Camp which extended to it. Besides this, I also saw just without the Town a little Hill, that was almost quite dug through, and inhabited by poor People, where I saw them several times creep in and out as Pismires do in Ant-hills. In this place and thereabout, stood formerly the Potent Townn of Nineve (built by Ashur) which was the Metropolis of Assyria, under the Monarch of the first Monarchy to the time of Sennacherib and his Sons, and was about three Days' Journey in length."1 According to Tavernier (born 1605, died 1689), Mosul was not worth visiting, and when he was there it had lost most of its importance.2 He says : " Moussul is a City that makes a great show without, the Walls being of Free-stone; but within it is almost all ruin'd, having only two blind Market-places, with a little Castle upon the Tigris, where the Basha lives. In a word, there is nothing worth a Man's sight in Moussul, the place being 1 Travels, Ray's Collection, p. 204. 2 But compare Thevenot's description of M6sul, which was printed in 1674. (Suite du Voyage, p. 95.) d 34 Tavernier's Description of Mosul. only considerable for the great concourse of Merchants, especially the Arabians and Curds, which are the inhabi tants of the great Assyria, now called Curdistan, where there grows great plenty of Galls, and for which there is a great Trade. There are in it four sorts of Christians— Greeks, Armenians, Nestorians and Maronites. The Capuchins had a pretty Dwelling upon the Tigris; but the Basha laying a Fine upon them, because they were about to enlarge it, they were forc'd to quit it. The City is governed by a Basha, that has under him, part Jani zaries, part Spahi's, about three thousand men. Ihere are only two scurvy Inns in Moussul. . . . But now let us cross the Tigris, over a Bridge of Boats, to view the sad Ruines of a city that has made such a noise in the World ; though there be now scarce any appearance of its ancient splendour. Nineveh was built upon the left Shoar of the Tigris, upon Assyria-side, being now only a heap of Rubbish extending almost a League along the River. There are abundance of Vaults and Caverns uninhabited ; nor could a man well conjecture whether they were the ancient Habitations of the people, or whether any houses had been built upon them in former times; for most of the houses in Turkic are like Cellars, or else but one Story high. Half a League from Tigris stands a little hill encompass'd with Houses, on the top whereof is built a Mosquee. The people of the Country say 'twas the place where Jonas was bury'd; and for that place they have so great a veneration that no Christians are suffer'd to enter into it, but privately, and for Money. By that means I got in with two Capuchin Fryars ; but we were forc'd to put off our Shooes first. In the middle of the Mosquee stood a Sepulchre, cover'd with a Persian carpet of Silk and Silver, and at the four corners great Copper Candlesticks with Wax Tapers, besides several Lamps and Ostridge Shells that hung down from the Roof. We saw a great number of Moores without, and within sat two Dervi's reading the Al coran."1 1 Travels, London, 1684, p. 71. The Tomb of Jonah the Prophet. 35 In spite of all the attempts I made to get into the Mosque of Nabi Yunis, I found it impossible to do so. The guardians and keepers of the various parts of it watched me with more than ordinary care, for they knew that I was collecting antiquities and Syriac and Arabic manuscripts, and they seemed to be afraid that I would carry off the building itself to London. The Wall told me that no Christian had ever entered the mosque, and he hoped that I would not try to do so, because the mullahs would make complaints against him in Stambul if I succeeded. From what I could see of the outside of the mosque, very few portions of it seemed to be older than the sixteenth or seventeenth century, but portions inside must be many centuries older. According to Layard the tomb of Jonah is in a dark inner room. The sarcophagus, which is made of wood or plaster, stands in the centre of the room, upon a common European carpet, and is covered with a green cloth embroidered with extracts from the Kur'an. Ostrich eggs and coloured tassels, such as are found in all Arab sanctuaries, hang from the ceiling. A staircase leads into the holy cham ber.1 Miss Badger, who through the Pasha's influence succeeded in gaining admission to the tomb some ten years before Layard, gives a somewhat different descrip tion. Passing through a spacious courtyard and along a fine open terrace, she descended into the mosque, which is a square building, lighted by several windows of stained glass. The eastern end is separated from the nave by a row of noble arches, which probably formed a part of the old church dedicated to Jonah. The pulpit (mimbar) stands at the south end, and the floor is covered with rich carpets. A passage, with locked doors, about thirty feet long, leads down into a square room with a vaulted roof, and in the middle of this, raised about five feet trom the ground, stands the coffin, which measures ten feet by five feet. On the south end of this is an enormous turban made of costly silks, and shawls, 1 Layard, Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i, p. xxii; Nineveh and Babylon, p. 596. d z 36 Jonah not Buried at Nineveh. and the coffin itself is covered with rich stuffs. A railing with large silver knobs runs round the coffin, and on it hang embroidered towels and bathing cloths. The walls of the room are decorated with mirrors, coloured tiles, and texts from the Kur'an. In one corner of it are placed a gilt ewer and basin, a ball of French soap, a comb, and a pair of scissors, for the use of the Prophet Jonah, who leaves his tomb at the times appointed for prayer daily, and performs his ablutions according to the strict cere monial law of the Muslims.1 Very few of the faithful ever approach the tomb, for it is considered to be most holy, and many men are content to look at it through the grated window in the mosque. The inhabitants of Nabi Yunis, and the people around it for miles, would tolerate no interference with the mosque, or the tomb, or the cemetery; and the ruins of the palaces of Sennacherib and Esarhaddon, which lie beneath them, have never been excavated. There appears to be no evidence that Jonah was buried at Nineveh. Many Jews in Mosul believe with Benjamin of Tudela (ed. Asher, p. 92) that the " province of Ashshur "z contains the synagogues of Obadiah, Jonah and Nahum, the prophets, and at least respect the tradi tion which makes Nabi Yunis the burial place of Jonah. The Christians do not accept the tradition, and believe that Jonah was buried in Palestine, but have no facts to support them.3 Yet it is clear that in some way or 1 Badger, Nestorians, vol. i, p. 85. » -HETK njno (Heb. text, p. 53). 3 According to Solomon of Basrah (see my Book of the Bee, pp. 70, 71) Jonah came from Gath-hepher (2 Kings xiv, 25), or from Kiiryath Adamos, which is near Ascalon and Gaza and the seacoast. He prophesied in the reign of Sardana (Esarhaddon), and then because the Jews hated him, he took his mother and went with her to Assyria and lived there. He rebuked Ahab, and called down a famine on the land. The widow of Elijah received him, and he returned to Judaea ; his mother died on the way, and he buried her by Deborah's grave. He lived in the land of Sarida, and died two years after the people had returned from Babylon (sic), and was buried in the cave of Kainan. Epiphanius has Kai KaroiK^crat tv yrj 2,au.p, CKCI a.Tri6a.vtv, Kal fTar/ tv T<3 p. 30, vol. ii. The Tomb of the patriarch Seth at Mosul. The Mosque of Xabi Yunis and modern cemetery. Secret Excavations at Nabi Yunis. 37 other the mound became associated with Jonah's name, and it is probable that a church was built on the mound in the early centuries of the Christian era, and when the " Fortress of Nineveh," i.e., Kuyunjik, and Mosul were captured by the Arabs about A.D. 640, the followers of the Prophet respected the church and the tradition, and absorbed both of them by building a mosque. Whether this be so or not, the mound of Nabi Yunis has enjoyed great fame as a most holy place for centuries, and large numbers of Arabs, Kurds and Persians, many having been brought considerable distances, are buried not only on the hill itself, but in the ground about it. No Wall of Mosul or of Baghdad has ever succeeded in wholly overcoming public opinion against the excavation of the mound, and no European ambassador has been able to persuade the Porte to agree to it. But the villagers of Nabi Yunis have managed to excavate secretly small parts of it during the last hundred and twenty years, not so much with the object of finding antiquities, as of finding alabaster bas-reliefs to burn into lime for the repair of the mosque of Jonah and their own houses. F. Vincenzo Maria, who also visited Mosul in the seventeenth century, describes the town as "picciola, ristretta, e povera d'habitazioni." Vincenzo went across the river to look at the ruins of Nineveh, but they did not interest him, and he saw only great heaps of earth and masses of " burnt stones'' scattered about. " Fui un giorno per vederla (i.e., I' antica Ninive), ma come non discernevo, che confusi montoni di terra, con un' infinita di pietre cotte disordinate, sparse per ogni parte senza trovar cosa degna di memoria, me ne tornai, pensando a che segno giongino le cose piu grandi e piu celebrate dal Mondo." (// Viaggio all' Indie Orientali, Venice, 1683, p. 80.) On the other hand, about half a century later, Otter1 says : " Les kiervanserais, les palais, et les autres edifices, batis de pierres dures, sont assez beaux. ... La ville est riche, et les habitans sont braves." In 1743 Mosul was bombarded for forty-one days by 1 I, 136. He was born 1707, and died 1748. 38 Bombardment of Mosul. Nadir Shah, and was only saved from capture and pillage by the breaking out of a rebellion in Persia, which made it necessary for him to return to his own country. The wonder is that anything was left of the town after the bombardment, for it was said that forty thousand cannon shot were fired into it. The Pasha and the people ot the town all behaved with great bravery, and as fast as the walls were knocked down they built them up. It is said that Nadir Shah planted his guns among the ruins of Kuyunjik, and for several days shelled the northern end of Mosul, where there were no houses at all. The general appearance of the town in the latter half of the eighteenth century is indicated by the plan published by C. Niebuhr.1 Parts of the walls were in ruins, and many of the flanking towers also. There were seven gates, not including the Bab al-Amadi, which was walled up when Nadir Shah was bombarding the town. The arrangement of the streets, which are all very narrow, was in 1889 substantially what it was in Niebuhr's time. Between 1820 and 1835 Mosul suffered from a series of calamities, caused by famine, plague and flood. The scarcity of food which afflicted Northern Mesopotamia in 1824 was hardly felt in Mosul that year, but in 1825 a drought set in which was spoken of with awe and horror in 1889. The wheat crop failed almost entirely, and all the vegetable gardens along the Tigris and about the villages inland produced very little, but a fairly good crop of olives came from the mountain villages in the north, which helped to mitigate the general scarcity of food. In 1826 the heavens became like brass and the earth like burnt brick, and all vegetable life disappeared. The flocks and herds were killed to save them from perishing by hunger, and after their emaciated carcases were eaten the people starved, and famished folk died in the streets and by the way-side, and lay unburied. In 1827 the suffer ings of the people of Mosul became more acute still, and but for the forethought of some of the Christian priests the town would have become depopulated. In the year 1824, 1 Reisebeschreibung, tome ii, p. 360 (pi. 46). 39 PLAN OF MOSUL by Niebuhr. 1.Bab el Amadi 2. Bab Sindsjar 3. Bab el Bad 4. Bab Edsjedtd 5. Bab Lidsjisch 6. Bab Ettob 7. Bab Edsjiisser 6. Ytsch Kalla 9. Pashas Pala.ce 2O. The Great Mosque 40 Famine, Floods and Plague when the wheat crop was superabundant, and one hundred weight of corn could be bought for about a shilling, these shrewd men had stored very large earthenware pots filled with grain in the chambers under their houses, and then bricked up the entrances to the chambers. When it seemed likely that everyone would perish these men, who, of course, knew something of the history of all former famines in their country, opened their corn chambers, and doled out the grain, I was told,1 literally by the handful. During the winter of 1827-28 the lions from the thickets west of the Sin jar hills, the wolves and jackals from all the deserts near M6sul, and even large birds of prey came to the town in a famished state, and found food in the shape of human corpses. Early in 1828 snow and rain fell, and men's hopes began to revive, but with the spring came the plague, brought, it was said, by a caravan from Aleppo, and of the remnant of the population left by the three years' famine, 20,000 persons died. Hundreds of deaths were due to excess in eating, and the melons, beetroots, egg-plants, and other succulent fruits and vegetables, which the earth brought forth in abundance, produced many fatal diseases in those who over-ate of them. The plague passed on to Baghdad, and men began to breathe once more, and tried to take up their old life again. But early in 1831 came the heaviest fall of snow that any man remembered, and for weeks Mosul was isolated. In the mountains the fall was excep tionally heavy, and the stepped paths which led from the plain up to the Monasteries of Mar Mattai and Rabban Hormizd were blocked so completely by the snow that access to them was impossible. In the middle of February came a sudden thaw, as the result of a week's rain, and all the district about Mosul and the town itself was flooded. Then the river rose several feet in one night, and swept away the bridge of boats, and destroyed many rafts laden with merchandise. The mound on which Nabi Yunis is built and the mound of Kuyunjik became 1 My authority for these facts was Mr. Jeremiah Shamir, a native of M6sul. To face p. 40, vol. ii. Srene in the bazar at Mosul. Scene in the baiar at Mosul. in Northern Mesopotamia. 41 islands, and the waters of the Tigris flooded all the lower parts of the town of Mosul, and filled the sarddbs, and even the ditch or moat outside the town walls. For many weeks all travelling in the desert ceased. When the river went down large lagoons, many square miles in extent, were left on both sides of the Tigris, and they caused fevers in abundance all that year. All stores of grain were destroyed, and the stocks of textile fabrics heaped up in the khans and in the shops in the bazar were ruined. Many houses and other buildings collapsed as soon as the waters receded, and in this state they were found when Badger1 visited Mosul a few years later. In 1880 there was another famine in Northern Mesopo tamia, and its serious effects are well described by Sachau,2 who was travelling to Mosul at the time. In Mosul there was no food to be had in the bazar, and the men whom he sent to buy food for himself and forage for his beasts returned day after day with empty hands. The distress was relieved in a measure by the British Consuls and American Missionaries, who telegraphed to Europe and America for assistance. And the severity of the famine may be judged by the dispatch of Colonel Miles who, in January, 1880, telegraphed from Mosul to London, saying, " Extensive relief measures urgently requisite ; numbers of deaths ; children being sold or abandoned; people flocking in from neighbouring villages, all starv ing." The American Missionaries sent similar dispatches from Erzerum, Wan, Diar Bakr, Urmi, and other places. The response in England and America was prompt, and, thanks to the stream of money which flowed into Turkey in Asia, thousands of lives were saved. In the courtyard of the British Consulate at Mosul great cauldrons of food were kept boiling over the fire all day for months, and Mrs. Russell, the Consul's wife, distributed food daily to hundreds of starving folk, without the least regard to their nationality and religion. The only passport 1 See his account of M6sul in Nestorians and their Rituals, vol. i, p. 62. e Reise, p. 344 f. 42 The Gates of Mosul. needed to enter that courtyard was hunger. The Domini can Fathers did splendid work likewise, and fed hundreds daily, but they only relieved the wants of members of their own communion. It may appear incredible, but at the moment when the sufferings of the people of Mosul were well-nigh unbearable, the Turkish Government in Stambul sent an Irade throughout Mesopotamia reducing the value of the coins in currency. Their argument was that by some oversight the bashlik, or five-piastre piece, and the majidiydh, or twenty-piastre piece, contained less silver than the Government had ordered to be put in them, and therefore the bashlik was only worth two piastres, and the majtdtyah eight piastres. The im mediate effect of this wicked order was to add to the distress in Mosul, and to ruin hundreds of families. At the same time another order was promulgated, which' gave the local authorities power to enter houses, and to seize whatever food they found in them, and distribute it among the people. The municipal authorities of Mosul carried out this order with alacrity, but the im mediate searchers for food went round each evening to the houses which they intended to search the following day, and (for a consideration) told their occupants what was going to happen. The result of this was that the houses of the well-to-do yielded nothing, and the poor were robbed of everything they had. Mosul is protected by a strongly built brick wall, about three miles in compass, which, when I saw it, was in a com paratively good state of preservation. It was complete, with the exception of a large gap at the south-east corner. The town had nine gates, viz., Sulphur Gate, River Gate, Castle Gate, Bridge Gate, Cannon Gate, Palace Gate, Narrow Gate, Egg Gate, and Sinjar Gate. The gates of the early mediaeval town were fewer in number, and the first Arab town of Mosul probably had only four gates. The streets are very narrow and ill-paved, and are dirty even in dry weather; but after heavy rain or snow their condition is indescribable. The houses are sometimes built of a pretty, greyish alabaster, which is brought from quarries at no great distance from the town. This stone 43 PLAN OF MOSUL. by Felix Jones Scale of Yards 1000 1. The Greatfcfoaque. in ruins 2. Stnjar Gat« 3 Nissaniyeh Mosque ? 4 Tomb of Ibn al-Hasan 5 Mosque of the Bridge 6. Mosque of the PSiha 7. Sar&yah (Government Offices) 8. Police Offices 9. Mosque of HusSn P&sha 10. ,, „ Oie White Gate II. Mosque of the New Gate 44 The Bazar at Mosul. is very soft, and is easily worked at all times, but when it comes fresh from the quarry it can be cut easily with the large blade of a clasp knife. Lintels, doorposts, and even doors are made of it, the walls of rooms are lined with it, and the courtyards of houses are paved with it. Most of the houses have flat roofs, surrounded by low parapets, and these form useful promenades during the winter, and afford excellent sleeping accommodation during the summer. The courtyards are pleasant to sit in when the weather is warm, but at every other time they are chilly and damp. During the heat of summer the natives occupy the spacious underground chambers (sarddbs), which are built specially for this purpose, but foreigners usually find occupation of them followed by attacks of fever. The bazar is a comparatively lofty building, and much business is done there, but there was little in it to interest the traveller who had seen the bazars of Stambul, Cairo, and Baghdad. I could find no " antica " shops, and the merchants who dealt in textiles had little to show except Manchester goods and modern fabrics from Aleppo. I asked in vain for specimens of the " muslin " which derived its name from that of the town of Mosul, and was famous all over the East for its delicate colouring and fineness, but all I was shown was made in England, and was folded round English boards, and wrapped up in English paper, stamped with the names of well-known English manufacturers. In one shop I saw a few old Italian medicine jars bearing Latin names of drugs, and a heavy brass pestle and mortar, which had belonged to an old Italian doctor, who came from Jazirat ibn 'Omar, and was said to have been very clever. The display of vegetables on market-days was very fine, but prices seemed to me to be high. No cigarettes were to be found in the town, and the only tobacco purchasable was tutiin, which was grown in the Kurdish mountains. It was sold in large leaves, which the purchaser broke up and rubbed down in his hands, and smoked in a little bit of coarse paper loosely rolled up. This odd form of cigarette was pointed at one end, and large at the other, The Great Mosque of Mosul. 45 and it frequently unrolled itself and let the burning con tents fall all over the smoker. The dogs of Mosul were legion, and there must have been many score in the bazar alone ; some were fierce and pugnacious, and these seemed to be descended from Kurdish and other mountain varieties.1 There are many mosques and prayer-houses in the town, but none seemed to me to be of interest archi tecturally. The most striking features of the mosques are the minarets, which, when seen from a distance, give a very picturesque appearance to the town. Most of them, however, do not stand straight, and the tower of the Great Mosque, which is commonly called " Al-Hadba," i.e., the " crooked," has a distinct bulge in it. Some of the minarets and domes were formerly ornamented with coloured glazed tiles, arranged in striking patterns, and others with stone mosaics, but little more than frag ments of such decorations remained in situ when I saw these buildings. A minaret wholly covered with bright, greenish-blue glazed tiles must have been a very striking object. I saw no evidence of any attempt made to keep the Muslim buildings in repair, and I could not discover that there was any fund for the upkeep of their fabrics in existence; the policy seemed to be to let a wall, or a doorway, or a dome go to ruin, and then repair it. The Dominican Fathers possess a fine pile of buildings and do a great work. Mosul lies on the west bank of the Tigris exactly opposite that portion of ancient Nineveh which is represented by the great mound of Kuyunjik; the space between Kuyunjik and the river is about a mile and a half. The principal means of communication between the town and the east bank is the bridge of boats. These are pointed at each end, and are moored by iron chains 1 The people of Mosul curse all dogs except the sel&kt, or grey hound, but with the strange inconsistence of the Oriental, many of them, Christians and Muslims alike, buy bread in the bazar every Friday, and feed the starving dogs on their way out from the town to the cemeteries to visit the tombs of their dead. I found that the men who spent most money in this way were Muslims. 46 Bridge of Boats at Mosul. upstream and downstream. Above the boats there is a layer of earth which rests on a layer of branches of trees, and these in turn rest upon a layer of poles, which are sometimes split and sometimes not; these layers form the roadway of the bridge. The boats were old and rickety, and I was not surprised to hear that when the great rise of the river took place about a month later, most of them were smashed. The eastern end of the bridge of boats is moored to the remains of the stone bridge which the Arabs (?) of the Middle Ages built over the Tigris and of which several arches capable of carrying traffic still exist. Round about the arches and beyond them a sort of perpetual fair was held when the river was low, and itinerant merchants of many nation alities pitched their tents there, and did a good trade in eggs, fish, bread," rolls, melons, etc. Acrobats and mountebanks were frequently to be seen there exhibiting their skill to crowds of admiring children, and as their quips and jests were greatly appreciated by the grown- ups for their " broadness " and " topical allusions," their " patter " never lacked ready listeners. When the river was very low some of the arches were used as stables by caravans which did not cross the river, and parts of others were screened off and openly used for immoral purposes, even during the day. What the population of Mosul was in 1889 I could never find out. In all attempts to count the people the Oriental always sees attacks of the tax collector, and replies to all questions on the subject accordingly. The population of Mosul consists of Arabs, Persians, Kurds, Jews and Christians, the last named including Nestorians and Papal Nestorians, Syrians and Papal Syrians, Armenians and Protestants. According to the census of 1849, which is quoted by Badger (i, 82) the population consisted of 3,350 families or houses, of which 2,050 were Muslim, 350 Chaldean (Nestorian), 450 Jacobite, 300 Papal Syrian and 200 Jewish. Sachau (Reise, p. 349) says that the population was estimated to be 42,000,1 1 Buckingham estimated it at less than 50,000. (Travels, ii, 34.) Population and Language of Mosul. 47 but thinks that it was larger. Mr. J. Shamir spent two days in working out the matter, and was convinced that in February, 1889, there were 63,000 people whose homes were in Mosul. To describe the tenets and dogmas of the various Christian sects of Mosul, not withstanding their surpassing interest and importance historically and socially, does not fall within the scope of this book, and for information about them the reader is referred to the works of Badger,1 Sandreczski,2 Fletcher,5 Parry4 and others. The language most commonly spoken in Mosul was Arabic. A large number of the people of the town spoke " Fallehi," i.e., the " peasant " or " farmer" dialect, which contains many old Syriac and Kurdish words. The American Missionaries in Urmi by Lake Wan were the first to print any portion of the Bible in this difficult but most interesting dialect, and copies of the whole Bible in Syriac in which the ancient and modern versions are printed in parallel columns are now •very rare and valuable. I found the Fallehi weekly journal Zahrtre dke Bahrd, which was also edited and published by the American Missionaries at Urmi, most useful in any attempt to become acquainted with the local dialect. In the villages to the north and east 'of Mosul they speak Kurdish mixed with Persian. It is perhaps impertinent for any stranger who passes a few weeks or months in an oriental town to criticize its government, but it seemed to me that the municipal administration of Mosul was as bad as it could be. Formerly, so merchants told me, when Mosul was governed from Baghdad there was some stability in town affairs, but since 1878 when Mosul was taken from the Walayat or province of Baghdad and made into a separate Walayat, everything changed for the worse. The Wali Pasha, or Governor, was changed 1 The Nestorians and their Rituals, z vols., London, 1852. e Reise nach Mosul, 2 vols. * Notes from Nineveh, 2 vols., London, 1850. 4 Six Months in a Syrian Monastery, London, 1895. 48 The Town Council of Mfisul. frequently, and each new Wall made as much money as he could as quickly as possible. Arabs, Kurds, Jews and Christians all agreed in hating their Turkish rulers, who seemed to take no interest in the town. Nothing could be done without bakhshish, and the man who gave most did as he liked. The Town Council, among whom were many rich Arab merchants, tried to get rid ot the Turk and they lost no opportunity of setting the mob against the Pasha and his authority. They spent money freely in forwarding their own plans, and it was com monly said that their chief object was to lend money to the Wall and so to get him into their power; from all that I heard it seemed that they generally succeeded in doing so. The administration of justice was very lax, and the " professional witness" made a good living, for his fee was increased in proportion to his ignorance of the case in which he undertook to testify. A single case in which I was interested will illustrate this state ment. One of the soldiers who had been told off to patrol Kuyunjik daily, while we were digging, was coming to the mound one day when he met an officer. Some words passed between them, and the officer suddenly seized the soldier's carbine, and raising it in the air brought the butt end of it down on his head with a crash ; the soldier dropped and never moved again. The same day some of the soldier's relatives came to me and begged me to go to the Wall with them and demand justice on the murderer, and as I knew what the exact facts of the case were I did so. The Pasha received me with great courtesy, thanked me for my visit, and promised to enquire into the matter. The next day I went again to the Pasha to see what had been done, and found that the soldier had been buried the night before. On the following day the Pasha sent me a message saying that the officer was to be tried in his court in the Sarayah, and inviting me to be present, and I went. Many witnesses appeared on behalf of the officer, and in different words they all said the same thing, viz., that it was the private who attacked the officer with his carbine, and that losing his balance he To face p. 48, vol. ii. A Musfili merchant in the bazar at Mosul. Murder of a Soldier by an Officer. 49 fell down on it and so inflicted on himself the wound which caused his death. No one believed the state ments of these hired witnesses, for when they were cross-examined it appeared that none of them had been present when the soldier was killed. After much talk the Pasha called upon an Austrian or Polish military doctor to give evidence, and he said that he had made a post-mortem examination, and had seen on the heart of the deceased a mark which showed that he was fated to die at the very moment in which he died, and that the blow from the carbine, which smashed in his skull, had nothing to do with the cause of his death. And on this evidence the officer was acquitted. As the Pasha invited me to his room and gave me the chance of expressing my opinion I did so, and he seemed genuinely surprised and troubled ; he assured me that the post-mortem examination had been made expressly at his request, and considered this to prove his sincerity in dealing with the case. When I said that I doubted the doctor's statement and that I did not believe his statement about the mark on the man's heart he said, " Am I Allah to know such things ? Allah forbid ! " And then adding the fatalistic words, " It was written," he went on to ask if we had found treasure in the mound, and said he was sorry we were leaving Mosul so soon, for he liked the English. As I was saying " Good-bye " to him he remarked, " No man hath seen the camel or the camel's driver," by which I understood him to mean that he did not wish me to talk about the trial I had seen that day. LIFE IN MOSUL. THE news of the arrival of the son of the British Ambassador at Constantinople and my humble self spread rapidly through the town, and long before we went to bed on the day of our coming it was freely discussed and commented upon among all classes of the community. As soon as we had taken up our quarters in Nimriid Rassam's house I sent our two soldiers to the Sarayah1 to report themselves to the Military Governor of Mosul, and bought a sheep and rice and other things in sufficient quantities to enable our mukeri and his companions to make a "feast" that evening. They, poor fellows, were as tired as we were, and they were thankful to eat a full meal in safety; and we agreed to feed their beasts for one week, and to pay them half wages until they left Mosul. They had made up their minds to return to Aleppo via Jazirat ibn 'Omar and Diar Bakr, and not to risk a second meeting with the Shammar Arabs. The soldiers having reported themselves to the Military Governor returned to the bazar, where they established themselves in a cafe, and spent their evening in describ ing to a large and ever-changing audience the attack of the Shammar upon our caravan, and the story that became current through them was that we had fought a sort of pitched battle with the Shammar, whom we had put to flight with heavy loss. In proof of their own personal bravery they exhibited their empty bandoliers (I fear they had sold the cartridges en route) and dirty carbines, and large rents in their ragged uniform, which they swore by Allah had been caused by the lance thrusts of the Shammar. The wise old Mosul merchants knew how to discount their stories, but they were sharp enough to see that when two Englishmen were robbed 1 Commonly pronounced " Saray." Native Views about White's Visit to Mosul. 51 as we were robbed, and the whole of a caravan was pillaged as ours was pillaged, the desert infested by the Shammar was not a safe place for ordinary merchant caravans to travel through. The soldiers' tale was in a great measure supported by the narrative of the men who were with our beasts, and by the merchants who had travelled with us from Nasibin, and very harsh things were openly said against the Military Governor of Mosul and the Wall Pasha in charge of Mosul for allowing the Shammar such freedom of action. When everybody was tired of cursing the Govern ment and the Shammar, they set to work to discuss White and myself in detail. It was generally known that the English were going to reopen the excavations at Kuyunjik, and when Nimrud Rassam told his friends and acquaintances that I had been sent to do the work, they contented themselves with hoping that no harm would come to the town through the digging up of the city of Nineveh, which Allah had overthrown, and considered my presence accounted for. They next con sidered White and asked Nimrud and each other what he had come to Mosul for. Nimrud himself being filled with curiosity, asked me the question point-blank, and I told him that White's father had sent him with me to see the country and its ancient ruins in which he was much interested. Nimrud passed this answer on to his friends and co-religionists, but none of them believed it, and they folded their hands one over the other, and their faces took on a look of helpless resignation and pity for the absolute folly of the man who could tell them such a really first-class lie and expect them to believe it. Jews, Arabs, Jacobites, and Nestorians were all con vinced that White had come on some political mission, and it was triumphantly pointed out that if the son of the British Ambassador was really travelling to see the country and to enlarge his mind, he would not have journeyed to Mosul without a large escort of soldiers, and many tents and servants and much baggage. The good people of Mosul were hopelessly puzzled, but they kept their counsel, and determined to watch our doings, e z 52 Our Native Visitors. and to interview us and to try and find out from us personally what White's deep scheme was. One result of their night's cogitations was evident the morning following the day of our arrival in Mosul. White and I were both very tired and wanted to sleep, but the next morning a little after seven, visitors began to arrive in order to pay their respects to White and to place their services at his disposal. I asked Nimrud to give them seats in one of the pleasant balconies of his house, and to serve coffee and stewed fruits, and mean while we dressed and made sure of our breakfast, which I cooked over a charcoal fire. The first visitor to be interviewed was the President of the Baladiyah or Town Council of Mosul, who was a very intelligent and pleasant and courteous Turk of the " old school." With him were two smart Turkish officers who welcomed us in the name of their General, who was a " little sick " that morning and unable to " greet and welcome" us in person. Next to them was an official from the Sarayah who said that he came to get information as to the extent of our proposed excavations, and who offered to assist us in every way possible. Among the other callers who sat patiently waiting for us were the Nestorian bishop and several other ecclesiastics of various ranks and their friends who had come to see what was to be seen. The President of the Town Council spoke Arabic, and began his conversation, after compliments, with the questions : " Why have you come ? And what do you want to do ? " He told me that before we began to dig we should have to buy the crops on the mound of Kuyunjik, and offered to supply labour and the necessary plant, and to be present at my interview with the Pasha when I went to present my authority to excavate. The officers devoted themselves to White, and as he was able to talk Turkish they got on very well with him, and invited him to their quarters, and promised to accompany him on shooting trips in the mountains near. With the Nestorian bishop Nimrud and I discussed Syriac manuscripts and possibilities of purchase, and White being bored past endurance with such things Visit to the Wdli Pasha of Mosul. 53 went off with the Turkish officers to see the town. The stream of visitors seemed endless, but when it became known that White had left the house it diminished, and in the early afternoon I thankfully saw our last visitor leave the house. The following morning I sent a messenger to the Sarayah to ask if the Pasha was disengaged, and received a very polite invitation to come, at once., so Nimrud and I set out for the Sarayah. I had arranged with Nimrud to make him the overseer of the workmen and to pay him a salary, and I was very fortunate in obtaining the services of such a capable and trustworthy man. He spoke Arabic, Turkish, and Fallehi equally well, and could read and write all these languages with great facility ; and he knew some French. He was a very fine Syriac scholar, and was thoroughly well acquainted with the Nestorian branch of Syriac Literature, but he regarded with contempt the Jacobites, their books and all their works. He was himself a most careful copyist, and wrote a beautiful Nestorian Syriac hand with unusual accuracy. When we arrived at the Sarayah we found the courtyard filled with an excited crowd of men from the town, and peasant farmers and stockholders, and Nimrud soon heard that they were there demanding payment from the Government for the robberies of horses, asses, and goods from their caravans by the Shammar. They hailed me as a fellow-sufferer, and in their eagerness to enlist my sympathy and help hustled and crowded Nimrud and myself very unpleasantly. I had to stand and listen, but as half a dozen shouted at me at a time and dozens of men interrupted with loud remarks and curses on the Government, it was not easy to get at the facts. At last I found out the cause of the violent demonstration which they were making. It seemed that the Shammar had fallen upon a large caravan of 300 baggage camels loaded with valuable merchandise for Mosul and Persia, and a smaller caravan which consisted entirely of young camels that were being taken eastward for sale in various towns. The Karawan- bashi, or leader of the caravan, tried to come to terms 54 Raids by the Shammar Arabs. with the Shammar, but failed to do so, and a pretty big fight took place in which the Karawan-bashi and several of his men and three of the Shammar were killed. The Shammar, exasperated at the resistance, seized every bale of the caravan, and all the bags of food, and the string of young camels, and then set to work to strip the men of their clothes and personal belongings. The attack had been carefully planned, for camels belonging to the Shammar appeared as it were from out of the ground, and the men loaded the bales on them, and, taking the young camels which the horsemen had seized, marched off with them. The Shammar horsemen then tied some of their naked captives to their saddles and rode off with them, the wretched men running by their side, leaving a few naked men and the remainder of the camels of the caravan to find their way to Mosul, a journey of four or five days. Two of the men had died of wounds or from hunger and exposure, and of the 300 camels of the larger caravan only about twenty had straggled into Mosul the day before, and of these some had since died. It was a terrible story and the facts were indisputable. The men in the courtyard of the Sarayah wanted me to get White to telegraph to his father, and they urged me to telegraph to Colonel Talbot, who was then relieving Colonel Tweedie, the British Consul-General in Baghdad, but I told them that I must hear what the Pasha had to say, and that he was the person whose duty it was to protect their caravans. At this moment messengers came to say that the Pasha was in his office waiting to receive me, and Nimriid and I followed them to the upper floor of the Sarayah. There we found the Pasha seated in a large room, and round about him on well-cushioned diwans were nearly all the notables of the town. As we entered they all rose and saluted us with the word " Salam," i.e., " Peace," and they laid their right hands upon their breasts as they did so ; they then raised them first to their lips and then to their foreheads, and sat down with great dignity. The Pasha gave me a seat by his side and clapped his hands as a signal to his attendants to The Pasha of Mosul Helpless. 55 bring coffee and cigarettes and pipes. When pipes were going the Pasha prefaced his remarks by some kindly words of welcome and thanks to Allah who had delivered us from the Shammar, and a murmur of approval went round the room. He then said that he hoped I would defer the talk which we must have about the excavations until another day, for it was all-important that he should first obtain from me an account of our robbery by the Shammar. I made a sign to Nimrud to speak, but the Pasha told him not to do so, and turning to me said, "No, speak thou," and another murmur of approval went round the room. This little incident showed me plainly how little native Christians were esteemed in Mosul. As there was no help for it I stood up and in my poor and halting Arabic told him how the Shammar had fallen upon us and robbed us, and how their leader had caused the Sultan's buyuruldt to be defiled and the way in which this had been done, and how the dwellers in the chadar (tents) on the chol (desert) because of their fear of the Shammar would neither give our caravan water nor let us camp near them, and how we had to ride for sixteen hours at a stretch to reach Eski Mosul. Fortunately it is neither hard to compose plain, simple narrative in Arabic, nor to understand it, and so the Pasha and the notables understood me, as was proved by the questions which they afterwards asked me. When the exclamations " dogs," " sons of dogs," " sons of filthy dogs," " misbegotten sons of shameless mothers," " sons of mules and asses," " offspring of Lot," " Allah damn their fathers," " Allah blacken their faces," etc., had died down, the Pasha asked me what I was going to do about it, and was I going to demand through the British Ambassador payment from the Government at Stambul for the things which the Shammar had stolen from us on the Darb as-Sultani or " king's highway." He went on to say that he knew I had already telegraphed our arrival to the British Ambassador, and that as I had said nothing about the Shammar in my telegram, he hoped I would not do so by letter, for he was responsible for the country between Mardin and Mosul, and he did 56 The Pasha Decides to Chastise the Shammar. not wish to lose his wazifah or position. At this point several of the notables interrupted the Pasha and said that the matter ought to be reported to the British Ambassador, so that the Porte might be forced to order out a military force against the Shammar, for no caravan was safe from their attacks. The Pasha then turned to me and repeated his question about my making a claim on the Government, and I said no, it would be useless to do so from Mosul. But, I added, the robbery of caravans is a thing which cannot be hidden, and should be reported to the Govern ment in Stambul, and I told the Pasha that I thought it was his duty to send out soldiers from the garrison at Mosul and kill some of the Shammar. Then one notable said one thing and another said another, but I was unable to follow all that was said. After much talk the Pasha seemed to arrive at a decision, and then he told me that if I would write nothing about the affair to the British Ambassador, he would despatch soldiers against the Shammar immediately, and would himself report the matter to Stambul when he had killed all the Shammar, and given their flesh to the jackals of the desert. I agreed to this proposition and, having made an appointment with him to discuss the excavations at Kuyunjik, Nimrud and I left the Sarayah. The same afternoon the bazar was convulsed with the news that the Pasha had ordered 250 horsemen to prepare for an expedition against the Shammar, and the town was filled with soldiers who were pushing about collecting equipment, food, etc. The merchants rejoiced that at last something was to be done, and did all they could to help the soldiers to get ready, and gave them gifts of raisins, tobacco, cooking pots, etc. This went on for several days, and each day we heard that the troops were to set out for Jabal Shammar to-morrow, and each night we heard a new reason for their non-departure. Then we heard that the delay was caused by the lack of horses which were shod, for none of the Government horses had shoes on their feet. It was said that regula tion horse-shoes and nails had been sent to Mosul from His Punitive Expedition Sets Out. 57 Constantinople, and that they had arrived safely, but had been sold, and so the cavalry horses went without their shoes. The merchants came to the assistance of the Military Governor and supplied not only horse-shoes and nails but men to shoe the horses. Then we heard that the number of soldiers to be sent was reduced, first to 150, then to 100, and eventually only 86 could be equipped at all adequately. On the sixteenth day after the Pasha decided to attack the Shammar news ran through the town that the punitive expedition was to start that afternoon, and all Mosul flocked to the Sin jar Gate to see it start. The men themselves were fine large men, but their uniform and equipment were very dilapidated. The tunics of many were burst at the shoulders and lacked buttons, all their boots were dirty and most of them needed repair, their bandoliers con tained old cartridges, as could be seen by the state of the bullets, the rifles of many were slung at their backs by bits of string, and great was the number of the varieties of their bridles. Each soldier had many small bundles tied to himself and his saddle-bags, and though some were mounted on horses and some on mules and some on asses, each man's load seemed to be the same. As far as I could see no baggage train either preceded or followed them as they rode out of the gate, and I assumed that camels carrying fodder for their beasts and water and rations for the men had started for Jabal Sinjar earlier in the day. When I looked at the eighty-six men that rode away to the west and compared them in my mind with the Shammar horsemen who had robbed us, I could not but feel sorry for them. But all Mosul was happy, and seemed to have no doubt that the Turkish soldiers would " eat up" the Shammar, and I drove away gloomy thoughts and hoped that the Shammar would be eaten up. Five or six days later two horsemen galloped into Mosul from the west and said that they had seen in the distance the soldiers who had gone out against the Shammar riding towards Mosul, together with a large body of Shammar Arabs. This news created great 58 The Expedition Comes Back. excitement in the town, and people began to drift to the Sinjar Gate and out into the country beyond, and waited to welcome the victorious soldiers, for it was generally assumed that the Shammar who were with them must be their prisoners. In the early afternoon we saw a great cloud of dust rising on the western horizon, and an hour later we saw the soldiers returning, and the report of the horsemen who arrived earlier in the day was quite true, there were Shammar with them. We watched the two companies of men draw nearer and nearer, but when they came quite close we saw that the Shammar were holding their long lances in their hands and had their " gas pipe " guns slung at their backs, and that they certainly had not the appearance of men who were prisoners. When they were about a mile from the walls of the town the soldiers and the Shammar halted, and the officer commanding the Turkish force and the chief of the Shammar rode towards each other and held a short conversation. The men of Mosul stood silent and wondered what was going to happen next. Suddenly the officer raised his sword in the air, and the Shammar chief having poised his lance as if for attack, wheeled his horse round quickly and galloped off to the west followed by all his company. The Turkish officer gave a word of command, and his men resumed their march and rode quietly behind him into Mosul. Then we all realized that the Shammar chief and his men were not prisoners of the Turks at all, and that they feared the garrison of Mosul so little that they dared to ride up to within a mile of the town walls, and to take a cere monious farewell of the officer and his men whom they had escorted to the town in order to protect them from the attacks of roving bodies of their own tribe ! Such was indeed the case. Little by little the facts became known, and they were as follows : The Turkish officer went a day and a half's ride due west of Mosul, and imagined that he would reach Jabal Shammar on the second day ; he had neither map nor guide to help him to find the way there. He pitched his camp in the open Chol, for there was no shelter to be had, The Turkish Soldiers Fed by the Shammar. 59 and then his men discovered that no fodder had been provided for their beasts, and no rations for themselves, and no water for men or animals. Most of the soldiers had brought raisins, or dates, or bread cakes baked very hard, and these served as substitutes for the official rations. There was no water near their camp, so the men scattered and searched for pools of rain water, several of which they managed to find, and when they had drunk themselves they brought their animals to drink. Whilst they were in this state of disorder a large body of Shammar Arabs found them, but they did not attack the soldiers, knowing that each of them had his rifle and cartridges with him. On the other hand, the Turkish officer was far from anxious to fight the Shammar, whose skill in the deadly use of their lances was well known. Moreover, the soldiers having been brought so far away without rations were sullen and discontented, and the officer felt that he could not depend upon their loyalty. Whilst the officer and the Shammar chief were discussing matters and smoking, another party of Shammar arrived driving before them a considerable number of sheep which they had that day seized as they were on their way to Syria. The soldiers and the new comers very soon made friends, and sheep were killed and boiled by the latter, and the Shammar and the soldiers all feasted together that night. What arrange ment the officer made with the Shammar chief we did not hear, but it was certain that the soldiers were the guests of the Shammar the whole of the following day, and that the officer was glad to have this escort back to Mosul. Comment in the bazar was very bitter for several days, and the indignation of the townsfolk was very great, but the explanation of the matter soon leaked out, and men's bitter anger was changed to bitter laughter. It was openly said that the Pasha knew quite well that he could muster no force sufficiently strong to beat the Shammar, so he decided to do what the Govern ment had done in the case of the Hamawand Kurds, who lived near Karkuk, and pillaged the caravans passing between Mosul and Baghdad, that was, to bribe 60 Our House in Mosul. them.1 He sent out a considerable sum of money to the Shammar chief, and when the officer paid it over to him he, according to Turkish custom, demanded a present (bakh shish) for himself. Thereupon the Shammar chief gave him seventy of the sheep which his kinsmen had that day stolen from passing flocks, and promised to deliver them to him in Mosul. He kept his word, and a few days after the soldiers returned, some of the Shammar drove the sheep into the town, and by enquiring in the bazar where they should take the officer's bakhshish, supplied the clue which enabled people to understand the nature of his interview with the Shammar chief. White and I continued to live in Nimriid Rassam's house for three or four days, but we found that it was absolutely necessary to establish ourselves elsewhere, for we could get neither privacy nor rest under his hospit able roof. Visitors came all day long and would not be denied. If we were eating they would come in and wait and watch us eat, if we were sleeping they would wait until we woke up, and if we were talking business they would sit down in a free and easy way and take part in the conversation, and discuss the points which we were considering, and then give us their advice freely and readily. After inspecting many houses we found a vacant outer court of a large house in which two or three families lived. It seemed to have been specially prepared for us. The outer court was separated from the inner by a high wall in which was a large door, usually locked, and on the right of the door was a square opening with a sliding panel that was worked in the inner court. Entrance into the outer court from the street was obtained through a door facing this wall. On the ground floor, on the other two sides of the court, 1 When these Kurds rebelled against the Turkish Government in 1879, the Pasha of Baghdad sent out a strong force of cavalry, infantry, and artillery to crush them. A battle took place in the plain near Karkuk, and the Kurds routed the Turks with great slaughter, and captured all the guns ; the Turks who escaped fled to Baghdad. A few months later the Pasha of Baghdad bought back the guns from the Kurds, and bribed them heavily to let caravans alone. Native Views about Chimneys. 61 were several small, badly-lighted rooms, and a couple of good stables, and above the small rooms on one side were two other small rooms, one on each side of the top of a flight of breakneck stone steps. We had no difficulty in renting all this for a sum in piastres equal to five shillings per week, and we entered into possession. We had all the rooms and stables cleared out, the walls and ceilings whitewashed, and the stone floors well scrubbed, and then we tried to turn out of the court what seemed to be the accumulations of many years. As fast as we cleared one part of it another part seemed to get filled up, and at length we found that the families living in the inner court used to open the door between the courts at night and shoot out rubbish and offal for us to clear away the next day. We nailed up that door with four-inch French nails and had no further trouble. As soon as we removed our belongings into our rooms the weather became very cold and snow fell heavily. We devoted our attention to making a fireplace in each of our rooms, but as soon as the mason began to cut through the walls to make a chimney we got into trouble with the owner of the house, who set the municipal authorities in motion against us. I interviewed an official to whom I tried to explain matters, and his reply was, "If you must have a wood fire, light it on the floor in the middle of the room, and let the smoke go out of the window. Allah is great, but what can you want with a chimney ? " Fortunately everything could be " arranged" in Mosul, and in the end we made our chimney. In a very few days we picked up in the bazar reed mats for the floor, cooking pots, etc., and were glad to live in a place where we could bar the front door and keep out curious and prying visitors. Our household consisted of one Hanna, a cook, who had lived with Europeans in Mosul and understood their dislike for Oriental dishes swimming in hot fat; a Kurdish groom for our horses and donkeys which occupied the stables, and two or three nephews of Hanna who made themselves generally useful and came with us on our daily visits to the excavations in the mound of Kuyunjik. 62 The Beggars of Mosul. Soon after we had set up house we found that chickens belonging to our neighbours, the families in the inner court, flew over into our court and settled there and lived on the grain which they found in the stables. Then several cats arrived, and whenever the door into the street was left open the dogs of the town came in and fought with the cats, and stole our meat and any thing else they could find. Sometimes they hunted the chickens round the court and often killed one, and claims for payment were made upon us; we never paid and so were greatly disliked by our neighbours. The beggars who thronged to our house were a great nuisance, chiefly because I did not like to send them away hungry. When the Pasha who had lived in the house was alive, every hungry person who came that way went into the inner court and knocked at the panel in the opening by the door in the wall already mentioned, and stood there and cried out, " Ya Allah al-Karim " (O Allah the Gracious !). The panel was withdrawn and some food was handed out to the beggar who then left the court; it was the Pasha's order that no beggar should be allowed to go empty away. When the beggars found out that we were living in the court they came in whenever the door was open, and stood under our windows and cried, "Ya Allah al-Karim." All of them were very, very poor, and some of them were blind, and some had loathsome sores on them, and some had horrible de formities. White and I felt that though we could not afford to copy the dead Pasha and give to everybody at all times we must do something for the beggars, and I consulted a native of whom I shall have more to say presently, Jeremiah Shamir. His advice was to buy, or have made daily, a number of flat bread-cakes each weighing about four ounces, and to distribute them once a day. We therefore arranged for a hundred bread- cakes to be supplied to us daily and White and I shared the cost. These were delivered to our Hanna, who seemed to know every beggar of Mosul, and he gave them away at his discretion every morning whilst we were at breakfast. The beggars soon realized that there was 'Askar the Kurd and the Dog Saba1. 63 nothing more to be got from us after breakfast-time, and left us in peace for the rest of the day. Nimrud, who was a rigid "dry "* Nestorian, and a fervent hater of the Muslims, was horrified at our weakness, but the " waste " (as he called it) earned us the good-will of the Muslims, as they are extraordinarily generous to the poor. In spite of all our attempts to keep our court to ourselves it was impossible to do so. One morning I went into the stable and found there a horse which did not belong to us. When I asked our Kurd, whom we called " 'Askar," i.e., "the soldier," to whom the horse belonged, he said that it was the property of a poor man, and that it had always lived in the stable in the days when the Pasha was alive, and that it was too old to be out in the open at nights during the winter. I spoke to the owner of the horse and asked him why he had not asked our permission for the horse to stay there before he brought it into the stable. He replied, " Pasha, I saw you buying bread to feed the starving dogs in the bazar last Friday, as the Muslims do, and I said, ' These Englishmen and the Muslims are all one, and they have hearts of gold. But the Muslims esteem horses more than dogs, and these Englishmen will do the same, and they will let my horse go back to his stable as in the days of the old Pasha, and God shall prolong their lives.' " There was no more to be said, and the horse stayed in the stable and we fed him from that time till the end of the period for which we hired the court. One day 'Askar was followed into our court by a large dog with short and thick black hair, and quite unlike any of the other dogs which were to be seen in hundreds in the town. The creature was in a very emaciated condition, but he did not cringe like the other dogs of Mosul, and having looked steadily at White and myself he walked to the door of the stable, and having dragged 1 The epithet " wet " was applied to that section of the Nestorians who received a subsidy from Rome ; " dry " Nestorians were those who did not. 64 Saba' and the Beggar Woman. out some old bedding walked round and round on it and then settled himself down to sleep. He had a short head, good teeth, and very powerful jaws, and a thick ruff of white hair. We thought he was a former in habitant of the court, and that he had, like the horse, found his way back to his old home, but no one knew him and no one had seen him before. It was quite evident that he intended to stay with us, and he did, and after a few days' rest and feeding he began to fill out and improve in appearance, and he kept the court clear of town dogs, cats and chickens. We called him " Saba'," i.e., the " lion." He disapproved strongly of the beggars who came each morning for their bread-cakes, and watched all their movements with suspicion. One morning when our water-carriers and several other men were in the court, a beggar-woman, with her face closely covered, came in and pushed her way behind the men to the kitchen door, and Hanna gave her two bread- cakes. To get out of the court she had to pass close to the dog and he growled at her, and the woman began to abuse him in very unwomanly language and shrieked at him, " nijis, nijis," " unclean, unclean." The dog stood up and his hair bristled, but he did not move. The woman turned quickly to get away and the end of her ragged garment flapped in his face. In a moment the dog seized the end in his teeth, and as the woman moved on he pulled backwards. The woman clutched at her garment trying to keep her face hidden, but the dog tugged and backed with the result that bit by bit she was unwound, and in a few seconds her garment left her, and she stood there with nothing on but a rag or two about her. Hanna tried to get her into his kitchen, but she stood there denouncing us all in violent language for several minutes, whilst the dog tore her ragged garment into little bits. One of the men in the court threw his cloak about her, but we did not get rid of her until I sent a man to the bazar who bought enough stuff to make her a new garment. She forgave us and paid us many visits, for H anna's bread-cakes were much appreciated, but whether the dog was in the J Excavations at Kuyunjik. 65 court or not she always bestowed many curses upon him. As soon as we were settled down in our new quarters I devoted myself to the work of the excavations and the search for Syriac and Arabic manuscripts. I visited the Pasha as arranged on the day following that on which he decided to send out soldiers against the Shammar, and presented my official papers for his inspection. His secretary read my permit, and then fetched a copy of the instructions which he had received from Stambul. He was ordered to permit the excavations at Kuyunjik which were to be conducted under the supervision of the Delegate who had been sent from Stambul for the purpose, and he was specially instructed to have delivered to him every object of antiquity which might be found during the work. I explained to him that Hamdi Bey had told me that I might take away " pottery " frag ments, i.e., fragments of inscribed tablets, but he said there was no mention of this arrangement in his instruc tions. He dismissed the secretary and then told me that the owners of growing crops on the mound of Kuyunjik must be indemnified, and that arrangements must be made for pasturage of the sheep which usually grazed on the mound. Besides this, he said that as all the work on the mound had to be done under the super vision of the Delegate, I must not begin to excavate until the Delegate arrived. When I objected strongly to this view of the case he begged me to be patient and to listen to what he had to say. The gist of his remarks was that I was to consider him my waktl, or deputy, and he would arrange with the owners of the crops and the men who had the right of pasture on the mound, and that when he had fixed the sum to be paid to them he would send me word. Meanwhile, as I had honoured Mosul by coming there, and he had not forgotten the matter of the Shammar, he would permit me on his own responsibility to begin to dig at once. He suggested that I should deposit a certain sum of money with him for preliminary expenses, and I did so, and although His Excellency forgot to pay for the crops and for the hire of 66 The Mound of Kuytinjik new grazing ground for the sheep, the money I gave him was well invested, for he caused me no further trouble. The minor official formalities having been complied with, Nimrud and I rode over to Kuyunjik1 to look at the mound, and to settle upon a plan of work. We walked up the mound at the south-west corner and followed the ruins of the western wall of Nineveh as far as the ruins of the buildings at the north-west corner, and then having turned a little to the east we made our way back over the heaps of rubbish which had been thrown up by the early excavators. Nimrud showed me the places where, as he had been told, Botta and Layard had made excavations, and a number of depressions in the ground which represented the " trial shafts " they had sunk, and the trenches they had dug with the view of locating large monuments. It seemed to me that they had been guided to the places which they dug out, entirely by the natives, who had searched through many parts of the mound in order to find limestone bas-reliefs, statues, etc., to break up and burn into lime for building purposes. In fact, as the searchers for bricks from Hillah were the true discoverers of the ruins of Babylon, so the natives who lived near Kuyunjik and searched the mound for limestone slabs were the true discoverers of the ruins of Nineveh. I could not ascertain that either Botta (1842) or Layard (1844, 1849 and 1850) had dug out any building or any part of the mound completely. On the other hand, the excavations made at Kuyunjik by Loftus and Rassam between 1852 and 1854 under the direction of Rawlinson, were carried out systematically, and the result was the splendid discovery of the mass of inscribed tablets which are now known to have formed the library of Ashur-bani-pal. Of the excavations made by Smith in the years 1874-76 there were many traces. His object was to find inscribed tablets and fragments, and 1 The natives pronounce the name thus. I have seen the name written (J^y Kuyunjik, tj*5^ Kuyunjik, and ij*^** Kuyunjik. An old name of the mound is 'Armushiyah £A '£, and there was a village of this name on the mound in 1889. and its Early Excavators. 67 he wisely contented himself with digging through parts of the mound adjacent to the spot where Rassam made his great " find " in 1854. In the course of Smith's three seasons' work he recovered over three thousand tablets and fragments, a result which in my opinion justifies his course of action. I did not find that he attempted to search the large heaps of debris which Rassam had thrown up, and which in many cases had been piled up on parts of the mound which had not been excavated at all. In this he followed the example of Rassam, who did not search the debris of the palace of Ashur-bani-pal which Layard discovered in 1849 an(l J85o. In the course of conversation with Ad-Da'im, the Trustees' watchman of Kuyunjik, I learned that after heavy rains a number of tablet fragments were frequently found by him on the heaps of debris, and this suggested to me that the best thing for me to do was to dig through these heaps carefully before attempting to break new ground. It was not very ambitious work, but there was no other way of finding out if these heaps contained fragments of tablets, and I determined to do it. I could not attempt an examination of the entire mound; this work would take a very considerable amount of time to perform, for, according to Felix Jones, who surveyed the ruins in 1852, the mound contained 14,500,000 tons of earth and covered one hundred acres.1 I spent two days in going over the mound, and then we began work. We began with fifty men and gradually increased the number to two hundred. First of all we practically put through a sieve the contents of all the chambers at the south-west corner of the mound, and were rewarded by finding about thirty fragments of tablets and a com plete Assyrian letter side by side with two inlaid silver bracelets of the Sassanian period.2 A great many of these chambers contained the lower portions of the limestone bas-reliefs which had lined the walls and had 1 Jnl. Royal Asiatic Soc., vol. xv, p. 326. e See Guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian Antiquities, p. 223 (Nos. 220, 221). 68 Death of a Watchman. been destroyed by fire. Though the people of Mosul had been accustomed to see excavations carried on at Kuyunjik for fifty years, and must have known that the mound had never yielded gold or precious stones, crowds visited the chambers where we were digging expecting to see undreamed of treasures brought to light. It had been rumoured in the town that I could read mismdri (i.e., cuneiform) writing, and the people were convinced that I had obtained information as to the exact spot where the ancient Assyrians had buried their gold and silver. Pending the arrival of the Dele gate two officials had been deputed to watch us digging so that they might be on the spot ready to claim all treasure for the Government, and they found their task very dull. Three days after we began to dig one of them caught a chill, which developed into pneumonia, and he died, and soon after this his companion was withdrawn and we were left unwatched until the Dele gate arrived. Meanwhile, in spite of bitterly cold winds, and rain and snow, we continued to dig through the debris, and each day produced a " find" in the shape of a tablet or fragment. Nimrud and I shared the work of watching on alternate days, but it was cold and dreary work. One evening in the second week of February as we were riding through the bazar we noticed signs of excite ment, and presently we were told that a high official from Stambul had arrived and was asking for me. The official very soon found me, and he turned out to be the Delegate who had been sent by the Ministry of Public Instruction at Stambul to watch our excavations. He expected me to lodge him in our court, but there was no room for him, and he had to go to one of the Khans in the town. Before I left him that afternoon I gave him a good meal in the bazar, for he was in a most pitiable condition, and he told me the story of his journey. It is necessary to state here the terms on which he undertook the duties of Delegate. The Turkish regulations laid it down that the excavator was to pay the Delegate deputed to serve with him £Tao per month i To face p. 69, vol. ii. Arrival of the Delegate from Stambdl. 69 from the day he left Stambul to the day he returned, and all the expenses he incurred in going to the site to be excavated and in returning. Acting under competent advice I had deposited with the authorities in Stambul, before I left, the sum of £T6o, i.e., £T2O for the Dele gate's first month's salary, and £T4o for travelling expenses, including the hire of horses. According to the Delegate he only received a small portion of the £T6o, and he had to set out on his journey insufficiently equipped as regards clothing, and with insufficient money. He travelled to Mosul by way of Diar Bakr and Jazirat ibn 'Omar, and as he could not ride even a donkey he hired somewhere a takhtarawdn, i.e., a sort of litter swung between two long poles which were carried by two animals (mules, horses or even camels), one supporting the fore-ends of the poles and one the hind ends. Near Diar Bakr he encountered snowy weather, and the roads were very bad, and every conceivable accident seemed to have happened to himself and his men. His horses fell down and broke one of the poles, the glass windows of the box in which he was carried got smashed, and the rain and snow drenched him to the skin. At one place he was, he said, robbed, and at another when he could not pay for his food the Khanji or Khan-keeper beat him. For several days he had lived at the expense of his muleteers, promising that I would pay them when they reached Mosul. He was greatly exhausted by his journey, and as soon as I had got rid of his muleteers, who utterly refused to leave him until they were paid, we saw him to his Khan and left him. He was a man of small stature and physically unfitted for any kind of hardship, and as soon as he found that the comforts which he had enjoyed in Stambul could not be obtained in Mosul he wished to leave the town as soon as possible. He spoke German fluently and had, I was told, a good knowledge of Turkish. When he had recovered somewhat from the fatigue of his journey he came out with us to the mound, but the place had no attractions for him, and the bitter wind soon drove him back to Mosul. He went to see the 70 Mr. Ainslie the American Missionary. Pasha two or three times, but what arrangement he made with him I do not know ; he rarely visited the excavations and the Pasha sent no one in his place. I took care that he was properly fed, and deducted what I paid for his food from his salary. Meanwhile, in the course of work, I became acquainted with many people in Mosul, Nestorians, Jacobites, and Muslims, and nearly all of them were ready to help me in every way. There were no English there, and only three people besides White and myself who could speak English, namely, Mr. Ainslie, the American Missionary and his wife and Mr. Jeremiah Shamir. The Ainslies had recently come to Mosul and found their task very uphill work, for the simplicity of the American services repelled those who loved churches with richly-furnished altars, high ritual and ceremonies, incense, and richly-clad priests. Mr. Ainslie was a simple earnest man, and was much liked by all who came in contact with him for his straightforward and honest dealing. An incident in connection with him may be noted here. He and I were walking to Kuyunjik one day to look at the work, and as we passed over the stone bridge which spans the Khusur, near the south-west corner of the mound, we saw a man fishing. Mr. Ainslie called out to him and asked what he had caught, and the man answered, " I have cast my net a hundred times, but Allah has given me no fish." Mr. Ainslie said, " Cast your net now, what are a hundred casts compared with the goodness of Allah ? " And the man replied, " I will cast my net in thy name," and mutter ing " Ansli, Ansli, Ansli," as a spell he cast his net. As we were leaving the bridge we heard him shout " Samak, Samak," " a fish, a fish," and turning round we saw him pulling out his little net with a large fish in it! Mr. Jeremiah Shamir was a little active old man, with dark eyes deeply set in a little wizened face; he was very shrewd and intelligent, not to say cunning, and by some means or other he managed to know every body's business. He spoke English clearly but slowly, Mr. Jeremiah Shamtr. 71 and at one time in his life he had been employed in the British Consulate at Mosul. He talked Arabic, Turkish, and the local Syriac dialect Fallehi, and he had some knowledge of Persian. He kept a small school, but depended for his living upon a small business as a dealer in books and manuscripts. He had been employed by Sachau to collect Syriac manuscripts for the Royal Library at Berlin, but being dissatisfied with his treat ment by the Germans he transferred his services to me. Through him I obtained several manuscripts and a copy of the great Syriac Bible which the American Missionaries printed at Urmi with the old Peshitta version and the Fallehi translation arranged in parallel columns. He knew the owners of many valuable manuscripts in Mosul, and through him I was enabled to examine many works which I had only known by name through the Catalogue of 'Abhd-Isho'. But he rarely succeeded in arranging the purchase of a really good manuscript, for the Jacobites disliked him because he was originally a Nestorian, and the Nestorians dis trusted him because he had become a Protestant, and because he was supposed to be a member of the congre gation of the American Mission. He had travelled extensively in many countries and knew Asia Minor, Armenia, Persia and Kurdistan thoroughly, and, judging by his conversations and the contents of many letters which I received from him, I came to the conclusion that he was a Freethinker. He knew a great deal about the Yazidis and their beliefs, and I obtained from him a stout octavo manuscript written in Arabic, containing the fullest history I had ever seen of this interesting people. I suspected that whatever religious sympathies he possessed inclined to the Yazidis, for the manuscript was the only one in which I ever knew him to take personal interest. Usually books and manuscripts were regarded by him as things to buy in order to sell them again at a profit as quickly as possible. Speaking generally, I found the Nestorians far readier to help me to acquire manuscripts than the Jacobites, 72 Mar EUyd Mtlos, Bishop of Malabar. and the Nestorian bishop Mar Milos1 was very helpful to me in this respect. He was a man of great learning, and possessed several ancient manuscripts and a large number of copies of rare works which he had made with his own hand. Like the Jacobites he refused absolutely to sell his ancient manuscripts, but unlike them he was quite willing to allow competent scribes chosen by him to make copies of them for libraries or even private scholars. Indeed, he was most anxious to have copies of valuable manuscripts multiplied, first, because by means of them the interest in Syriac Literature would be increased, and secondly, because the making of such copies would provide remunerative occupation for scribes who needed practice in their craft to maintain their skill and ability. He gave me introductions to members of his community at Tall Kef, a large village lying a few miles north of Mosul, with a good church served by many priests, and I rode out there one afternoon to deliver them. I was warmly received by the priests and elders of the village, and over coffee and cigarettes we discussed manuscripts and the possibility of obtaining old manuscripts or copies of them. During my visit they took me to the house of a good scribe, and I was fortunate enough to find him actually engaged in copying a work of Bar Hebraeus. I greatly admired the ease and quickness with which he made his bold, well- formed letters, and the unerring way in which he added the vowel points and the other diacritical marks. In answer to my questions he told me that he bought his paper from the grocers in the bazar who used it for wrapping up sugar. It was a good, stout, rag-made paper manufactured in Russia, very rough on both sides, and in size small folio. Before use each sheet was laid upon a smooth board and well rubbed and rolled with a large round bottle, like a whisky bottle, and under this treatment the paper became so beautifully smooth and shiny that the reed pen rarely spluttered. 1 The " Mar Elijah Millus," Bishop of Malabar, whose history is given by H. Rassam in Asshur and the Land of Nimrod, p. 161 ff. Visit to Tall Kef. 73 The scribe took a sheet of the paper and ruled dry lines on it with a metal stilus to mark the margins and the number of lines in the column of text to be written upon it, and having rubbed it with his bottle he sat down and wrote whilst we looked on. He wrote a few lines in the usual way from right to left, and then he turned his sheet of paper half round so that the lines already written became perpendicular instead of horizontal, and then proceeded to write his text perpendicularly with the greatest ease. He had much to say about the selection of reeds for pens, and he explained how to cut them, and how he made his thick inks, both red and black. When I returned with the priest to his house we renewed our talk about manuscripts, and I mentioned the names of several works that I wanted to acquire, e.g., the Book of Governors by Thomas of Marga, 'Anan- Isho's recension of the " Paradise" of Palladius, the " Cream of Wisdom" by Bar Hebraeus, and the " Hudhra " or service-book for the whole year. None of these works was in the British Museum. He told me that friends of his possessed manuscripts of all these works, but that it would be impossible to buy them. With the bishop's help, however, he thought good copies of them might be obtained. He said that if I was prepared to commission a scribe to make copies he would superintend the work, and would for a small payment collate the copies with the old manuscripts. Now, I had no authority to buy modern copies of Syriac or Arabic manuscripts for the British Museum, for the Keeper of Oriental Manuscripts was of opinion that if the owners of ancient manuscripts found purchasers for modern copies they would never offer the originals for sale. But my experience was the exact opposite of this, for I found that many natives were quite satisfied to possess clear and easily legible copies of their ancient manuscripts and to sell the originals at good prices. My instructions, however, were quite definite and I could not go beyond them. As I had no means of communicating quickly with London, and was obliged 74 The Dominican Fathers at Mosul. under the circumstances to come to a decision, I asked my host to have made at my private expense copies of the Book of Governors by Thomas of Marga and the History of Alexander the Great, of which works I was then engaged in preparing editions with English transla tions. This request gave great satisfaction in the village, and the copying began almost at once. A few days later two of the Dominican Fathers called upon me and very kindly invited me to visit their great establishment and see the printing press which they had set up in connection with their work ; I did so, and under their guidance spent a very pleasant and instructive afternoon. They showed me their com posing room and the presses on which the sheets of their works were printed, and I saw some of the Fathers engaged in teaching young natives how to set up type and how to read and correct proofs, and some of them were inking the formes and working the great press. The Fathers made the drawings of the letters and cut the matrices and cast the types themselves, and winter and summer they toiled at this laborious work many hours each day. They collated and folded and sewed the sheets and trimmed them ready for binding, and they taped and bound their books with considerable skill all with their own hands. Among the works which have issued from their press are two of the greatest philological value, namely, the " Vocabulaire Chaldeen-Arabe " by the Abbe J. E. Manna (Mossoul, 1900,) and the " Dic- tionnaire de la langue Chaldeenene" by Monseigneur Thomas Audo, Chaldean Archbishop of Urmiyah (2 vols., Mossoul, 1897). They appear to be little known in Europe. About the middle of February we had a few very fine days, and I took the opportunity of visiting several ancient sites in the neighbourhood of Mosul. I had received an invitation to visit the Shekh of Baibukh, or Bebukh, who told me that he had a large stone altar in his village which had been left there by the French when they excavated the Palace of Sargon, King of Assyria, in 1846-48. Nimriid and I rode out there one An Altar of Sargon II, King of Assyria. 75 afternoon, and we found the altar standing close by the threshing-floor of the village. It was of the same size and shape as the stone altar which stands in front of the great stele of Ashur-nasir-pal in the British Museum, and round the top edge was an inscription in cuneiform stating that it had been dedicated to the god Ashur by Sargon, King of Assyria (B.C. 721-705). The hospitable shekh insisted that we should stay the night in his house, and we did so. He showed me great civility, and I passed a very pleasant evening in listening to the stories which he told us about the excavation of Dur Sargina (Khorsabad), which was carried out by the French when he was a young man. His father had been employed by Botta, the French Consul at Mosul, and he described how the great bas-reliefs which are now in the Louvre were dragged to the Tigris, and the difficulties that were met with in getting them on to the rafts for transport to Basrah. He remembered Rawlinson's visit to Khorsabad, and how he sawed in four pieces each of the colossal winged and human-headed bulls which now stand in the Assyrian Transept in the British Museum (Nos. 810, 840), and had them dragged on sledges to the river. The shekh insisted on my sleeping in his quarter of the house, and I unrolled my bed and laid it out by the side of the wall opposite the cushions on which he slept. Just before turning in one of his men led in his favourite mare Najimah, and she walked across the room to the space between our beds and then stood still and turned her head to the shekh who caressed her. This went on for some time, and when at length I asked where she slept, the shekh replied, " Here, with me," and he went on petting her and talking to her. Then it suddenly came into his mind that as my bed was not more than a couple of feet from her I might not like the prospect of going to sleep so close to her hoofs, and he said, " Fear not, she will stand like the mountain." And she did, and as far as I know stood still the whole night. The next morning the shekh took me over to Khorsabad, and I spent a long morning in going over 76 Visit to Khorsabad. the site of Botta's excavations. On one side of one of the gates of Sargon's city which faced the east there still stood in situ one of the colossal figures, half-animal and half-human which the Assyrian kings set up on each side of their gates to protect their towns and palaces. It was smaller than the examples of such colossi in the Louvre and British Museum, but the animal character istics were well defined and unusual, and I talked with the shekh about the possibility of getting saws from the quarries and cutting it in four pieces to remove to London, provided I could make a satisfactory arrange ment with Hamdi Bey. Its man's face was of a wholly different character from the faces on the other colossi, for it was a strong face with high cheek-bones, and a strong, heavy chin, and it may well have been a portrait of Sargon II. Though out of place somewhat its subsequent fate may be given here. I opened negotia tions with Hamdi Bey and he was quite willing to surrender the colossal figure for a consideration which was very reasonable. On my return to London I made all arrangements for obtaining the necessary saws and timber for its removal, and labour, and the Shekh of Baibukh was ready to give me every assistance. Early in the year 1890 I received the very sad news that the colossal figure had been smashed to pieces by a peasant and his son who lived in a small village called Fadhaliyah, to the east of Khorsabad. It seemed that the elder man (one Muhammad ibn Kaftan) had had a dream one night in which the Prophet had appeared to him and told him to get up from his bed at once, and to go and smash the idol of the unbelievers and take out the gold which was in its belly. The man got up, called his son, and taking their axes they went and smashed the figure, but they were bitterly disappointed at not finding any gold. I wrote to Hamdi Bey and told him about it, and sent on to him the names of the destroyers and the name of their village, and though he caused the Pasha of Mosul to be called upon for an explanation none was forthcoming. Meanwhile the pieces of the figure were carried off by the peasants to burn into lime, and they Boundary Stele of Sennacherib. 77 rejoiced to have such excellent limestone to burn. On our way back to Baibukh I began to persuade the shekh to let me take the altar of Sargon to Mosul to prevent it from being smashed and burnt into lime, but he did not seem willing to do so. A little later in the day he agreed to hand it over to me provided that I would pay men to drag it to Mosul. This I undertook to do, and a rough sledge was soon made and the altar tied on it, and the gang of powerful men employed by the shekh worked with such vigour that before night the altar was in Mosul. I handed it over to the Delegate in order to keep it out of the hands of the local authorities, who promptly tried to take possession of it, and I intended to make an arrangement for its acquisition from Hamdi Bey later on. The day after my return from Baibukh a native who farmed a little land between Kuyunjik and Nabi Yunis came and told me that at a certain spot in one of his fields there was a large flat stone with figures and writing upon it, and he asked me to buy it from him. Taking a few men with digging tools and baskets Nimrud and I went with him, and in a short time we uncovered a stele about 40 inches high and nearly 20 inches wide. Having washed the face of it we saw that several figures of gods and divine emblems were sculptured on the upper part of it, and below these were several lines of cuneiform text, which stated that the stele had been set up by Sennacherib (B.C. 705-681). As some of the sculptured figures and emblems resembled those which are seen on Babylonian boundary stones, I concluded that the stele was one of several which marked the boundary of the grounds of the palace which Sennacherib built on the spot now called Nabi Yunis.1 We got the stone up out of the hole in the ground and were dragging it away on a sledge, when suddenly a number of men and some of the officials connected with the mosque on the mound of Nabi Yunis came running towards us, 1 There is a somewhat similar stele on the wall at the northern end of the Nineveh Gallery in the British Museum. (See the Guide* p. 38, No. 44.) 78 Visit to Tall Balawat. and when they saw the stele they claimed it, saying that it had been found on land belonging to the mosque. I refused to give up the stele, but whilst we were arguing the matter several soldiers appeared and said they were ordered to take it to the Pasha's office. They took charge of it at once and had it taken to the Sarayah, and I went with them to make sure that the stele did not find its way to Nabi Yunis. The farmer told me that he had found several such stones and that they had all been broken up and burnt into lime. The series of visits which I was paying to sites in and about Nineveh was interrupted for more than a week by heavy snowstorms, and it was impossible to travel. The cold was intense, and the town was the most miserable place imaginable. The narrow streets were almost impassable, for they had turned into little canals, and the mixture of half-melted snow and mud in them was frequently more than a foot deep. In many of the houses that I went into, the courtyards were covered with the water which ran in from the streets. Wood was scarce and very dear, and we could only indulge in the luxury of a fire in the evenings. The snowstorms were followed by very fine weather, and I determined to visit Tall Balawat before the melting of the snow on Jabal Maklub made the region round about impassable. Tall Balawat is about fifteen miles from Mosul, on the east bank of the Tigris, and owes its celebrity to the fact that the bronze plates made for the famous Gates of Shalmaneser II were said to have been found there. In the year 1876 natives from the district of Nimriid brought some portions of these plates to the French Consul at Mosul, who promptly sent specimens of them to Paris and London for examination by experts. The portions sent to Paris were acquired by the well-known collector Schlumberger. In 1877 Mr. H. Rassam was despatched to Mosul to reopen the excavations at Kuyunjik, and whilst there he acquired the remainder, as it was then believed, of the bronze plates from the Gates of Shalmaneser, and a series of important frag ments from smaller gates which had been set up by Bronze Gates of Ashur-nasir-pal and Shalmaneser II. 79 • his father Ashur-nasir-pal (B.C. 685-660) in his palace. Besides these bronze plates Mr. H. Rassam brought home a stone altar and a stone coffer containing two large stone tablets1 which recorded the building of the town of Imgur-Bel, and the founding of the temple of Makhir; these were also said to have been found at Tall Balawat. When the bronze plates had been cleaned and examined they were found to be incomplete, and before I left London I was instructed to make careful enquiry among the antiquity dealers of Mosul and Baghdad for the missing pieces. The man who brought the bronze plates to the French Consul was well known, but he had no others in his possession, and I could find nothing of the kind in Mosul. Believing that the plates were found at Tall Balawat it seemed to me that some of the natives there might still have pieces of them in their possession, and I went there to see if this was the case, and if it would be worth while continuing excavations in the mound. Nimrud and I arrived at Tall Balawat about i p.m., and the shekh showed us great civility. After we had eaten he set out with us to show us the mound, and I went all over it and examined it carefully, and in order to be quite certain that he understood my questions and I his answers I got Nimrud to act as interpreter. The mound was small, in fact too small, in my opinion, to have contained the ruins of Imgur-Bel and of the temple of Makhir. There were traces of surface diggings in a few places, but I felt convinced from what I saw that no extensive excavations could ever have been made there because of the shallowness of the mound. The shekh's answers to my questions were vague as a rule, but he said that nothing of the kind which we described, i.e., the stone coffer and the bronze plates had ever been found there. And in this matter I be lieve he spoke the truth, and I came to the conclusion that the above-mentioned antiquities had been found 1 I published the text of these with a translation in Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., vol. vii, p. 59 ff. 8o Mosul Flooded. elsewhere. From every point of view it seemed unlikely that Shalmaneser would have set up such a wonderful monument as the " Gates " in an out-of-the-way place like Tall Balawat, for the natural place for this un rivalled example of bronze work was his palace or some great temple. We know now that the " little gates " were made by Ashur-nasir-pal, the father of the Shalmaneser who set up the " great gates," and that they had a place in his palace, which as already said would be the natural place for such a work. But the " little gates " were brought home by Mr. H. Rassam, who said they were found with the " great gates," and if this be so both sets of gates were unearthed in the ruins of a palace, in fact in the ruins of Ashur-nasir- pal's palace. If the two sets of gates were found at Tall Balawat there must have been a palace at this place,1 but this is impossible, for there is no room in the mound for a temple still less for a temple and a palace, however small. An explanation of the difficulty is hard to find, but it seems very probable that the natives deceived Mr. H. Rassam and did not tell him where they found the plates which were sent to Paris. Mr. H. Rassam may have obtained from Tall Balawat the plates and the coffer, etc., which he sent home, but if he did the natives must have taken them there.2 Personally I believe that both sets of " gates " and the coffer, etc., were found in some part of the ill-defined district now called Nimrud. The spell of fine dry weather which we enjoyed was short, and it became warm and rainy. In a very few days we saw the effects of this change on the river, which began to rise rapidly. In a couple of days all the land by the Tigris was flooded, and the market-gardeners began to cry out that they would be ruined. For another two days it seemed as though the flood were subsiding, and then suddenly one afternoon the waters 1 See the Preface in L. W. King, Bronze Reliefs from the Gates of Shalmaneser, London, 1915. 2 Mr. H. Rassam's own account of the finding of the Gates is given in Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., vol. vii., p. 44 ff. The Mound of Kuyunjik becomes an Island. 81 appeared to leap out of their bed and they spread over the country on both sides of the river for miles. The bridge of boats was " cut " and Mosul and Kuyunjik and Nabi Yunis were separated by a mighty river with a current that ran at the rate of five miles an hour. The Khusur, which ran by the south-west end of Kuyunjik and had seemed to me a very insignificant stream, became a fine river and rolled grandly into the Tigris. On the third day of the flood the mound of Kuyunjik became an island, and our workmen could only get there by boat. The ferrymen did a roaring trade and charged very high prices to take men from Mosul to the other side. But this was not to be wondered at, for the current carried their boats a long way down the river, and it was very difficult to find any landing-place. Sometimes the clumsy boats were drawn into backwaters, where they grounded, and men and women and sheep had to get out into the water and wade to land. As the hire of the boats would have swallowed up all the wages which we gave our workmen, I agreed to pay for their transport to and from the mound as long as the flood lasted. The " cutting " of the bridge of boats dislocated the business of Mosul very considerably, but it removed from that rickety structure a holy man who was a great nuisance to passengers. This " saint " was believed to be a native of Diar Bakr and was supposed to possess supernatural powers. He neither walked nor rode to Mosul, but progressed there by a means much in vogue among the self-torturing fanatics of his class. On setting out from Diar Bakr he stood upright and shouted " Hu," i.e., " He," that is to say, Allah. He then laid himself down at full length on the ground in the direction in which he wished to go, and then got up and stood upright on the spot which his head had touched. He then shouted " Hu " again, and laid himself down on the ground in the same direction, and again stood upright on the spot which his head had touched. Each time he stood up he was about six feet nearer the place where he wanted to go, and in this way he journeyed all the way to Mosul. Whether the road was dry or wet, 8 82 A Holy Man of Mosul. dusty or muddy, it made no difference to him, and those who said they knew all about him assured me that when he came to a stream or a river he lay down in it just as if he were on land, and that his peculiar holiness enabled him to float and not get drowned. He was accompanied by several " disciples" who went about each village they came to and told the story of his miraculous powers and, of course, collected a good deal of money, food, etc. They claimed that he could cure every ailment that flesh is heir to by casting out from the sufferers the spirits of evil that caused the sick nesses, and under the influence of persuasion accom panied by gifts they admitted, but reluctantly, that the stories current about him to the effect that he had raised the dead, were quite true. He used to come to the bridge early in the morning and squat on the edge of the wooden roadway on the upstream side and stay there till sunset. He was a tall man with a well-shaped shaven head, small deep-set eyes, a hooked nose, large mobile mouth and a dirty ragged beard; he was naked to the waist, and sat among a heap of filthy verminous rags. The mob gazed at him in wonder and were afraid of him, and gave him gifts of food, and the Mijlis, or Town Council, made no attempt to disturb him. Though he was the direct cause of many of the accidents which took place on the bridge, the police pushed and jostled and beat anybody and everybody except him. At intervals during the day he shouted " Hu " in a mighty voice, which could be heard in the bazar at Mosul. His favourite trick was to wait until he saw a lot of sheep crossing the bridge in one direction, and men on horse back or laden camels going in the other, and whilst they were trying to pass each other he would shout " Hu " so violently that horses would bolt, and sheep rush into the river. Even stolid camels have been known to turn round and block the road, thereby in creasing the confusion ten-fold. I heard that the faith of the mob in him was greatly shaken when the flood did so much damage, for they expected him to protect them from it. Whether the holy man and his disciples feared their Illness of the Delegate from Stambul. 83 wrath is not clear, but it was said that he left the town to go to Samarra, where there was another bridge of boats. When the flood was at its height we had been digging at Kuyunjik for six weeks, and as the waters on and about the mound interfered with our work I felt that it was time to consider our position carefully. We had dug through many chambers in the south-west palace and had found over three hundred tablets and fragments, among them being several letters ; some days we found nothing and on others we found five or six fragments of tablets. It was quite clear to me that all the heaps of debris in the south-west and north palaces ought to be searched carefully with the help of a limited number of men, but it was equally clear that this work could not be properly done in less than two years. I had no authority to remain at Kuyunjik for an indefinite period, and I decided, supposing the Delegate agreed, to let the searching of the mound go on under Nimrud Rassam's direction, and to return to England and submit a detailed report on the work still to be done on the mound to the Trustees of the British Museum. When I suggested this plan to the Delegate he approved highly of it. I had assumed that he would stay in Mosul in order to watch Nimrud, but he refused absolutely to do this. He said that he was ill, and that if he stayed there he would die, and he complained greatly of his treatment by the local authorities. His health, he said, had been permanently injured by his journey from Stambul to Mosul in mid-winter, and as he had incurred such suffering solely on behalf of the British Museum he thought the British Government ought to provide for him either by giving him employment or a pension. He agreed to the continuance of the excavations by Nimrud Rassam, and said he would go to Baghdad with me and arrange with the authorities there for the export of any antiquities I might wish to send to England. He urged me to get a kalak or raft built without delay to take us all to Baghdad, and he took the greatest interest in its preparation. In many ways the Delegate was to be pitied. He had never travelled in Asia Minor in the winter before, 84 The Sam Wind. and was physically unfitted for rough travel of any kind. He had not been well received at Mosul, for the Pasha and the Town Council did not understand his official status and thought that he had been sent from Stambul to spy upon them; that he was sent to watch our excavations they did not for one moment believe. The Town Council, many members of which were Arabs and descendants of the Arabs who governed the town in the eighteenth century, naturally hated the Turkish Governor and his officials, and they harassed him in many ways, knowing full well that the Pasha would tacitly approve of their attempts to drive him out of the town. Besides this, it must be confessed that just then Mosul was not a pleasant place to live in. It was the season of boisterous winds which filled the air with the dust from the roofs and waste places in the north of the town and the acrid smoke of scores of limekilns, and with this was mixed lime-dust which was driven over the town from the crushing mills where plaster for building purposes was made. The smells in the town were numerous and powerful at the best of times, but with the coming of the warm weather the reek from the tanneries down by the bridge became more penetrating, and when to this the fumes from the hot sulphur springs to the north of the town were added, the result is easier imagined than described. To add to our discomfort, the hot wind, which the natives c&HSdm,1 blew into the town from the western 1 This is the " Samiel" about which Thevenot (Suite du Voyage, ii, p. 102) has so much to say. It is undoubtedly the " poison " wind, as he says. According to him, " Quand une personne a respire ce vent, elle tombe tout d'un coup morte sur la place, quoy qu'il y en ait quelquefois, qui ont le temps de dire qu'ils brulent en dedans. D'abord qu'un homme est tombe mort de ce vent, il devient tout noir comme de 1'encre, et si on le prend par le bras ou par la jambe, ou en tout autre endroit, sa chaire quitte les os, et reste entre les mains de celuy qui le veut lever." He goes on to say that there is actual fire in the wind, and that " it consists of burning fumes of sulphur, and that the person on whom rays of this fire fall dies, whilst all the other members of the caravan may escape." Whether this be so or not I cannot say, but the desert Arabs go in deadly fear of the Sam, and my camel guide told me that men who die through this wind look as if they had been lightly roasted at a fire. Departure from Mosul. 85 desert for two days and covered everything with a thin layer of sand and dust. We therefore hurried on the build ing of the raft by which we intended to go to Baghdad, and before the end of the month of February it was finished. 'During the last few days of our stay in Mosul we were visited by many people of the town, both clergy and laity, who came specially to say their adieux to White, of whom they had seen very little. As soon as his leg grew strong he called on the General commanding the Mosul garrison, and they became great friends. The General introduced him to the officers, who made him an honorary member of their mess, and White spent much time with them and became a general favourite. They arranged small shooting parties, and he went off with them into the Kurdish hills for days at a time, but he was unused to the hard life and the poor and scanty food which they found in the villages in the hill country, and each of his trips was followed by a period of exhaustion and depression. Everyone with a grievance who could get speech with him gave him a written petition and implored him to ask his father to use his influence and interest with the Porte to get his wrong righted, and White took all such documents and promised the petitioners to do his best for them. Some of the more importunate of these men pressed him to take them with him to Constantinople, and when the time came to load up our raft I found that he had promised to give several persons a passage to Baghdad on it by way of helping them on their way to Europe ! Several of the merchants asked me if it would not be possible for him to be made British Consul in Mosul, but when I mentioned the suggestion to him he said that nothing would ever induce him to return to the town, and he wanted to get away from it as soon as possible. I therefore arranged with Nimrud Rassam to superintend the excavations, and gathered together the tablets we had found at Kuyunjik and the Syriac and Arabic manuscripts which had begun to come in from various places, and on one of the last days of February we embarked on our raft for Baghdad. 86 MOSUL TO BAGHDAD BY RAFT. MERCHANTS who have baggage to transport, and travellers who dislike travelling by land, frequently make use of the kalak,1 ^_^, or raft, when making a journey from Diar Bakr or Jazirat ibn 'Omar to Mosul or Baghdad. The kalak is made of poles and planks of wood and inflated goat-skins, and is practically unsinkable; it varies in size from 10 feet to 50 feet square, and the number of goat-skins used for one raft varies from 50 to 1000. Small parties of natives with little baggage often make a journey on a raft 10 feet square. The merchant's raft that is required to carry goods of various kinds measures 30 feet by 20 feet, and the rafts which carry grain down the Zab and Tigris to Baghdad are often 40 feet square and more. The frame of the raft is made of poles, the ends of which are lashed together with ropes or bark, and this is strengthened by cross-poles fastened to the frame with strong cords. Underneath the frame and the cross-poles series of goat skins2 are tied, the number of skins varying with the size of the raft. A moderate-sized raft requires about 200 skins and an exceptionally large one 700 to 1,000, according to the nature of the load. The rafts man inflates the skins by blowing into them with a reed tube, and when full of air each skin is tied round the neck with a stout cord ; and during the inflation water is poured over it frequently to prevent leakage through drying of the skin. When the raft reaches its destina tion it is pulled to pieces and the poles and planks are sold, but the skins are deflated, dried, and carefully tied up in bundles to be carried on the backs of donkeys 1 In Mosul often pronounced tcheletch. " These skins are removed from the bodies of the animals with special care, and the natural openings in the skin have strong leather patches sewn over them. Raft of Goat Skins Described. 87 to the place whence they came for use again. The raft can only move down-stream, and its course is guided by the kalakji, or raftsman, with long wooden sweeps; it is moored to a stake which he usually carries on the raft, or to a large stone by a rope made of fibre. When passengers are to be carried the raft is covered over with planks, and on these carpets and beds are spread, generally under the shelter of the bales of goods to keep off the wind. In winter passenger rafts carry on them a sort of wooden shanty in which passengers cook their meals and sleep, and when a carpet is hung over the opening this little building affords shelter not to be despised. When the river is in flood the journey to Baghdad, not including stoppages, occupies three or four days; when the river is low anything from eight to twelve days. The raft which I had made under the kalakji's direction measured 30 feet by 20 feet, and the skins were about 350 in number. We had to use plenty of skins, for the raft had to carry the altar of Sargon II, the boundary-stele of Sennacherib, and a lot of in scribed bricks and pieces of sculpture from Kuyunjik which the Delegate insisted on taking back with him to Stambul in order to impress the authorities with his zeal and diligence. Besides these things we had to carry a number of packages of all sorts and kinds for people in Mosul who had been helpful to White and myself, and who took the opportunity of sending their things to Baghdad by what they called " safe hands." We also agreed to give " privileged passages" to three specially recommended young natives who were going to study in the schools of the Dominican Fathers in Baghdad, and the kalakji said he must take his nephew with him to help him to guide the raft. The Wall took a personal interest in our journey, and insisted on sending a soldier with us to protect the raft and ourselves. The Delegate declared that he was only sent to watch him, and I believe he was right. As the Delegate's arrange ments for feeding himself were of the vaguest character, I got a large bagful of bread-cakes baked, and chickens and mutton roasted, and several kindly natives brought 88 Hdmmam 'Alt. gifts of food, eggs, preserved dates and the like, which they had specially prepared for our journey. Among such gifts were several loaves of white bread, which Mrs. Ainslie, the wife of the American Missionary, had herself baked. There are, of course, evil, cruel and crafty people in Mosul, as there are in most towns containing nearly 100,000 inhabitants, but White and I discovered many who were good and kind and sincere. We embarked on our raft in the afternoon of February 26th, and as soon as we pushed out into the river we began to move quickly. The raftsman having tied a little bag of dust from the tomb of Rabban Hormizd about his neck, felt happy and began to sing, and his helper threw down his cloak on the planks and began to pray, while the soldier began to bewail his departure from Mosul and from a lady whose personal charms he praised extravagantly. We arrived at Hammam 'Ali1 a little before sunset, and there was sufficient light to enable us to walk over the mounds and find the traces of the excavations made by Layard2 and by one of the French Consuls at Mosul. Neither excavator discovered any Assyrian antiquities there, and the pieces of pottery suggested to me that the mounds covered the ruins of some early Arab town. Whether the great 'Ali is alluded to in the name " Bath of 'Ali" is uncertain, but I was assured that he had bathed there. The village is famous all over that part of the country for its hot sulphur springs, and the curious bath-houses built over them are generally crowded with men and women suffering from all manner of ailments. Patients of both sexes used the same bath, and there being little or no accom modation for their clothing many would walk or hobble there naked and unashamed. There is no doubt that the waters of the spring do cure skin diseases, rheumatism and sciatica, but the terribly insanitary state of the village, which so horrified George Smith, induces in those who stay there long gastric diseases to which many 1 The " Alyhama " of Thevenot, to which many lepers resorted. e Nineveh and Babylon, p. 465. Salamiyah and the Nimrud Rapids. 89 succumb. In the course of the evening we found the stench unbearable, and we were obliged to move our raft some distance down-stream. The night was very cold and in the morning we found that our beds and rugs were drenched with dew. Being anxious to avoid visits from the people of Hammam 'All we pushed out into the stream at dawn, February 27th, and in a short time we found ourselves opposite to the village of Salamiyah (east bank). Yakut (iii, p. 113) speaks of the beauty of the village and says that it was one of the largest of the province of Mosul, and that it was situated quite close to the ruined city of Athur.1 The Arab town must have been built on the ruins of an ancient Assyrian town, for a fragment of a fine cylinder, and a part of a sculptured slab, and bricks inscribed in cuneiform were found here.2 When Layard was carrying on his excavations at Nimrud he lived in the modern village, but I have found no evidence in his books that he ever attempted to examine archseologically the walls of the ancient town. We made no attempt to land at Salamiyah and so floated down to the Nimrud rapid. At the lower end of it are the remains of what appears to be an ancient stone dam which is called " Away," i.e., the " roarer," or " Sakhar al-Away."3 When the river is low these remains project nearly a couple of feet above the water, and they are said to consist of huge slabs of limestone held in position by metal clamps. Rich speaks of the " roaring " caused by the water rushing over it like a rapid, " boiling with great impetuosity."4 Layard thought that these stones were the remains of the foundations of a wall and towers which had been gradually concealed by the deposits of the Tigris, and that the wall had once stood on the western bank.6 1 This town is mentioned by Ibn al-Athir in his account of the campaign of alih ibn Mahmud; see vol. viii, p. 163. 6 Felix Jones, Topography of Nineveh, p. 455. 5 Rich calls this dam " Zikr ul-Aawaze " (Sakhar al-'Awaz ?). * Narrative, ii, p. 129. 6 Nineveh and Babylon, p. 466. go Nimrud Dam. Be this as it may, the ridge of stones caused our raftsman some anxiety, for the raft became much shaken, and the creaking of the poles and straining of their lashings showed that it was being subjected to great pressure unevenly applied. A few minutes later we heard the skins scraping on the stones of the barrier, and we moved to the back of the raft with the view of lessening the weight on them. Meanwhile the raftsman and his helper thrust mightily with their sweeps and the raft turned broadside on and dropped over the barrier into the swirl of waters just below it. Both Thevenot1 and Tavernier say strange things about the " Nimrud Dam." The former connects the remains of a castle (which he calls " Top-Calai," and says he saw on the right (sic) bank) with the bridge, which was built by Nimrod so that he might cross over by it to the other side where his mistress lived. Tavernier says that the dam stretches right across the river from one bank to the other, and that it is 200 feet " de large," and causes the river in flowing over it to make " une cascade d'environ vingt brasses." Some Arabs told him that it was built by Alexander the Great, who wished to alter the course of the river, and others thought that Darius had built it to stop the Macedonians from descending the river. When Tavernier reached the dam he and his companions left their raft and had all their goods removed from it. He admired the way in which the raftsmen worked the raft over the dam, and watched it with astonishment as it righted itself on the waters after a fall of 26 feet \z There must be some mistake in the figures, or exaggeration, or misprint, for the dam at Nimrud can never have been 26 feet high. Niebuhr visited it and examined it and thought that it was not the work of the Arabs, and that it had been built to 1 Voyage, ii, p. 108. * " Car on ne peut voir sans etonnement la chute de ce Kilet [i.e., Kalak], qui tombe tout d'un coup de la hauteur de pres de six- vingt pieds, et qui passant parmi les ondes qui boiiillonnent entre les rochers est soutenu des oudres, et demeure toujours sur I'eau." Six Voyages, Paris, 1676, vol. i, p. 204 (4th Voyage to Asia). The Ruins of Nimrud. 91 hold up water for irrigation purposes. In his opinion it was not dangerous for rafts that were worked by skilled raftsmen.1 As soon as the raft righted itself we saw that one corner of it and a part of one side were very low in the water, and it was clear that we had burst several skins on the barrier; we drifted slowly on to a place close to the modern village of Nimrud and tied up there. We all helped in moving the bricks, etc., from the raft so that the skins might be examined, and whilst the raftsmen were engaged in this task I got a couple of the villagers to take me to the ruins of Nimrud. Formerly the river flowed near its western wall, but now it is two miles or so from it. The mounds of Nimrud contain the remains of (alu) KALKHU ^IT Mfflf -U>, the KELAKH H73 of Genesis x, n, where the city is said to have been founded by Nimrod. The evidence derived from the cuneiform inscriptions shows that it was founded by Shalmaneser I about B.C. 1300, and refounded by Ashur-nasir-pal (B.C. 885- 860), who made it his capital and lived there. Seen in the light of early morning the ruins were a disappoint ment to me, for they seemed to consist of series of low, irregularly-shaped flat mounds, with a prominent pyra midal mound at the north-west corner of the platform on which the palaces were built. The sides of all the mounds were furr6wed by rain torrents in all directions, but at many places they also bore signs of the work of archaeological excavators. The area of the platform was in 1852 said to be about one hundred acres ;2 its length is about 2,500 feet, and its width 1,000 feet.3 It lies north and south, and its shorter sides are the north and south sides. The line of the walls was still visible in many places, but their ruins suggested that they were neither so massive nor so high as those of Nineveh ; 1 Reisebeschreibung, ii, p. 355. " Felix Jones, Topography, p. 451. s Smith's measurements were: North to South, 600 yards; West to East, 400 yards. (Assyrian Discoveries, p. 70.) o,2 The Ziggurat of Nimrud. the strongest section of the wall seemed to have been on the north side. Some of the deeper cuttings in the west side of the platform may once have contained stairways. Layard proved by his excavations that the artificial mound was occupied by four palaces or royal buildings of some kind, and the sites of these were distinctly visible. They were enclosed by a wall quite separated from the city wall. At the north-west corner of the walled enclosure are the remains of a great ziggu- rat1 or temple-tower, which stood upon a rectangular base of burnt bricks faced with slabs of stone, though the upper part of it was made of sun-dried bricks. Rich estimated its height at 144^ feet from the ground,' and Felix Jones at 133 feet above the low autumnal level of the Tigris, and about 60 feet above the platform of the palaces.8 Recent measurements make its height above the plain to be no feet, and above the platform about 70 feet. When Smith was digging into this ziggurat he concluded from certain remains which he found on the southern face, that there had once existed a flight of steps on that side leading up to the tower.* On the south and east sides of the platform of Nimrud there were several mounds which did not seem to me to have been excavated, and in the largest of these (that on the south side) one of the natives showed me the tops of some slabs which resembled in general form and thickness the bas-reliefs of Ashur-nasir-pal in the British Museum. It is much to be hoped that one day all these mounds will be excavated and the d6bris in the ruined palaces carefully searched through for frag ments. Many European travellers had seen the place and wondered what these mounds might cover, but the first to call the attention of the learned world to their 1 For Koldewey's description of the ziggurat see his Die Tempel •van Babylon und Borsippa, Berlin, 191 r, p. 64. " Narrative, ii, p. 132. 1 Topography, p. 452. 4 Assyrian Discoveries, p. 75. J 93 Plan of the ruins of NIMRUD (CALAH) by Felix Jones Scale of Yards 94 Badger's Report on Nimrdd. importance was Rich, who published a drawing of them1 and copies of the cuneiform inscriptions which he found on fragments of Assyrian bricks lying there. Moreover, Rich was convinced that the city buried under the mounds was Larissa, and that the tower at the north west corner of the platform was the pyramidal building which Xenophon8 had seen and described. Layard went over the mounds carefully in 1840, and he resolved that whenever it was in his power he would " thoroughly examine " the ruins of Nimrud. When Botta became French Consul in Mosul, Layard wrote to him and called his attention to the mound of Nimrud, but he declined to consider that site because of its distance from Mosul (20 miles), and its inconvenient position. Layard also wrote to friends in England, but he could get no one to take an interest in Nimrud or find money to excavate it, and for two years nothing was done. Meanwhile Botta was making excavations at Kuyunjik and dis covered Khorsabad, but his results only confirmed Layard's belief that neither place was the site of Nineveh. He was certain that the ruins of Nineveh lay under the mounds of Nimrud, and he used every endeavour to get excavations started there. At the moment when this seemed hopeless his pleading received help from an unexpected quarter. The Rev. G. P. Badger visited Nimrud in March, 1844, and surveyed the mounds and measured them, and made careful notes of the " cone " (i.e., the ziggurat), and accepted Rich's identification of Nimrud with the Larissa of Xenophon. A few months later he was in Constantinople, and after describing to Stratford Canning the discoveries which he and his friend Mr. Ditell had made, the Ambassador asked him to draw up in writing the result of their researches. This Mr. Badger did, and on October 26th he sent to him 1 Narrative, ii, p. 130. 1 Anabasis, iii, 4, § 7. He says its wall was 100 feet high and 25 broad, and that it rested on a stone foundation 20 feet high ; its circuit was two parasangs. The pyramid of stone two plethra high and one plethron wide, which, he says, was near the city, was probably the ziggurat. 95 1000 A. Ziggurat B. NorthWestern Palace C. Central Palace or Hall of the Obelisk. D. Temple of Esar-haddon or S.W.PaJace. Ei. South Eastern Edifices and Tombs. Plan of the ruins of NIMRUD by Felix Jones. 96 Stratford Canning and Nimrud. from Malta the report on Nimrud of which he printed a copy in his " Nestorians and their Rituals " (vol. i. p. 87 ff). This report was the clearest and fullest account of Nimrud possible at that time, and there can be little doubt that it induced Stratford Canning to start the excavations at Nimrud. When Layard was in Constantinople in 1845, Stratford Canning proposed to him that he should excavate Nimrud, and offered to defray most of the expenses of the undertaking. Layard accepted his offer with alacrity and set out for Nimrud in October. In a few months he cleared out the four great buildings on the platform at Nimrud, and obtained a brilliant success. When the extent of the excavations increased the Trustees of the British Museum took over the work and carried it to a triumphant conclusion. But had it not been for the liberality and public spirit of Stratford Canning in the first instance it is probable, as Layard suggests, that the " treasures of Nimroud would have been reserved for the enterprise of those who have appreciated the value and importance of the discoveries at Khorsabad."1 In 1854 H. Rassam reopened the excavations at Nimrud and discovered the ruins of the temple of Adar, among which were six statues of the god Nebo.2 These were made by Bel-tarsi-iluma, the Governor of Kalkhu (Nimrud), and dedicated by him to the god so that he might grant a long life to Rammannirari III (812-783 B.C.), and to the Queen Sa-am-mu-ra-mat,3 and to himself. In April, 1873, George Smith made excavations at Nimrud with the object of finding the foundation- cylinders which both he and Rassam expected to discover 1 Nineveh and its Remains, p. n. This work contains a full descrip tion of Layard's excavations at Nimrud from 1845 to 1847 ; the account of his labours there in 1849-51 will be found in his Nineveh and Babylon, London, 1853. e Two of these are in the British Museum (Nimrud, Central Saloon, Nos. 69 and 70). See Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., vol. viii, p. 365. 5 In cuneiform •£- ^y £^j^ »^£ ff]] V". The first sign •jfe- means " woman." See Rawlinson, Cun. Inscr., vol. i, pi. 35, No. 2, 1. 9. This name may be the original of the Greek " Semiramis." To face p. 97, vol. ii. Khidr Elias. A kalak, or raft, ready to start on its journey. The North-West Palace of Nimrud. 97 in the base of the " cone," or ziggurat, but he met with little success. He uncovered several inscriptions and verified passages which Layard had copied badly and dug through many of the old trenches and tunnels made by his predecessors. His three weeks' campaign produced small results.1 In 1878 and 1879 H. Rassam re-opened his old works at Nimrud and discovered the ruins of a temple of Ashur-nasir-pal, at a spot to the " north of the North-West Palace of Nimroud." At the south east corner of the mound he cleared out an " ascending passage with a perfect and well-built brick arch."" Since 1880 excavations at Nimrud have been suspended. Having seen all that there was to see above ground at Nimrud, the natives took me beyond the curious angle made by the outer city wall at the south-east corner, and showed me the subsidiary wall and a group of four unexcavated mounds at the end of it. A little further on we came to some bitumen springs, and saw several black lumps of bitumen on the surface of the water. When I asked if there was anything more to be seen my guides offered to get me a donkey and to take me to the old Syrian monastery of Mar Behnam,5 which 1 See Assyrian Discoveries, pp. 70-85. 1 See his account in Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., vol. vii, p. 57. 8 This monastery is commonly known among Muhammadans in the district as " Khidhr Elyas " u-WH ^, and it has been often referred to and described by travellers. Niebuhr (Reise, ii, p 368) calls it " Chodder Elias," and says it is a Jacobite monastery, though the village is inhabited by Muslims; Layard speaks of the "ancient Chaldean monastery " called " Kuther Elias " (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 169) ; and Fletcher (Notes from Nineveh, ii, p. 28) spells the name " El Khudder." Why the monastery should bear the name of " Khidhr " (i.e., " the evergreen "), that extraordinary personification of Elijah the Prophet, I have not been able to find out. Mar Behnam (= Persian <•* *>, i.e., " good name") is said to have been the son of the Magian high priest of Sapor, the great king, and to have been converted to Christianity by his sister Sara, who had been con verted by her handmaiden. He and his sister escaped from their father's house and took refuge with Mar Mattai on Jabal Maklub, and were baptized by him. Later they fell into the hands of the Magians, who tortured them both to death, about A.D. 341. The monastery has been well described by Fletcher, Notes from Nineveh, 98 The Mtmayyarah Rapid. they assured me was " near " (karib}. But I knew from experience that " near " in the mouth of an Arab in the desert was usually a vague expression, so I said, " If the monastery be near, show it to me." They at once took me to some rising ground near the north-east corner of Nimrud and pointed to a block of buildings afar off, which they declared to be the monastery. But these seemed to me to be quite six or eight miles distant, and knowing that the journey there and back and the examination of the church and the other buildings would occupy a whole day, I reluctantly gave up the idea of going there and returned to the raft. I should have gone on to Mar Behnam when I was at Kara Kush and Kara Teppah1 some ten days before. When I returned to the raft I found that the damage done to it in its passage over the dam had been repaired, and that it once more floated levelly on the water. We started again in the early afternoon and quickly reached another rapid caused by another barrier in the river which the natives call "Away Sakhar Munayyarah," because it is close to the village of Munayyarah on the west bank. The word " Away " means the " roarer," and is added to many names of rapids because of the noise made by their waters. The water here was decidedly tumultuous, but none of the skins touched the obstruction, whatever it was, and all was well. We passed two small islands and then saw on the east bank the group of box-shaped mounds to which the name of ii, p. 78 ; by Badger, who also published a plan of the church, Nestorians, i, p. 94 f.; by Felix Jones, Topography, p. 471; and by Preusser (op. cit., p. 4 ff.), who supplies a careful plan of the church and nineteen plates of reproductions of photographs. The Beth Gubba, which is associated with Mar Behnam, is the Der al-Jubbi mentioned by Yakut (ii, p. 651), who says that it lay between Mosul and Arbil, and that many sick folk flocked there and were healed by the power of the saint. The Abyssinian Church commemorates Behnam (flfttf^; Ba'min) on the 27th of the month Nahasse (August 20). i d.i \ yi, or " Black Hill," better known as Tall Balawat, i.e., "Hill of Troubles." Export of Grain from the Upper Zdb 99 Sanadik (i.e., " boxes ") has been aptly applied by the natives. A few miles lower down we came to Jabal Mishrak on the west bank, and just below it, on the east bank, the mouth of the Great or Upper Zab River, about twenty-eight miles from Mosul. There was much water in the Zab, and its strong stream flowed grandly into the Tigris and forced its way nearly across it to the west bank. The place of its confluence with the Tigris is called " Makhlat," or " Mikhlut," i.e., the " place of mingling," and its bright bluish-green water is in striking contrast with the muddy stream of the Tigris. Three or four miles up the Zab on its south bank are two or three mounds, the larger of which is called Tall Kushaf.1 These mounds mark the site of Nawkird,2 j^y "New Town," an old Sassanian town, on which the Khalifah Marwan II built the city known as " Hadithah of Mosul," to distinguish it from " Hadithah of Nurah" on the Euphrates.3 Beyond the mouth of the Zab we passed through another rapid which disturbed the raft considerably, and then we tied up for the night close to a village inhabited by Jabur Arabs. Here we saw large numbers of mud huts and huge mud vessels filled with grain which had come down on rafts from the country through which the Zab flows. These rafts were huge square structures and the grain was carried on them packed in sacks from four to six layers deep. Sometimes a raft suffered in its journey down the Zab, and parts of the lowermost layer of sacks became submerged and the grain was spoiled. In such cases the raft was unloaded at the village where we tied up, and the sacks of wet grain taken out, 1 This is the spelling of Yakut (iv, p. 275). 8 Yakut, ii, p. 223 ; Istakiiri, pp. 72, 75 ; Ibn Hawkal, pp. 137, 147 ; Mukaddasi, pp. 137, 139, 146. * The platform of the large mound is artificial, and rests upon rock, and on the platform are many layers of unbaked bricks. On the top runs a stone wall, and in Layard's day it had an arched gate way facing the south. These were probably parts of the comparatively modern fort in which a company of soldiers from Baghdad was stationed to prevent raiding by the desert Arabs. 1,2 ioo City of Tukulti-Ninib I. and the broken skins replaced by new. Large quan tities of grain were exported from this village to Baghdad. We left the village about 6.30 the following morning, February 28th, and passed the village of Makuk on the east bank about two hours later. There were several mounds about two miles from the river, but there was no sign that they had been excavated. Three hours later we passed Al-Kayyarah1 (so called because of the bitumen springs which are near it) on the east bank, and then for several miles we floated along without seeing anything of special interest. The country on both banks was very flat, and every here and there were large encampments of Arabs. In the early afternoon we saw several mounds a little to the south of the village of Tulul 'Akir," and knowing that we must be near 1 See the description of these bitumen springs in the Travels of Ibn Batutah, vol. ii, p. 134. When the natives wanted bitumen they set fire to the vapour, as they do to-day, and then cut out the pieces they needed. * The ruins here are, according to Messrs. Andrae and Bachmann, the remains of the ancient Assyrian city of Kar Tukulti Ninib >-^:y ^TT? T ^T £? *-tf< -Hf- HK which was built by Tukulti- Ninib I, King of Assyria, B.C. 1275. They were excavated in the winter of 1913-14. See the letter of December I3th in Mitt. Deutsch. Orient-Gesellschaft, 1913, 1914. The rectangular stone tablet of Tukulti-Ninib I (Brit. Mus., No. 98494), which records the building of this city, was acquired by L. W. King, and brought to England in 1906. The text forms a very important historical document, for it describes how Tukulti-Ninib I defeated Bitiliashu, the Kassite King of Babylon, and led him captive to his city, and paraded him before his god. By this conquest Sumer and Akkad became subject to Assyria. The tablet was probably buried in the foundations of the wall of the city, and was discovered by natives, who sold it to the dealers, from whom King acquired it. Here is another example of the discovery of an ancient site by natives who were digging for bricks to build their houses with. For the complete text and trans lation of the tablet see King, The Inscription of Tukulti-Ninib, London, 1906. Ibn Batutah says (ii, p. 133) that after travelling two days from Takrit he came to a village called Al-'Akar, on the Tigris. Near it was a hill on which a castle formerly stood, and at the foot of it was the " Iron Khan," a well-built edifice with towers. It would seem that the hill he refers to is Tulul 'Akir. The City of Ashur. 101 Kal'at Sharkat,1 or the " Eastern Fortress," I reminded the raftsman that we must stop there. This he strongly objected to do, and urged as his excuse the existence of several rapids which ought to be passed before sunset. And pointing to the strong swift current running in the river he said that only Allah could bring the raft to land safely, and by way of settling the matter he asked if I thought he was Allah ? The argument I used con vinced him that he could land us near the ruins on the west bank, and he did so, near the Wadi ash- Shababik, or " Valley of Windows," a little to the north of the ancient mound. We went up to the highest point and so obtained a good general view of the ruins, which seemed to consist of a series of mounds of debris, apparently of many periods. The general arrangement of the old Assyrian city was substantially that of Nineveh and Kalkhu (Nimrud), for all the royal buildings, in cluding the palace and the chief temple, stood in one quarter of the area. The remains of the great ziggurat are at the north end of the city and were then about 140 feet high, and the circuit of the area of the city, which contained about two hundred and twenty-five acres, seemed to be about two and a half miles. On the river side the mound was very steep. Each of the large mounds probably covered some great building or temple. The Turkish guardhouse, which was dignified by the name of " Castle " (Kal'ah), was a tumble-down building, but the occupants showed me much civility and invited me to drink coffee with them. They seemed genuinely glad to see strangers, and wished us to spend the night under their roof. They were stationed at Kal'at Sharkat 1 This is the transcription of the Arabic CL>U£*. iili, as Rawlinson wrote the name. In Baghdad a scribe wrote the name for me thus, Ui^h ijJj, Kal'at Sharkat, and I have seen the name spelt " Kal'at Sharghat," ^vtji £jj. The Turks call the place Tuprak Kal'at, && j^jt. which means " Earth Castle." Which Arabic form is the more correct cannot be said until the meaning of the name is known. Sharkat, or Sharghat, probably hides an ancient Assyrian name for the city or district. IO2 The City of Ashur. to prevent the desert Arabs from raiding passing rafts, but they admitted that they were too few in number to check raiding effectively. Two or three of them came down to the raft and received with satisfaction a gift of bread-cakes and a small 3-lb. loaf of white sugar. We dropped down the river for two or three miles and then tied up for the night under a high bank on the right side of the river. The extent and importance of the ruins of Kal'at Sharkat were first pointed out in modern times by Rich,1 who published an outline drawing of them ; he was unable to go over them, for " owing to the violence of the current and the eddies " his raftsmen absolutely refused to make the attempt to land. With his glass he saw lines of stone-masonry in the heaps of rubbish, and on their surface fragments of buildings, and large square bricks. One piece of stone seen by him was " carved like the fragment of a statue." Curiously enough he greatly underestimated the height of the ruins, for he states that they are 20 feet high. In his day they were regarded as the mark of the southern boundary of the province of Mosul on the west bank of the Tigris. They lie about 40 miles from the mouth of the Great Zab, 50 miles from Nimrud, and 75 miles from Mosul. When Layard visited them in 1840 the natives told him of a tradition that " strange figures carved in black stone still existed amongst the ruins,"2 but he could not find any. Later he saw there the head less statue of Shalmaneser II and caused it to be sent to England ; it is in the British Museum (Nimrud Central Saloon, No. 849). Between 1849 and 1851 he renewed the excavations at Kal'at Sharkat " which had been very imperfectly examined," and found fragments of a winged bull, part of a black stone statue, pieces of a large inscribed slab of copper, the fragments of a large inscribed cylinder in baked clay, a copper cup, some vases and beads, but he doubted if " an edifice containing any number of sculptures or inscriptions ever existed on 1 Narrative, vol. ii, p. 137. " Nineveh and its Remains (1867 edition), p. 4. Cylinders of Tiglath-Pileser I. 103 the platform."1 Rassam also excavated there under Rawlinson's direction and found three terra-cotta cylinders of Tiglath-Pileser I, about B.C. noo (Nos. 9I»°33-9I.°35)- These mention the rebuilding of the temple of Arm and Ramman by Shamshi-Ramman, B.C. 1820. When the inscriptions on these cylinders were read it was generally accepted that the mounds of Kal'at Sharkat contained the remains of the city of Ashur, the oldest capital of Assyria. It has long been known that this city was very old, and the way in which it is mentioned with Nineveh by Khammurabi in the preface to his Code of Laws, suggests that the two cities were very ancient even in his time. But the excavations which the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft made between 1903 and 1914 have proved that the earliest inhabitants of the site were not Semites but probably Sumerians; according to some they were Hittites. If this be so, there may have been a city at Ashur as early as B.C. 3500, and probably earlier. And here reference may well be made to the thorough and comprehensive series of excavations which Professor Andrae and his colleagues have made at Kal'at Sharkat on behalf of the Deutsche Orient-Geselischaft. They have systematically searched the mound layer by layer, and discovered sculptured figures which must date from Sumerian times. They have described a splendid series of historical stone stelae2 which were set up in honour of kings and high officials of the city, and monuments of some of its earliest rulers. Among the inscriptions dis covered by them are some which mention Ushpia,3 the founder of the temple of Ashur, and Kikia,* the great builder, who, judging by their names, were probably not Semites. They have cleared to the foundations the great temple of Anu-Adad,5 and in the course of their 1 Nineveh and Babylon, p. 581. E Andrae, Die Stelenreihen in Assur, Leipzig, 1913. 3 ! ^^wT ^" IT- Messerschmidt, Keilschrifttexte aas Assur, Leip zig, 1911. (Shalmaneser I, No. 13, col. 3, 1. 33.) 4 f ^. ^ y^. Messerschmidt, op. tit., No. 63, 1. 5. Andrae' Der Anu-Adad-Tempel, Leipzig, 1909. 6 IO4 Excavations at Kal'at Sharkat. work on the remains of the temple of Ishtar have identified the remains of several temples to the goddess which succeeded each other on the same site. The development of the defences of Ashur has been carefully worked out,1 and the publication of the historical inscriptions begun.8 It has been possible to watch the course of this great work through the series of letters by Andrae which appeared in the Mitteilungen of the Society, but it is to be hoped that he will summarize the results of his labours in a single volume, and do for Ashur what Koldewey has done for Babylon. It is impossible not to regret that Layard and Rassam did not make use of the golden opportunity they had of excavating Ashur and carrying off rich archaeological spoils, for in their day they had permission to take possession of anything and everything they dug up, and there was no Imperial Ottoman Museum to obstruct their researches. Because they thought there was no chance of finding at Kal'at Sharkat the bulls and bas- reliefs with which their minds were obsessed, neither of them found there " any trace of its former magnifi cence," and neither saw any " sign of any ancient building."5 A visitor to Kal'at Sharkat during the course of the German excavations says: " Their methods is undeniably thorough, and suggests unlimited resources. You have a set of mounds before you, covering perhaps twenty acres or more, and rising to a height of about eighty feet. A light railway is laid down running well out into the desert; and the whole of these mounds, or something like it, goes through a fine sieve and is carried into the wilderness and dumped. When a pavement is reached in this process that level is cleared absolutely, and everything worth preserving is preserved, with careful plans showing the position in which it was found. Then that pavement is broken up and progress made to the next level; and so the work is continued till virgin 1 Andrae, Die Festungswerke van Assur, Leipzig, 1913. 1 Messerschmidt, op. cit., Part I. * Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., vol. viii, p. 364. Kal'at al-Bint. 105 soil is reached."1 This is exactly what still wants doing at Kuyunjik. We set out again on our journey the next morning, March ist, at 6.30, and soon passed a mass of rocks which stood out boldly in mid-stream. A few miles lower down the course of the river changed, and we left the ridge of hills called Khanukah behind us and floated eastward. We passed the Khanukah rapids, and the barrier of Sakhar an-Naml, or " Barrier of the Ants," without difficulty, but the Farraj Rocks caused the raftsmen much trouble. The raft swayed and creaked, and the fastening of some of the poles got loose, and as soon as we could we tied up to repair the damage and reinflate the skins. The altar of Sargon II and the Delegate's bricks were weighty objects. When we started again we floated almost due south, but as soon as we came close in under Jabal al-Makhul on the west bank, the river turned off sharply towards the east. Close by, also on the west bank, we saw the ruined castle to which the Arabs have given the name of Kal'at al- Bint, i.e., the " Maiden's Castle," or " Kal'at al-Makhul." The castle stands on the top of a hill nearly two hundred feet high, and there is a deep cutting on each side of it. Considerable portions of many of the walls still remain. A little lower down we passed through the rapid of Tureshah, which caused us no trouble, though its waters were in a state of commotion and made a great noise. We then passed the mouth of the Little or Lower Zab, on the east bank, and the mouth of the Wadi Jahannam, or " Hell Valley " (on the west bank), which divides Jabal Khanukah from Jabal Hamrin. Then came Tall Marmus, on the east bank, Kal'at Jabbar,2 or the " Giant's Castle," which is perched on a hill on the west bank, Tall al-Dhahab or " Gold Hill,"3 and then another rapid. Soon after the rapid the river turned sharply to the east, and then turned again to 1 Wigram, Cradle of Mankind, p. 344. 2 The " Gioubbar Calai " of Thevenot. (Voyage, ii, p. in.) 1 The " Altun Daghi " of Thevenot. (Voyage, ii, p. in.) io6 Water Wheels on the Tigris. the south-east. Close to Al-Fathah, i.e., the "Opening," where there is a pass through Jabal Hamrin, we saw on the east bank some ruins, which did not appear to be ancient, and close to the east bank a large solitary rock standing in the stream. A few miles lower down we skirted several islands, and floated down the river swiftly with the strong current ; at the foot of a long rapid Jabal Hamrin comes close up to the river on the west bank. We next passed Tall al-Laklak,1 or the " Chattering Hill," on the east bank, and then some large mounds on the west bank ; close to these was Khan Kharnenah," where we saw a camp of soldiers. Several miles lower down the river on the west bank we saw Kal'at Abu Riyash, a ruined castle, which seemed to be about to tumble into the river, and then, on the same side of the river, several Muhammadan tombs. Among these is the tomb of Abu Khalkhalan, son of Imam Musa, the seventh Shi'ite Imam, who is buried at Kazimen near Baghdad. The river now ran due south through fine open country, and palm trees appeared on the banks. These were standing in large groups in gardens which were watered by oxen. The animals did not walk round and round on a platform above the river, as they do when turning a water-wheel, but they drew up the water-skins, to which they were attached by a rope, by walking down a slope away from the river, on the bank of which the staging was erected. When the skins reached the level of the staging, the oxen stopped, and their drivers tilted out the water into a channel, from which it was directed on to the land through many runnels. The oxen then walked back up the slope, the drivers let the skins down again into the river, and the process was repeated as long as necessary. Soon afterwards we saw in the distance, on the west bank, the high cliff on which stood the old castle and fortifications of Takrit, and we prepared 1 " Three miles to the north of Leg Leg is the northern mouth of the old Nahrawan Canal." Felix Jones, op. cit., p. 27. 2 See Felix Jones, Bombay Records, vol. xliii, p. 26. Takrit, Birthplace of Saladin. 107 to stop at the modern village of the same name near the cliff and close to the ruins of the old town. The site of the old town of Takrit is easily identified by the ruins of houses and other buildings, the founda tions of which are visible. It was surrounded with strong stone walls, but was separated from the castle by a moat, or an arm of the Tigris.1 The ruins of the castle, which stood about one hundred feet above the town, were considerable, but the natives were taking away the stones2 from its outer walls for building purposes. The first to build a castle at Takrit was, according to Yakut (i, p. 861), Sapor, the son of Ardashir, but the position of the town makes it certain that there must have been a strong city here at a far earlier period. In the tenth century it contained a strong fortress, but the bulk of the inhabitants were Christians5 who sup ported a large monastery; according to Mas'udi (ii, p. 32) the Christians were Jacobites. It is possible that the ruins of the churches which are pointed out to the visitor are theirs. Ibn Juber, who stayed at Takrit in the second half of the twelfth century, says that it was an old and famous city, large and spacious, with fine bazars and numerous mosques.4 Ibn Batutah says practically the same thing (ii, p. 133), and praises the character of the people of Takrit and their kindly disposi tion. Takrit will be famous for all time as the birthplace of Salah ad-Din, or Saladin, the son of Ayub, an officer of theKhalifah of Baghdad, who was born there in 1137-38.6 1 Rich published a drawing which gives a good idea of the position of the town in respect to the castle. (Narrative, vol. ii, p. 146.) * " Large massive bastions of lime and pebbles, faced with solid brickwork, abut around the cliff, between which the wall once stood. On the south face, between the citadel and the modern town and half-way down the cliff, two buttresses, of the same formation as the bastions, point out the situation of the gateway. The bricks which face them have been carried away." Felix Jones, Records, No. 43, p. 23. For a drawing of the citadel see p. 8. 5 Ibn Hawkal, p. 156. * Travels, ed. Wright, p. 234. 5 An excellent summary of the three periods of the life of this chivalrous warrior is given in Lane-Poole, The Middle Ages, London, 1901, p. 190 ff. io8 An Ill-Conditioned Sayyid. We arrived at Takrit (about 150 miles from Mosul and 120 from Baghdad) soon after noon, and when we had walked about and looked at the ruins we went into the poor and straggling bazar to make a few purchases. The Delegate had spent most of his time on the raft in making coffee over a brazier, and in lamenting whilst he drank it his hard fate in having to travel on a raft where, he said, he was roasted by day and frozen by night. As a result our coffee was nearly finished when we were little more than half-way to Baghdad, and sugar was urgently needed. Our soldier took us to a shop kept by an Arab and we purchased coffee without difficulty. When we began to bargain for sugar, the price of which was trebled for our benefit, the shop keeper seemed unwilling to sell, even though we were ready to pay what he asked. Several of the people who were passing through the bazar stopped to listen to what we were saying, and as is usual in such cases several of them passed their opinions and discussed the price of the sugar as if they were the would-be buyers. During a pause in the talk our soldier said, " O merchant man, why are you asking the Beg to pay so much ? Wallah ! (by Allah) you are trying to cheat him." The merchant made no reply, but a sinister-looking man wearing a long black cloak and a green turban (which proclaimed him to be a descendant of 'All the Khalifah), said to the soldier, " O dog of blood, thy business is swords and guns and not sugar and coffee. What is it to thee if the merchant makes these filthy Christians, may Allah curse their fathers, pay more than the sugar is worth ? They have majtdts as we have paras,1 they are ..." Here followed much obscene abuse of Christians in general, and ourselves in particular. I retorted in kind to the very best of my ability and tried to complete my purchase. Presently some mass whizzed between the heads of White and myself and fell with a crash on a box, which it split open, and we quickly realized that the Sayyid with the green turban had lost 1 Forty paras = i piastre, 2 \d. I The Tigris at Takrit. 109 his temper and hurled one of the merchant's stone weights at us. The soldier seized the Sayyid and a scuffle began, and as some of the bystanders began to hit and kick the soldier, White and I attacked his attackers and a sort of free fight took place, during which the merchant's scales and shelves got smashed and his stock scattered about. Before the soldier had done with the Sayyid the Ka'im Makam, or local governor, appeared with a couple of his men and seized the Sayyid, who had lost his turban and most of his garments in his struggle with the soldier. It seemed that his quarrel some disposition was well known, and that he was a fanatic and violent Shi'ite, who never missed an oppor tunity of fighting with Christians. The Ka'im Makam insisted on our going to his house, where we drank coffee with him and stayed a short time, and he showed us much civility. He excused the rudeness of the Sayyid on the ground that he suffered greatly from fever, so I left some quinine with the official, and asked him to dose the Sayyid with it in order to prevent him from making further attacks upon travellers. We returned to our raft in the early afternoon accompanied by the Ka'im Makam and several of the people from the bazar, who wished us a safe passage to Baghdad. The river at Takrit was very wide, quite 600 yards, and the current was very strong. We changed raftsmen here and were very sorry to part with SaKm, who had brought us down from Mosul, and had told us many interesting stories and traditions about earlier British travellers whom he and his father and his grand father had served. He seemed to know and to have names for every rock in the river, and he believed firmly that three which he pointed out to us were the homes of evil spirits, and gave them as wide a berth as he possibly could. Our new raftsman was not ready to start till three o'clock, but when we unmoored the current carried the raft along at a good pace; we had a fine view of the country on the east bank. There were large con tinuous patches of cultivation to be seen in many places, and groups of palm trees became quite common. We no The Nahrawan Canal. passed several rocks standing up abruptly in mid-stream, and in many places the violent eddies and swirls pro claimed submerged dangerous rocks or obstructions of some sort. We drifted for a couple of hours and then the striking building of the Imam Muhammad of Dur came into sight on the east bank. We passed in safety through the rocks of Dur and then drifted slowly along by the side of a large island full of pretty stretches of cultivation, and when we reached the southern end of it we had a fine view of the " Imam Dur " and of the modern village of Dur, which looked very well in the light of the setting sun. The tomb of this Shi'ite Imam seemed to me to be like the so-called Tomb of Zubedah at Baghdad, that is to say, it has a square base out of which rises a conical tower with the quaint decoration common to such buildings at Baghdad, Hillah, Kufah, Kin, etc.1 It stands on a low hill between the river and the village, and is said by Felix Jones to be visible from Takrit. There seems to be little doubt that there has been a town at Dur from time immemorial. There is no proof that the district about it is the " plain of Dura," mentioned in Daniel iii, i, as Rich thought. A town stood there in Parthian times, and Ammianus (xxv, 6, 9) mentions Dura in A.D. 363, and Polybius (v. 52) in B.C. 220. Dur is frequently mentioned by the Arab geographers, who call it " Dur al-'Arabaya," or " Dur al-Harith,"2 and it was famous as the town at the head of the great " Cut of Chosroes" (Al-Katul al- Kisrawi) or the Nahrawan Canal.5 This canal started on its course to the south on the east bank of the Tigris, and the Ishaki Canal began its course on the west bank. Opposite Dur the river split up into a number of channels through which the water flowed at great speed, but it would have been comparatively easy to bridge them. Here Jovian and his soldiers are said to have crossed the Tigris after the death of Julian. A little below Dur, 1 A drawing of it is given by Rich. (Narrative, vol. ii, p. 148.) e E.g., Ibn Hawkal, p. 166 ; Yakut, ii, p. 615. 5 On the track of this famous Canal, see Felix Jones, Bombay Records, vol. xliii, p. 55 ff. Eski Baghdad. in on the east bank, we caught a glimpse of the large high mound called " Tall al-Banat," or " Hill of the Maidens." Between it and us was much smoke or mist, but whether this was due to limekilns1 or the cool of the evening it was impossible to say. We tied up for the night on the west bank, opposite the mouth of the Nahrawan Canal, and near Tall al-Muhejir. We set out next morning, March 2nd, soon after daylight and did not attempt to cross to the east bank to see the ruins of the " Leaded Bridge " or " Leaded Dam" (Kantarat ar-Rasasah), so called because the stones are clamped together with lead. We passed Abu Dalif, on the east bank, where some columns of an old mosque were still standing, and then the ruins of the famous palaces and buildings which are grouped under the name of " Kasr al-Mutawakkil," and were known by the Arab geographers as the "Mutawak- kiliyah," or "Ja'fariyah." It is quite clear that from this point southward the whole of the east bank was the northern suburb of Samarra;' a large part of this section of the bank is commonly called " Eski Baghdad," or " Old Baghdad." Soon after this we passed on the east bank a group of ruins called " Shinas," and then came to Tall 'Alij, the " Nose-bag mound "3 of Felix Jones, who thought that it marked the spot where the body of Julian the Apostate was burnt before its removal to Tarsus. It lies some distance from the river, probably two or three miles. On the same side of the river were the ruins of the famous " Kasr al-Ma'shuk,"4 or the " Castle of the Beloved," which was built by Mu'tamid, the son of Mutawakkil, about 890. A little lower down, on the west bank, we saw the ruined walls of Kasr al- 'Ashik, which must have been a large and strong fortress, 1 There were many limekilns here in Felix Jones' time, and the people of Dur supplied Baghdad with lime, sending it down the river on rafts. e See Guy le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, pp. 53-57. 1 An old Arab tradition says that the earth which formed this mound was brought there in horses'"nose-bags,"or,inotherwords,that sacks were used for carrying the earth there instead of wicker baskets. * The " Aaschouk " and " Maaschouk " of Thevenot (ii, p. 115), who says, " Les gens du pays disent que ces lieux sont ainsi nommez 112 The Tombs of the Imams at Sdmarrd. and passing the ruins of Khalifah, on the east bank, we came to Samarra, where we tied up near the bridge of boats. On landing we went over some low sandy ground, and turning away from the high bank of the river saw the modern town for the first time. A thick wall about 18 or 19 feet high surrounds the whole town, but it seemed to me comparatively new, and in places it needed repair. A native, whom we induced with difficulty to accompany us through the town, advised us to get out of the place as soon as possible, and the behaviour of the bazar folk showed that Christians were not wanted in Samarra. In these days Samarra is famous because it contains the tombs of the Tenth Imam, 'Ali al-'Askari, and his son Hasan, the Eleventh Imam ; and their hand some cupolas and minarets are striking objects when seen from a distance. To get anywhere near them was impossible. The mosque with the small cupola is said to cover the underground chamber where the Twelfth Imam hid himself in 898, and is said to live to this day. He was called " Al-Ka'im," and was regarded as the Mahdi who was to come one day and right the wrong in the world. We were told that the exact spot whence he will emerge from the ground is known, and is pointed out to the true believers who make pilgrimages, chiefly from Persia, to this shrine. These tombs are in the western half of the city. North of the modern town is the large walled enclosure, 810 feet long and 490 feet broad, within which the great mosque stands; the main entrance faces the Kiblah, and the walls are 30 feet high.1 Immediately to the north of this enclosure stands what Rich called a " corkscrew tower, a spiral dividing it into six towers." It is called the a cause que dans chacun de ces villages, il y a eu autrefois une tour, dans 1'une desquelles il demeuroit un homme qui estoit amoureux d'une femme qui habitoit dans la tour de 1'autre village, et dont il estoit pareillement aime." 1 These are the measurements of Felix Jones (op. cit., p. 13). Rich thought that the enclosure measured 200 yards by 150 yards. (Narra tive, ii, p. 151.) PLAN OF THE RUINS OF SAMARRA by Felix Jones. it a mtl^ ^fil''/:1!, 'Ill ratwM^ti ^J$^jlla^4 » ® ^'J '"' 0#£§ 7 ^/» '!• 1. Malwtyah 2. Madrassah or Mosque 3. Palace of the KhalTfah. 4. Tombs of the Imams. H4 The Mcdisuiyah. « o^ "Malwlyah,"1 .L^L., because of the spiral paths to the top on the outside of it. Felix Jones ascertained its height to be 163 feet." Some modern travellers hold the view that the " Malwiyah " is a Babylonian zig- gurat,3 or temple-tower, but it is more probably the minaret of the mosque built by Mu'tasim. The site of Samarra is so convenient and the climate so good, and before the destruction of the ancient system of canals its fertility was so great, that there must always have been a town there. Babylonian bricks have been found on the foreshore, but they may, of course, have been brought there from Babylon. There was a city there in Julian's time, and it seems to have been a place of importance when the Arabs conquered Mesopotamia. It was the ' Abbasid capital during the reigns of seven Khalifahs, i.e., from 836 to 892, and each of them spent large sums -in building vast and beautiful palaces at Samarra itself and on the western bank of the Tigris just opposite. Long after the return of the 'Abbasid Court to Baghdad it preserved much of its importance, and the splendour of its great mosque attracted many to the town. In the fourteenth century the town was a mere mass of ruins, as Abu '1-Fida (p. 300) and Ibn Batutah (ii, 132) testify. Later it was occupied by Shi'ites, and the bulk of the population to-day are members of this sect. The tombs of the Imams are maintained by the offerings of the pilgrims, who are also called upon to pay for the upkeep of the walls.4 1 A rock at Nahawand, with a winding path about it, is also called " Malwiyah." See Yakut, iv, p. 638. 8 Rich says it is about 200 feet high. 3 " At Samarra . . . stands the only ziggurat, or Babylonian temple-tower, that has not been ruined in the lapse of centuries. By some fortunate freak of fate, the great pyramid, with its spiral ascent to the summit, was preserved when worship ceased in the temple below. It went on as a Zoroastrian fire-temple, and subse quently as minaret to the great mosque which Harun-1-Rashid built at its foot." Wigram, Cradle of Mankind, p. 348. * Accounts of Samarra by the Arab geographers will be found in Istakhri, pp. 78-86; Ibn Hawkal, pp. 156, 157 ; Mukaddasi, pp. 114, To face p. 11^, vol. ii. f - * The Malwiyah at Samarra. Istabuldt. 115 We returned to our raft in safety, but did not take with us the good wishes of the townsfolk, who possessed a violent hatred for all Christians, especially when accom panied by a man wearing a tarbush, and therefore believed by them to be both a Turk and a Turkish official. This hatred took the form of a refusal to sell us some melons, and a good deal of stone throwing at large, mingled with good comprehensive cursing of ourselves and our fore bears. But fortunately the Samarrali trader loved the rupee as much as other folk, and so it fell out that after we had scrambled down the steep bank to the raft, and were just pushing off into the stream, a man sprang up, apparently from nowhere, with a large loose sack con taining several fine melons, which he rolled on to the raft. Soon after we left we passed on the east bank the ruined tower or building called "Al-Ka'im," which was said to be quite hollow, though Felix Jones describes it as a "solid quadrangular tower." It is surrounded with ruins on all sides, and may be the remains of a large edifice built by one of the Khalifahs who beautified Samarra. A little later we saw on the west bank the ruins of the town of Istabulat, round which parts of the old girdle wall were still standing. On the west bank, almost opposite, are masses of ruins, now commonly called "As-Sanam," i.e., the " Image," probably because of the stone statue of a god or king, which Rich saw there and described (Narrative ii, p. 152). Rich says it was made of grey granite and basalt, and if this be so, it was probably an ancient Babylonian statue.1 A little further on we passed, on the same bank, the ruins of 115, 120, 125 ; and Yakut, vol. iii, pp. 14, 22, 82, 675, etc. The detailed account of the founding of the 'Abbasid city is given by Mas'udi, vii, pp. 120-123. See also le Strange, Baghdad, Oxford, 1900, pp. 246-9, and Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, Cambridge, pp. 53-56; and Felix Jones (Bombay Records, vol. xliii), who published a plan of the town and a drawing of the " Malwiyah." 1 Felix Jones says the lower half of the statue was of black stone, " similar to those of Egypt," and that it was in the possession of Dr. Ross. Bombay Records, vol. xliii, p. 10. * 2 n6 Kadisiyah on the Tigris. the important Arab town of " Kadisiyah of the Tigris/'1 so called to distinguish it from the town of the same name on the edge of the desert, about five miles to the west of Kufah on the Euphrates. Rich and some other travellers have confused the two towns, and stated that the great battle of A.H. i4 = A.D. 635 between the Arabs, under Sa'ad, and the Persians, under Rustum, was fought at Kadisiyah of the Tigris instead of at Kadi siyah near the Euphrates. There is no doubt that Rich was misled on this point, for the Arabic accounts2 of the great three days' battle are quite definite about the matter. A modern German traveller5 calls the reader's attention to this mistake of Rich and his copyists, and says that they followed Gibbon blindly in their error. But in his account of the " Battle of Cadesia " (chap, li, ed. Smith, vol. vi, p. 292) Gibbon makes no attempt to identify the geographical position of the " Plains of Cadesia." Moreover, he quotes the " Nubian geographer " who says that Kadisiyah is " in margine solitudinis," sixty-one leagues from Bagdad and two stations from Cufa, and the French traveller Otter, who says it is fifteen leagues from Bagdad. Gibbon evidently thought the "plains of Cadesia" were on the edge of the desert, and not on any river. It was not Gibbon who confused the two towns of Kadisiyah, but William Smith, his editor, who in his note says: " The ruins of Cadesia may be seen on both sides of the Tigris," and then quotes Layard's " Nineveh and Babylon," p. 471, in support of his statement.4 1 See Yakut, iv, pp. 7-9, and the Index in vol. vi, p. 168. Both Yakut and Abu '1-Fida (p. 299) say that the town was famous for its coloured and decorated glass work. 1 See Ibn al-Athir, vol. ii, pp. 346-351, 375-377. 39J-394 ff- '• Biladhurt, ed. de Goeje, p. 225 ; and Mas'udi, vol. iv, p. 207 ff., and p. 224. 3 Oppenheim, Vom Mittdmeer zutn Persischen Golfes, Berlin, 1900, vol. ii, p. 229 (note). * If Gibbon had had access to the Syriac and Arabic histories and ecclesiastical works which are now available in the original texts and translations, there is no doubt that he would have modified some of his statements and supplemented others. Considering the limited The Median Wall of Xenophon. 117 The ruins of Kadisiyah on the Tigris were con siderable, but the buildings which stood there were those of a frontier fortress rather than a town. Felix Jones examined the ruins carefully and found that the city wall had eight sides, and a round tower at each angle. It was built of bricks of the Sassanian period, 18 inches square and 5 inches thick, and was 25 feet high and originally 50 feet thick. A ditch 70 feet wide ran round the city inside the wall, and this was protected on the inner side by a mud rampart. Within the area enclosed by the wall was a wall running due north and south 1,240 paces long, and from this another wall 450 paces long ran due east. The palace or central building stood in an oblong enclosure 250 paces long from north to south, and 100 paces broad.1 A little below Kadisiyah we passed on the west bank the mouth of the Dujel Canal. At Kanattr, i.e., " the dams," were the remains of works connected with the great canal and of a bridge, and due south of it, on the west bank, were the remains of Sadd Nimrud. These were identified by Felix Jones and others with the end of the " Median Wall" of Xenophon, which is said to have reached from the Euphrates to the Tigris. We passed Huwai, Khan as-Su'ewlyah (formerly called Khan Mazrakji), Tall Husen, Balad, Ba'riirah, Sayyid Muhammad, Kubbat ash-Shawa.li, and many smaller villages, and then came, on the east bank, to the mouth of the river 'Adhem. Here we tied up in order to pay a very hurried visit to the ruins called Tall Mahassil. Everything we saw there was post-Christian, and Rich was undoubtedly correct in condemning the theory of sources of native information that were available to him, his accounts of Oriental matters are singularly correct. In connection with this opinion, I would put on record a criticism which I heard Mommsen make on the Oriental part of Gibbon's history. He and A. S. Murray and I were discussing that point in Murray's house in Gower Street, and Mommsen said, " I once spent two years in verifying Gibbon's statements with the original authorities, and I found his accuracy in reproducing their evidence so great that it amounted almost to a vice." 1 Felix Jones, Bombay Records, vol. xliii, p. 10. yv 118 Opis a Base for Shipping. Kinneir, which placed the ancient city of 6pis on this spot. The ancient city of 6pis, 'fims (Xenophon, Ana basis, ii, 4, §25) was certainly at the mouth of the Physcus (<£uo-/cos) river, but it lay on the west bank of the Tigris, and the mouth of the 'Adhem river must have been some miles further to the south than it is to-day. 6pis, the U-pi-i, or U-pi-e, or U-pu-a of the cuneiform inscriptions,1 was a town of importance in the twelfth century before Christ, and the Tablet of Synchronous History says it was captured by Tiglath- Pileser I* (B.C. noo). Sennacherib used it as a shipping base during his expeditions against the peoples of the Persian Gulf and the Elamites, but in Strabo's time (ii, i, 26; xvi, i, 9) it seems to have been little more than a village. The ruins of Manjur, which lie two or three miles inland on the west bank, and consist of several mounds, probably mark the site of 6pis. The downfall of the city was possibly brought about by the Tigris changing its bed. After returning to our raft we floated on for a couple of hours more in semi-darkness, and just before we reached Zanbur we saw two or three large camp fires on the west bank and several Arabs, some squatting by the fires and others standing up and holding " gas- pipe " guns in their hands. Some of the latter cried out and asked who we were, and the kalakji shouted a reply, saying in effect, " English Consuls. Peace be upon you." In reply to this they shouted, " Liars ! Stop, we fire." Our answer was, " Fire," as we floated on, and fire they did, and we heard their slugs strike the water near the raft. None of us was hit, but the slugs pierced several of the skins, and the raft at once took on an uncomfortable list. As the Arabs made no attempt to follow us we tied up at Sindiyah, where we found several caravans halting for the night. Some of 1 ^ff tffft *f- s£ (Rawlinson, Cun. Inscr., vol. ii, pi. 53, 1. 10) ; --TT tfflfc *T- «=ff (»«*•. "> PL 65,1- 20); ^TT sTTTt ifr U (««*•. ™. pi. 12, No. 2, 11. 15 and 16); the sign -£.]] alu means " town," or " city." * Published by Rawlinson, op. cit., ii, pi. 65. A Monster Fish. 119 the Arabs from them brought us dates and milk and wondered much why we were loaded with " bricks and stones/' as they called our precious antiquities. A group of men also came with two fishermen who were dragging along in a large basket an enormous fish which they said was " fit for kings." It was an enormous fish, more than five feet long, and very thick, and it had a huge mouth. It resembled the large fish which I had seen the Barabara catch with a net off the Island of Sahal in the First Cataract in Egypt. The Arabs call it " biz," and Buckingham was correct when he said (Travels ii, p. 440) that one was large enough to form a good load for an ass. I bought the whole fish for 18 piastres, and the caravan men were glad to take away for their supper all but the few steaks from it which we broiled and ate. The flesh had a slightly coarse taste, but it formed a useful addition to our evening meal, and the fish secured us the goodwill of the Arabs who ate it. We left the following morning, March 3rd, as soon as the skins were repaired, and found that the river had risen during the night and that the current was very strong. We floated on at a good pace and we determined, if it were possible, not to stop until we reached Baghdad, which we hoped to do that afternoon. The wind was cold, for it blew from the east, but the sun was bright and hot, and we all enjoyed the journey that day. The scenery on both banks of the river reminded me of Egypt, for we saw nothing but a succession of date- palm groves, and large gardens and patches of cultiva tion stretching away from the river for a considerable distance. We passed many villages that were half hidden by palms, among which may be mentioned Sa'adiyah, Mansuriyah, Kuseriyin, with its splendid palms, Tarmiyah, with its canal, Al-Malluh, etc., on the east bank, and 'Awejah and Farhad on the west bank. Here and there, close to the bank, was a shekh's tomb as in Egypt, and the most important shrines we saw were those of the Imam Banat al-Hasan, Shekh Jamil, Beni 'Abbas, and the Imam 'All. Soon after noon we saw in the far distance, on the west bank, the cupolas I2O Arrival in Baghdad. and minarets of Kazimen, and two hours later we passed them and saw the bridge of boats of Baghdad. Almost immediately after this our kalakji was hailed by two men on the east bank, and after a short conversation with them at the top of his voice he told me that they had been sent to watch for us by the British Consul- General, and that we were to tie up our raft at the landing-stage of the Residency. In due course we reached the opening in the bridge of boats through which we were to pass, and when the officials had inspected us they ordered us to go to the Custom House so that the raft might be searched for contraband, and the bricks and slabs and altar be taken over by them. At this point the Delegate interfered and informed them that he was the Mufattish (Inspector) of Antiquities for the provinces of Jazirah, Mosul and Baghdad, and that Allah only knew what would happen to them in Jahannum if they touched a single brick. The bridge authorities did not in the least believe him, and sent a messenger to ask for instructions from the Mudir of the bridge. Meanwhile the raft was held in the opening between the boats, as the tow rope had been twisted round a spar projecting from one of the boats, and was under the charge of a river policeman. Whilst I was paying the bridge dues, profiting by a hint from the kalakji, I gave a bakhshish to the policeman who promptly loosened the tow rope and threw it on the raft, which floated through the bridge, and in a very short time we came to the landing-stage of the Residency on the east bank and tied up there. Thus we travelled from Mosul to Baghdad, a distance of about 300 miles in six days, or, deducting the hours spent in sleep and sight-seeing, two and a half days, or sixty hours. 121 BAGHDAD TO LONDON. ALMOST before we were tied up two or three kawwasah, i.e., guards from the Consulate, followed by several servants, came running down the steps to help us disembark, and to tell us that the Bali6s Beg, or British Consul-General, had instructed them to take White and myself with our belongings up to the Residency. The Delegate asked that the raft with the antiquities upon it might remain by the landing-stage for the night, and, having committed it to the charge of the soldier who had accompanied us from Mosul, he departed to report himself to the proper authorities. White and I then followed the servants with our baggage through the beautiful orange garden to the Residency, and just before we reached the entrance to it we were met by Colonel (now Sir) Adelbert Cecil Talbot, C.I.E., who was acting as British Consul-General during Colonel W. Tweedie's absence on leave. Colonel Talbot welcomed us most cordially, and said that he had rooms ready for us in the Residency, and that Mrs. Talbot was waiting to give us tea. Neither White nor myself needed a second invitation, and we accepted his offer gratefully, and followed him into Mrs. Talbot's sitting-room, where we were soon established in great comfort. Under the influence of her gracious words of welcome, ruins, dirt, dust, cold, and all the unpleasant incidents of a journey of 300 miles by raft were soon forgotten in the English home-like atmosphere of her room. Many hospitable and experienced " Mem Sahibs" have graced the Residency at Baghdad, but none could ever have taken more thought for the comfort of her weary guests than Mrs. Talbot did for ours. Colonel Talbot, himself an accomplished Persian scholar and linguist, took great interest in all Oriental archaeological work, and during 122 Changes in Baghdad. my stay in Baghdad in 1889 he did everything he could to help me. During the year which had elapsed since my first visit to Baghdad many changes had taken place among the British residents in the town. My friend Captain Butterworth, I.M., had been promoted and his successor on the " Comet " was Captain Dogherty, who cordially offered to help me in any way possible. Mr. Somerset, who had visited Babylon with me the previous year, had become captain of Lynch Bros.' " Khalifah," and we each enjoyed the renewal of our acquaintance. Mr. Alfred Holland had been selected to open up a new branch house for Lynch Bros, at Shushtar, and had gone to Basrah to prepare for his new duties. Mr. George Clarke, Lynch Bros.1 manager, and his wife welcomed me with characteristic kindness, and Mr. Clarke assisted me in business matters as before. All the men who had helped me in 1888 seemed glad to meet me again, especially Mr. Dorabji, the chief engineer of the " Comet," and old master-gunner Nelson, a delightful old Scotsman, who always wore a Tam o' Shanter, had porridge for breakfast, drank whisky with every meal, kept the Sabbath with great strictness and solemnity, and prayed to live long enough to see British guns bombarding Baghdad. Under the genial and tactful influence of the Talbots the social atmosphere of the British colony was easier, and the relations with the merchants and the Turkish authorities in the Sarayah were more friendly. As a proof of this I mention the fact that the new Wall Pasha of Baghdad paid me a visit at the Residency and had a long conversation with me about the excavations and Babylonian and Assyrian antiquities. The Chaldean Patriarch called upon me also, and highly approved of my action in having copies made of ancient Syriac manuscripts, and he offered to lend me any of his manuscripts for this purpose. But I was not in favour with the native dealers in Babylonian tablets, and they told me so openly. They had hoped that the collections of tablets which I had Antica Dealers in Baghdad. 123 bought from them the previous year would have been confiscated, and they were very angry with me for causing the tablets to leave Baghdad in the " Comet," for they intended to buy them cheap from the Customs authorities and sell them again at a large profit. Three of them came to me and complained that in reporting the watchmen and their thefts from the Trustees' sites, and thus causing their dismissal, I had slandered and calumniated " poor but honest Christians," and they hinted that they would prosecute me in the courts of Baghdad. Worst of all from their point of view, they said that in depriving these same " poor but honest Christians " of their official positions as watchmen and overseers employed by the British Government, I had destroyed their own chance of obtaining collections of tablets from the watchmen and so ruined their business. They then went on to say that as they could prove that I had destroyed their business, they could obtain heavy damages against me in the law courts, and most likely get me imprisoned, but they had so great an affection for me that they would rather lose everything they had in the world than cause me trouble. Since the day of their dismissal the world had become black to them, their cloaks were shame and their head cloths disgrace. If only I would telegraph to London and get them reinstated as watchmen and overseers, not only would the world become bright again and they would array themselves in joy and gladness, but they and their sons and grandsons would do business with me and my sons and my grandsons, and they would procure me such important tablets that my ism (renown) would reach to the ends of the world. I told them in answer to their threats and cajolings that they were at liberty to bring any action they pleased against me in the law courts of Baghdad, but that it was far better business for them to bring to me the wonderful tablets of which they had spoken and let me buy them without delay. To this they said that they had no tablets to sell, for I had destroyed their business, and that even if they had they would sell them to anybody, French, Germans or 124 Tablets from Abu Habbah. Americans, rather than to me. And so after uttering many dark threats as to legal processes and allusions as to the terrors of a Baghdad prison they departed. When these men left me I took with me the native who had been so useful to me the previous year and was waiting for me now, and went to see the dealers and what they had to sell. In many houses we found boxes of fragments of sun-dried contract tablets and business documents from Abu Habbah, which were useless. During Mr. H. Rassam's excavations on that site his workmen discovered various chambers filled with sun- dried tablets, in number " between forty and fifty thousand."1 Had these tablets been taken out and dried slowly in the sun all might have been brought unbroken to England, but the natives baked them in the fire with the terrible result that they either cracked in pieces or their inscribed surfaces flaked off. Several natives bought large quantities of these fragments at Abu Habbah, and hoped to sell them, and were greatly dis appointed when they found they could not do so. In one house I found a large collection containing many valuable tablets, which was offered to me on behalf of a highly-placed Baghdad official. Most of the larger tablets were found in a chamber near the wall at Abu Habbah, in which Rassam discovered the famous " Sun- god Tablet,"2 and the inscriptions upon them were of a miscellaneous character. Besides these there was an odd object of baked clay, the like of which I had never seen. Its owner attached a high value to it, because he had shown it to a French savant in Baghdad, who told him that it was an instrument used by the ancient Babylonian astronomers in making their calculations and forecasts, and who offered him a comparatively large sum of money for it. I did not share the opinion of the savant, although the inscriptions upon the object, which were arranged in squares, looked like tables of calculations. I feared at first that the object might be 1 Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., viii, p. 177. 2 See his Asshur and the Land of Nimrod, p. 401. To face p. 124, vol. ii. Clay model of a sheep's liver inscribed with omens and magical formulae. Brit. Mus., No. 92668. Model of a Sheep's Liver. 125 a forgery, for I had seen several forgeries that had been made by the Jews at Kazimen and they were very cleverly made, but after examining it for two days I felt sure that it was genuine, and as I knew it to be unique I decided to acquire it with the rest of the collection. Its shape and general appearance seemed strangely familiar to me, and at length I remembered that it closely resembled the plaster cast of a sheep's liver which I had seen in the hands of Canon Isaac Taylor. That cast was made from a bronze original inscribed in Etruscan, which had been found near Piacenza in 1877, and had been sent to him so that he might attempt to decipher the inscription. Taylor came to the conclusion that the bronze original was the model of a sheep's liver, and that it belonged to a temple and was used by the extispex or priest whose duty it was to inspect the livers of the sheep that were offered up as sacrifices, and to predict events from their appearances. Taylor brought the cast to the British Museum hoping to find evidence to support his view, and he showed it to Franks, Birch and myself. The more I thought about it the more I became convinced that the object from Abu Habbah was the model of a sheep's liver which had been used for purposes of divination, and I bought the whole collection and made arrangements to take it with me to London.1 1 When Taylor saw the Babylonian model he felt convinced that it represented a sheep's liver, and rejoiced in its acquisition by the British Museum ; but Assyriologists were sceptical about the correct ness of his identification, though they had no proofs to the contrary. In 1898 the Trustees of the British Museum published a photographic reproduction of the liver and a transcript of the texts on it in Cuneiform Texts, part vi, pll. i, 2, and so made it available for general study. The following year M. A. Boissier published his " Note sur un Monu ment Babylonien se rapportant a 1'Extispicine," and proved beyond all doubt that the object was a model of a sheep's liver, and that it had been made with the purpose of giving instruction in the art of divining from the appearances of the livers of sheep. A year later he published a further " Note sur un nouveau Document Babylonien se rapportant & 1'Extispicine," and proved that the object in the Kuyunjik Collection (Rm. 620), which Bezold described in the official Catalogue (vol. iv, p. 1628) as " part of model of an ox's hoof in clay," was in 126 Colonel Talbot's Influence. In another house I examined a second fine collection of early Babylonian tablets, which came from the same place and were of the same period as those which I bought in 1888. These also I bought at a reasonable price, and when the time for paying for them arrived I found that they belonged to the three former watchmen of the Trustees, who had vowed they would never sell me any more tablets. They were most anxious for me to take the tablets with me, and they said that they still regarded themselves as servants of the British Govern ment though the Mijlis (i.e., the Committee of the Trustees) no longer paid them for their devoted services ! They said they knew of the existence of other large collections of tablets, and that if I could stay in Baghdad for three months they would bring me enough tablets to load one of Lynch's steamers. Of course they exaggerated, but I was sure that there were many hundreds of fine tablets buried in the basements of houses in Baghdad and Hillah, and that £5,000 would have bought them all. I greatly regretted that I had not the necessary money, especially as the general feeling of the town towards the English was very friendly. The Wall Pasha and Colonel Talbot were on good terms, many difficulties between the Residency and the Sarayah had been smoothed out, and the fact that the Wali Pasha had called upon me and that I was at the Residency as a fellow-guest with the son of the British Ambassador, caused officials of all kinds quietly to relax their rules and regulations in my favour. In one of my conversations with the Wali Pasha I told him about the altar of Sargon II and the bricks and bas-reliefs which I had brought down with the Delegate from Mosul, and he gave orders that no obstacle was to be placed in the way of their leaving Baghdad. When the time came for me to depart the Customs' officers came and looked at the objects and asked me a few reality part of another model of a liver. The texts on the liver bought at Baghdad date from the period of Khammurabi, about B.C. 2000. Similar models with Babylonian inscriptions were found by Winckler at Boghaz Kioi in 1907. See Jastrow, Jr., Bildermappe, coll. 72, 73. Tablets from the Dtydld District. 127 questions, and when they had received a little present for their trouble they withdrew, and I had no further bother until I reached Basrah. Colonel Talbot's in fluence was very great, and old Ya'kub Thaddeus, the great authority on British prestige in Baghdad, told me that if he were to stay in Baghdad he would make things to be as they were in the days of the great Balios Beg, who was, of course, Rawlinson. Having acquired all the tablets I had money to pay for, I made a little journey to the mounds on the Diyala river where the natives had found some tablets and several small terra-cotta figures and bronzes, all of which were in a poor state of preservation. I acquired a selection from the " find," and took the objects to Baghdad and arranged for them to be sent to London, where they would be paid for. . Meanwhile the Delegate did not find Baghdad an enjoyable place to live in, and he was anxious to leave it. White also found nothing to do in the town, and the heat, for the weather had suddenly become very hot, caused him acute discomfort. I discussed with Colonel Talbot the possibility of returning to London via Tudmur (Palmyra) and Damascus, which latter city I was most anxious to see, but he would not allow me to attempt the journey. The Jabur and Shammar tribes were fighting their neighbours and raiding caravans, and the whole country north of Der az-Zur was in a very un settled state. Even the Government tattartym or postal couriers had to be provided with escorts. Matters were no better on the banks of the Tigris than they were on the banks of the Khabur and Euphrates, for about this time the Hamawand and other Kurdish tribes held up and pillaged a caravan of 300 camels, although provided with a military escort, within sight of the town of Karkuk,1 where there was a large Turkish 1 A town on the left bank of the Hasa Su, about 190 miles north of Baghdad on the main road between Baghdad and Mosul. The name " Karkuk" is well known in Syriac under the form 128 Tombs of the " Three Children." garrison. Whilst the pillage of the caravan was in process, the Baghdad postman with his men and armed escort rode up and attempted to drive off the Hamawand. But the robbers killed some of them and wounded others and the rest took to flight, leaving their twenty mules, which were laden with the Baghdad mail, in the hands of the Hamawand. These bold thieves unloaded the mules, "went through" the "value-parcels" and registered packets, and took out all the money and valuables and silks. They next examined the bags of letters and burnt all those that were addressed in Arabic or Turkish. The letters with addresses in English handwriting they put back in the bags, for they did not want trouble with the British or Indian Government. These things they did in daylight, within two miles of Karkuk, and the Turkish governor, it was said, made no attempt to stop them. There may have been exaggera tion in the details of the story which drifted south to and is a contraction of its ancient name vQAno ovua.i Karkha dhe Beth Selokh, which is commonly met with in Syriac Martyrologies and Chronicles. (See Hoffmann, Auszuge, p. 43 ; Budge, Book of Governors, vol. ii, pp. 81, 91, 245, and the authorities quoted in the notes.) The remains of the ancient city, which must have been there in the days of Darius and his successors, lie in the great hill on the top of which the citadel now stands. It was a great centre of Western Persian Christianity, and many churches were built there during the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries ; a hill near the town is still pointed out as the place where an untold number of Christians suffered martyr dom. None of the Arab geographers mention the town, possibly because in their time it was entirely a Christian town. The Muslims of Karkuk have graves in the Mosque of 'All which they say contain the bodies of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and several late apocryphal works state that the " Three Children " are buried there. The Ethiopian Church commemorates them on the second day of the month Takhshash (November 28th), and the section of the Synaxarium which is read on that day summarizes their history. Mr. Wigram gives a photographic reproduction of the Mosque of 'Abd al-Kadar, a Kurdish shekh of such surpassing sanctity and zeal for Islam that 'Abd al-Hamid used to correspond with him in a private cipher, and " was accustomed to ask by telegraph for his prayers, whenever he was meditating anything exceptionally black." (Cradle of Mankind, p. 343.) Departure from Baghdad. 129 Baghdad, but there was no doubt that the Government had lost control of the nomads and that whole flocks of sheep were frequently carried away by them. Therefore to return to Europe by the Tigris and Constantinople was out of the question for us. Finally we decided to go to Basrah by Messrs. Lynch's steamer and take the British India Mail Steamer to Bombay and return by P. & O. steamer to Plymouth or London. The Delegate wished to go to Basrah and to sail from there direct to Egypt, where he could embark for Constantinople, but this route, owing to the irregularity of merchant steamers at that time of the year, would have prolonged our journey many weeks. Whilst we were debating this proposal a telegram arrived from Sir William White who wished his son to see Karachi and Bombay, and this settled the matter. I was glad that he had decided thus, for going to Bombay would enable me to travel the whole way to England with my boxes of tablets and manu scripts. I therefore left sufficient money with Colonel Talbot to pay the Delegate's travelling expenses to Stambul and two months' salary in addition to that of the current month, and left him in Baghdad to make his own arrangements for return there. On March 7th White and I bade our most kind host and hostess good bye, and were sent in the Residency boat to the s.s. " Khalifah" with all our belongings, including the tablets and manuscripts. Many members of the little British colony in Baghdad came to see us safely on board, and the civility of the Customs' officials was in marked contrast to their behaviour in the previous year. It seemed to me that most Turkish rules and regulations were specially made to be broken—on pay ment by the breaker ! Captain Somerset weighed anchor at 6.30 a.m. on March 8th, and the "Khalifah" nosed her way between huge lighters and a couple of Turkish river steamers out into the stream. A strong hot south wind was blowing, but in spite of this we travelled at the rate of n knots an hour until about 5.30 p.m. when we ran head on to a shoal and stuck very fast. Whilst the crew were k 130 Fish-Traps on the Tigris. casting out ropes and hauling on them to get the ship afloat we watched the natives on the bank emptying their fish-traps. These are square enclosures of reed mats fastened to pegs driven in the river near the bank, and have an entrance on one side only. This entrance is through a hollow cone of reeds with the smaller end inside the trap. The fish swim in through the large end, which faces up-stream, and having pushed their way through the loosely made smaller end are unable to return, and are caught in the trap. After two hours' hard work, and darkness having fallen, we tied up for the night. We got afloat at five the next morning (March gth) and steamed till sunset when we tied up for the night. We reached 'Amarah at 1.30 p.m. on Sunday, March loth, and left again at 3 p.m., and as there were some bends in the river ahead of us which could only be safely negotiated by daylight, we tied up early. We started again at daybreak and lost some time in getting round a bend or " elbow "; it formed almost a right angle, and the- ship had to be warped round it with guiding ropes held by some of the crew on each bank. We passed Kurnah, the so-called " Garden of Eden," at 11.50 a.m., and arrived at Basrah at 3.35, March nth. Basrah is about 300 miles from Baghdad by direct route, and 510 miles by river; the s.s. " Khalifah " covered this distance in a little over forty-three hours. On my arrival I found Mr. Alfred Holland waiting for me, and with him was Mr. W. A. Buchanan, who had rendered me such great assistance in shipping my boxes of tablets the year before, and was ready to help me again. I handed over to him the boxes and manu scripts which I had brought down the river with me, and he and Captain Somerset helped me to get them on board the s.s. " Arabia," the British India Mail Steamer. Mr. Robertson, the British Consul of Basrah, of whom I have already spoken (see vol. I, p. 167), invited White and myself to stay with him at the Consulate, but White preferred to be free from the restraint of the British Consul's house, and asked me to find him a lodging The Altar of Sargon II. 131 elsewhere for the four or five days which we had to spend in Basrah. Mr. Buchanan again came to our assistance, and found him a comfortable room with adequate attendance. As soon as this arrangement was made I transferred myself and my baggage to Mr. Robertson's house, and found that Mrs. Robertson and her two children were there, having recently arrived from England. During the very delightful days I spent there I made two short excursions to the Old Town, which lies about nine miles from Basrah Creek, and traced the course of the ancient canal which ran round three sides of the city. On March I2th Mr. Alfred Holland left Basrah for Shushtar, and before he went he promised me to collect all the information he could about the ruins of Susa, and about routes to Mal al-Amir1 and other places where Persian cuneiform inscriptions were graven on the rocks. A fellow-guest at that time in the Consulate was Captain Lindsay, a great gunnery expert, then commanding H.M.S. " Kingfisher," which was lying in the river. He invited me to his ship and his officers showed me much civility. On the following Friday (March I5th) I made arrangements to transfer the altar of Sargon II from the s.s. " Khalifah" to the mail steamer the " Arabia." Just when we had got it on to a lighter the Turkish governor sent over an officer from the barracks who ordered me to replace it on the "Khalifah," as he intended to send it back to Baghdad. I went and saw the governor and explained how the altar had come into my possession, and that the Delegate had agreed to my taking it, and the Wall Pasha of Baghdad had permitted me to take it with me. In proof of my statement I showed him the rafttyah* but he waved this aside politely, and said that the exportation of 1 The chief town of Great Lur in Khuzistan ; its ancient name was Idhaj. Here stood the great stone bridge over the Dujel which was held to be one of the wonders of the world. See Guy le Strange, Lands, p. 245. 1 £*) the Customs' permit to export merchandise. kz 132 / Abandon the Altar. antiquities was prohibited by the Ministry of Instruc tion in Stambul, and that the altar being an antiquity could not therefore leave the country. Moreover, he had received information from Baghdad that the altar had been taken from the place which the French excavated many years before, and though he was willing to do anything for the English he dared not risk giving offence to the French Consul in Baghdad. We talked and talked and drank innumerable cups of coffee, and finally he said that he personally wished me to take the altar, and that he would see what he could do, and would send me a message in the afternoon. A few hours later his message arrived, and it took the form of a native scribe, who produced a document written in French stating that he was empowered to treat with me about the altar. He said that much time had been wasted and many words spoken, and that he was a man of business. The French, he said, could not prove that the altar was theirs, on the other hand, neither could I. The governor was certain that a huge, ugly block of stone was no use in Stambul, and would take upon himself to give it to me personally if I really cared for such things. But there were certain enemies of the governor in Basrah who would certainly mis represent his generosity to me, and might write to the Porte even, and make accusations against him. To such people presents would have to be made if I took the altar away, but if I would give him a draft on one of the English merchants for so many pounds Turkish, he would distribute them in such a way that everyone would be satisfied. I exclaimed at the considerable sum of money he mentioned, whereupon he halved it. But even so the altar was not worth that to the British Museum, for the Trustees already possessed an altar of Ashur-nasir-pal, which was not only of the same size and shape of that of Sargon, but was about 150 years older. I therefore abandoned the altar of Sargon II and it was taken back to Baghdad, where it remained for several years in the Custom House ; what became of it later I know not. Mukammarah and Faw. 133 White and I embarked on the s.s. " Arabia" on Friday night, March I5th, and early on the i6th we dropped down to Muhammarah, where we saluted the shekh and stayed for a few hours ; we anchored just off the Karun river, and the ship was visited by a crowd of natives from the neighbourhood of Ahwaz. They walked along the decks speechless, either with fear or admiration, and touched or handled everything they saw. Their costumes though picturesque were very scanty, and I noted that many of the men went with their right shoulder uncovered. I was told that they were representatives of the tribes who lived on' the banks of the Karun, and had undertaken to prevent their wild neighbours from obstructing the steamers which had begun to run up to Ahwaz,1 and from pillaging the Persian merchants who brought mer chandise for shipment to Basrah. Before the days of steamers on the Karun it frequently happened that the way-dues levied by the tribes on merchants were more than the total value of the camels and their bales together. We reached Faw at 4 p.m., and as it was low tide on the " bar" we hove to until Sunday morning, the i7th. Just after we started again we passed the H.M.I.M.S. " Lawrence," with Colonel Ross and his wife and family on board. We left Bushire on the i8th and arrived at Linjah on the 2oth, where we were delayed for nearly a day. In some very artful way which I did not understand, a party of natives managed to get away in the dark with a boat containing 150 bags of rice, whilst their confederates on board were quarrelling with the ship's officer about the number he had tallied. The importer of the rice swore that only two boatloads had left the ship, but several of the passengers had seen three drift away, and the officer 1 The decree of the Persian Government which threw the Karun open to steam navigation was promulgated in May, 1888, and took effect the following October. Messrs. Lynch provided a fortnightly service of steamers to Ahwaz, with a subsidy from the British Government. 134 Thunder-Storm in the Persian Gidj. called a crew together and went off in one of the ship's boats in search of the missing bags of rice. He found the boatload of rice without much difficulty, and said when he returned to the " Arabia," that he had taken advantage of the growing darkness and of his captain's absence to teach the thieves a lesson. Judging by the state of his knuckles and of his clothes generally the lesson which he taught the thieves was not taught with his tongue only. We reached Bandar 'Abbas on the 2ist, and as soon as the ship anchored we found the heat very great. The sea was like oil, and a heavy stifling evil-smelling mist hung over it; under a double awning on deck the thermometer marked i5i°F. We left in the early evening, and as we steamed eastward saw many signs of an approaching storm. The little waves made by the bow of the ship were crested with brilliant light, and for a mile or two astern the waters churned by the propeller assumed the appearance of a lane of many- coloured splendours. Captain Simpson took us up on the bridge and showed us the lines of sparkling fire in the sea which the dolphins made as they raced round and round the ship. He told us that we were passing through a part of the Gulf of 'Umman that was famous for electrical disturbance at certain times of the year, and that we were running into a violent storm. The crew were at that moment making things taut on the bow of the ship, and as they dragged the chains about, every time these touched each other, they emitted sparks. At 9 p.m. the storm broke upon us, and there seemed to be nothing in the world except the ship and lightning and thunder. Little flames leaped from the stanchions as the chains struck them, and the wire ropes of the masts became lines of fire. It was an awesome sight, and it impressed the Chinese carpenter and his friends so much that they stopped playing cards and cheating each other. The air was a little cooler the next morning, but there was a smell in it that was choking and unpleasant. We reached Gwadar on the 23rd at 5 p.m., and the Karachi and Bombay. 135 captain received a telegram from shore ordering him to await the arrival of Mr. Crawford, H.M.'s Commis sioner for Baluchistan. The captain waited for twenty- seven hours and then departed, the Commissioner arrived two hours later, and we heard subsequently had to wait six days for the next steamer. We were all thankful to leave Gwadar, for the heat was suffocating. We reached Karachi at daylight on the 26th, and I went up into the town to see Mr. Mackenzie, the Director of Indo-European Telegraphs, and he showed me much kindness. We left Karachi at 3.45 p.m. on the 27th, four hours late, feeling very doubtful about catching the homeward Indian mail which was to leave Bombay on the 29th. Among our passengers for Bombay was Captain Hobday, who brought on board two terriers and two beautiful horses. It was quite clear that he and the horses were fast friends, and he spent many hours of the day in talking to them and petting them ; and they returned his affection with all their loyal hearts. In running from Karachi to Bombay, about 500 miles, we were caused much loss of time by the small native coast boats which seemed to be everywhere. Their owners were in the habit of drifting along with out showing lights, and as often as not all the occupants of the boats were fast asleep. Our siren was going at frequent intervals the whole night long, and the look out Indian must have been tired of beating his gong and shouting " Hum dekta hai." We dropped anchor in Bombay Harbour at 3.45 p.m. on the 29th, and I found that I had only seventy-five minutes in which to get tickets for White and myself from the P. & O. offices in the city, and to transport our personal baggage and the tablets and manuscripts to the mail steamer, which was timed to leave at 5 p.m. Captain Simpson himself took the tablets to the mail steamer, the s.s. " Oriental," and to my great relief my old friend, Captain Butterworth, appeared in his launch at the foot of the gangway ladder and gave me help most opportunely. He had received promotion during the past year, and was then living with his wife in tents pitched on the 136 Mr. N. White goes to America. shore close to the sea. Meanwhile, White had insisted on taking charge of his baggage, saying that he would find his own way to the mail steamer. During our journey from Karachi he said he wanted to spend some weeks in India, and asked me to draw a bill on his father and provide him with funds ; this I declined to do, as Sir William White asked me not to leave him behind in India. Captain Butterworth took such steps as were necessary to prevent White missing the steamer, and he appeared in a native boat on the stroke of five, and he and his baggage were hauled up whilst the ship was being cast loose from her moorings. There was a very large number of passengers on board, and we all took the greatest interest in the " Oriental," which was a new ship, and was making her maiden voyage to England. We arrived at Aden on April 4th in the morning, and transferred the Indian mail to the " Arcadia" which was carrying the Australian and China mails. We had a very fine passage to Suez, where we arrived on the 7th at 4 p.m., and here White left me. Sir William White had wired to Mr. Hamilton Lang, who at that time held an appointment in Cairo, and asked him to meet the " Oriental " at Suez and relieve me of the charge of his son. By special arrangement with the P. & O. agent Mr. Hamilton Lang came off to the " Oriental" and took White ashore with him. I heard subsequently that, in accordance with the wishes of Sir William White and the plans which he had made as to his son's disposal, at Sir William's request Mr. Hamilton Lang travelled with him that same evening to Alexandria via Banha, and escorted him to an American liner on which the " Blue-Peter " was hoisted. He then handed to White his tickets for the journey by sea and land to Manitoba, and a sum of money, and a few hours later the liner sailed, not, as White had expected, for Constantinople, but America. We passed through the Suez Canal in twenty hours of actual steaming and reached Port Sa'id in the morning of April 8th. During the coaling I went on shore and met by appointment To face p. 136, vol. ii. 9aEUB9WrifpMI«EJMic^,-X£j /Mj^cd^^^d^^ijKriic. n&TftirvrfnAjify. M ifcrtfjg^ ^fo*+t$+*iF*>£*D&J$.'1h'ctltiJ>J ^^^^^,^tc5<^^r«tj&^ \ ^f^H^K^f^y^^'ij^S^hai ^r^^l^^^-i^^^M.3^J k»a4Ur^^->fr^«^4roU7tfT^»~J.T' if- -, :r.-MT-:;, ; ^^^r4>t^l01-^ , .Vjj^d^tu^J^v'j.^S : ^ • - - i . tt- v-_" . .frOYi, »llt fl^^^i*1*^^ 4t irt4^ ^Ai^rr^^^^si^vv^ ^W^ ^^^^H^^^^Sf,- ^'^^1 -u^^^rte^l^r-r*^^- A column of text and a magical design from a Greek magical papyrus. Brit. Mus., Pap. No. 121, col. 6 Results of the Third Mission. 137 some natives who brought me several hieroglyphic and Greek papyri, and I made arrangements for these to follow me to England. We arrived at Marseilles on the i3th and stayed a day there. We left the follow ing morning and arrived at Gibraltar on Tuesday morning. In obedience to some special order which the captain received there we left in two hours, and, thanks to the calm state of the Bay of Biscay, which was literally " like a mill-pond," we passed the Eddystone Lighthouse at dawn on Friday April igth, and soon after reached Plymouth, where I left the ship. The " Oriental " was a very fine and comfortable ship, and as she had made the journey from Bombay to London in record time, her captain, officers and passengers warmly congratulated each other and them selves. Mr. P. Le Page Renouf, Keeper of the Department, submitted a detailed account of my Mission to the Trustees at their meeting, May nth, and was so good as to report " that the duties of the delicate and most arduous task imposed upon Mr. Budge have been discharged with the same intelligent ability and discre tion which had so signally distinguished the efficiency of his work in former Missions." And the Trustees " approved " his report. The material results of the Mission were: I. 210 tablets and fragments, and miscellaneous objects from Kuyunjik. II. 1,500 tablets, 49 cylinder-seals, etc., fiom Abu Habbah and Der. III. 3 rolls of papyrus inscribed on both sides in Greek. On the backs of these rolls was the copy of Aristotle's 'AG^vaCojv iroXiTeia, the publication of which has brought such fame to the Trustees of the British Museum, and the editor, Sir F. G. Kenyon, K.C.B. IV. Various rolls of papyrus containing portions of the Iliad, magical texts, etc. V. 3 hieroglyphic papyri. 138 Results of the Third Mission. VI. 52 Arabic and Syriac manuscripts from Mosul and the neighbourhood.1 These included " the following rare and curious works " : 1. A commentary by al-Nawawi, who died A.H. 676, on the Sahih of Mushim, four teenth century. 2. Akhbar al-Duwal al-Munkati'ah, a general history by Abu'l-Hasan 'Ali ibn Zafir, who died A.H. 623. 3. Kala'id al-'Ikyan, notices of Spanish poets, by Ibn Khakan, who died A.H. 539. 4. A volume of the Canon of Avicenna, of the twelfth or thirteenth century. 5. Jami'al-Gharad, a treatise on hygiene, by Ibn al-Kuff, who died A.H. 685 ; manu script of the fourteenth century. 6. Commentary of Ibn Hisham al-Sibti, who died A.H. 557, on the Maksurah of Ibn Duraid; dated A.H. 731 = A.D. 1331. In the autumn of 1889 the Principal Librarian suggested to Mr. Le Page Renouf, Keeper of the De partment, that he should send in a report to the Trustees recommending that my salary be raised to the maximum of my Class, and pointed out to him that in 1875 the salary of George Smith, who had done work similar to mine in Mesopotamia, had been raised to the maximum of his Class. Mr. Renouf accepted the suggestion cordially, and in his report on the subject wrote as follows : Mr. Renouf considers " that it is a piece of rare and extreme good fortune for the Museum to have in its service a person who so thoroughly 1 British Museum, Nos. Oriental 4051—4102. Dr. Wright advanced the money for the payment for these manuscripts, and arranged with Dr. Rieu, Keeper of the Department of Oriental Manuscripts, to hand them over to the British Museum when funds became available. Dr. Wright died before the arrangement could be carried out, and the manuscripts were despatched to the Museum by his widow. I mention this to explain the official entry in the Register that the manuscripts were purchased from Mrs. Wright. Results of the Third Mission. 139 understands the languages and the archaeology of all the objects belonging to the multifarious branches of this Department, and is at the same time gifted with some of the finest qualifications for a negotiator and an administrator." The Trustees approved the report and applied for Treasury sanction to give it effect. In a letter dated November 27th the Treasury authorized the raising of my salary to the maximum of the Second Class (£240) " in recognition of his ability and attain ments and the exceptional value of the services rendered by him to the British Museum." FOURTH MISSION, 1890-91. LONDON TO BAGHDAD VIA EGYPT, BERUT, DAMASCUS, AND MOSUL. FOURTH MISSION. LONDON TO DAMASCUS viA EGYPT. THE greater number of the tablets which I acquired in Baghdad in 1899 arrived at the British Museum during the week following my return to duty on April 22nd, and Rawlinson came and inspected them and passed much time in examining their contents. As regards the tablets from Kuyunjik he was of opinion that all the letters and grammatical fragments ought to be published, and the fact that such tablets were still to be found in the mound there made him deter mined to recommend the continuance of excavations on the site. He believed that the tablets inscribed with astronomical and mathematical and magical texts and omens came from Abu Habbah, and thought it very important that the Trustees should take steps to secure all the other parts of the group which were either under the ground there or in the hands of the dealers in Baghdad. He was specially interested in the fine, large Babylonian case-tablets, which helped to com plete the series which I obtained at Der the previous year, for he thought that they came from a site which had not been previously excavated. The net result of his examination of the whole collection was that he suggested to his fellow-Trustees (i) to continue the excavations at Kuyunjik for another year, and (2) to apply to the Porte for a new permit, of a more liberal character than that issued for Kuyunjik, to excavate Der and some half dozen of the neighbouring sites. The Keeper of the Department having consulted two distinguished foreign Assyriologists, warmly supported Rawlinson's views in his report to the Trustees on my Third Mission, and they resolved to ask the Foreign Office to apply to the Porte for a permit to excavate several sites in Babylonia and for more generous terms 144 Application for a Permit for the excavator. The Foreign Office applied to the Porte for the permit (through the British Ambassador, Sir William White), but reminded the Trustees at the same time that Sir William had written in November, 1887, saying that diplomatic representations would not succeed in obtaining permits of an exceptional character. Early in July a dispatch was received from Sir William White, who stated that in his opinion it was undesir able to attempt to obtain a special permit to excavate in Mesopotamia. He went on to say that Mr. Consul Wrench had had a conversation with Hamdi Bey on the subject, and that he had promised to do what he could to forward the interests of the British Museum. And he also said he would take steps to secure the appointment of a more suitable Delegate to accompany the excavator and to watch his work. No complaint had been made by the Trustees about the unsuitability of the Delegate who had been sent with me for his task, and as I had feared that he might be sent with me a second time I had made no comment upon it. The Minister of Public Instruction was disappointed at the behaviour of his nominee, and told Hamdi Bey that he would not employ him again as a Delegate to watch the interests of the Turkish Government. In the last week of July the Principal Librarian received an answer to a letter which he had sent to Mr. Consul Wrench concerning the probability of the Trustees obtaining a permit to excavate. Mr. Wrench described in detail the conversation which he had had with Hamdi Bey, and then suggested that the Trustees should make an application for a permit for two years, and state in it the names of the sites which they wished to excavate and the order in which they proposed to excavate them. This application must be accompanied by a detailed description of the situation of each site, and of the parts of each that were to be excavated, and a map of each site must be appended. It must be distinctly understood that no two sites could be ex cavated simultaneously, and the application for the permit must be addressed to the Ministry of Public to Excavate Several Sites in Mesopotamia. 145 Instruction, Constantinople. The Trustees discussed the matter, and ordered the Principal Librarian and Raw- linson to make all arrangements for resuming the excavations. I submitted to Rawlinson a list of the " Tulul " or " mounds " which I thought would repay excavating, and when he had supplemented it with the names of other mounds well known to him, a petition for a permit was drawn up and sent to the Foreign Office on August i4th. In September Sir William White wrote saying that he had applied for a permit in writing and verbally and that he was hopeful of obtaining an ordinary permit. To apply for anything else just then would be to court disaster, though the Minister of Public Instruction viewed the petition favourably. Early in December another dispatch was received from Sir William White, who reported that the Delegate who had been with me at Mosul was causing trouble at the Porte, but as the Grand Wazir was in favour of granting the permit, he hoped to get it in due course. He pointed out that the season of the year was unfavourable for excavating, and that cholera was just then very prevalent in Mesopotamia, and he recommended the postponement of the proposed excavations. Late in January, 1890, the Foreign Office trans mitted a dispatch from Sir William White announcing that the Porte had refused to accede to the Trustees' application for a permit to make tentative excavations in Mesopotamia. The Turkish Government refused on the grounds that the Turkish regulations concerning the excavations of ancient sites did not allow excava tions to be made, however superficially, at several places at the same time; and they thought that any exception to this rule would be a bad precedent and would lead to many inconveniences. When Rawlinson had read the dispatch he asked me to put in writing any suggestions I could make, and after talking the matter over with him I proposed that application should be made for a permit to excavate Der, such permit to date from the expiration of the permit which I 146 Excavations at Wan. we then had for Kuyunjik. I thought it most important to obtain this permit, for I was certain that thousands of tablets were lying there, and that if we did not excavate the site the natives would do so,1 and, of course, destroy many tablets in the process. Whether we obtained the permit or not it was necessary for me to return to Mosul in order to bring away the tablets which had been recovered from Kuyunjik since I left the town in February of the previous year. I was certain too that the men I had sent into the Tiyari country would make a good haul of Arabic and Syriac manuscripts for me, and that there was much at Baghdad which we ought to secure. Rawlinson approved of these suggestions and discussed them with the other Trustees on February 8th, and an application for a permit for Der was forwarded to the Porte, through the British Ambassador, in due course. The success of the application was jeopardized by some rumours which were circulated at Stambul about this time by certain malicious persons. Some clan destine excavations had been made at Toprak Kale at Wan during the winter and a whole gateway of great archaeological interest had been removed. The local authorities at Wan reported the theft to Hamdi Bey, and rumours reached him to the effect that it had been perpetrated by natives who were incited to undertake the work by me. Excavations had been made at Wan by Captain Clayton, R.E., the British Vice-Consul at Wan, and Mr. H. Rassam in 1881,' but their permit had long since expired, and I had never been to Wan and saw little chance of going there. The Assyrians were masters for a time of the whole country in which Wan lies, and which they called " Urartu," and the results of Captain Clay ton's small excavation proved that Assyrian remains were to be found there, but my interest at that time was exclusively in Kuyunjik and 1 In October, 1889, the Trustees purchased the collection of tablets, nearly 700 in number, which I saw in Baghdad the previous year; most of them came from Der. 2 See Asshur and the Land of Nintrod, pp. 244-6. The Application for a Permit Successful. 147 Der. Early in May dispatches were received from the Vice-Consul at Wan and the Consul for Kurdistan stating that the Turkish authorities at Wan had stopped the excavations which unauthorized persons had been carrying on there. When these persons were questioned they said they were only digging out for building pur poses the stones which they were told they might keep for themselves by the British Vice-Consul when they were digging for him in 1880 and 1881. The Trustees withdrew all claims to the uninscribed stones, and in formed the Foreign Office that if possible I would visit Wan and report upon the site generally. In June the Keeper of the Department received a private letter from Sir William White stating that the application for the permit to excavate Der had passed certain stages, and that he did not anticipate any serious difficulty in obtaining the permit. The Keeper re ported the receipt of this letter to the Trustees on June I4th, and recommended that an application be made to the Treasury for funds sufficient to finish the work at Kuyunjik and to excavate Der. Application was made to the Lords of the Treasury in due course, and the Trustees received their sanction for the expenditure on July 8th. And here I must break the trend of my narrative concerning excavations in Mesopotamia and explain a matter about which much misconception has existed. It will be remembered that in passing through Port Sa'id in 1889 I made arrangements for the dispatch of a box containing papyri to England. This box arrived in due course, and held several rolls of papyrus, three being inscribed in hieroglyphs and the rest in Greek. The Greek rolls were transferred to the Department of Manuscripts, where they were examined and tran scribed by the present Director of the British Museum (Sir F. G. Kenyon) who discovered that the reverses of the rolls were inscribed with a copy of Aristotle's lost work on the Constitution of Athens. This was a very great discovery, and the Trustees decided to publish a facsimile of the text of the work with a transcript and {2 148 A Fragment of the Aristotle Papyrus Missing. translation by Kenyon. As he progressed with the work he found that a large piece of one of the rolls was missing, and I was asked if I could account for it, and whether it might possibly be in the hands of some native in Egypt. Ultimately I was instructed to go to Egypt on my way to Mesopotamia and to spare neither trouble nor expense in finding the missing piece of the papyrus, and I forthwith wrote to friends in Egypt asking them to institute a search at once. Meanwhile the report of Kenyon's great literary discovery spread abroad and, naturally enough, aroused universal interest. At the same time some gentlemen, who for one reason or another generally betook themselves to Egypt for the winter, claimed to have seen the papyrus in Egypt and to have identified the Greek text on its back as the lost work of Aristotle on the Constitution of Athens.1 Others claimed to have discovered the papyrus them selves and to have sold it to natives who sold it to me, and more than one archaeologist told me personally that the Trustees acquired it from him. I therefore take this opportunity of saying how the rolls of papyri came into my hands. I was travelling to Asyut with the Rev. Chauncey Murch in December, 1888, by slow trains and easy stages so that I might be able to go to various villages in Upper Egypt and examine objects which natives wished to sell. Among other places we stopped at Malawi, about 185 miles from Cairo, and as we arrived at two o'clock in the morning we gratefully accepted the hospitality of some Coptic friends of Murch for the rest of the night. Early in the morning various natives brought us antiquities, chiefly Coptic, and some of these 1 The official description of the papyrus is as follows : Papyrus CXXXI. Recto. Accompt-book of Didymus, son of Aspasius, farm bailiff to Epimachus, son of Polydeuces, in the neighbourhood of Hermopolis, giving his receipts and expenditure for the nth year of the Emperor Vespasian (A.D. 78-79), 3 rolls, 7 ft. z\ in., 5 ft. 5 in., 3 ft. ii in. Verso "AftjvaiW TroAira'n. Late first or early second century. See Greek Papyri in the British Museum, p. 166 ff., and Kenyon, Aristotle on the Constitution of Athens, 3rd edit., 1892. The Papyri from Hermopolis. 149 we bought. It was only natural for Coptic antiquities to be found at Malawi, for the modern village is built near the site of the famous old Coptic town of Manlau, of the name of which Malawi is a corruption. In the early centuries of the Christian era there were many churches at Manlau, and the place was a thriving business centre. In the course of our conversation a native from the other side of the river reminded me that the Greek magical papyri which I bought in 1887 had come from him, and I asked him where he obtained them. He mentioned a place a few miles down the river on the opposite bank, and pressed us to go and visit it with him that day. We crossed the river and then rode donkeys northwards to the site of the ancient city of Khemenu (i.e., the centre of the cult of Thoth and his Eight Gods). Keeping well away from the ruins of the old city, which the Greeks called " Her mopolis," we bore to the east and came to a low, flat spur of the hills close by, where there were the remains of many fine ancient rock-hewn Egyptian tombs of the twenty-sixth dynasty. In one side of the spur of the hill two series of tombs had been hewn during the Roman period, the upper series had been occupied by Greek or Roman settlers or officials in Egypt, and several mummies of the fourth or fifth century A.D. had been taken out of them. The lower series had not been excavated because of the immense heaps of stone and sand that blocked up the approaches. There seemed no doubt that the tombs of the lower series contained important antiquities, and I suggested to the Copts who had come with us from Malawi that they should apply to the Service of Antiquities for permission to excavate the site. They absolutely refused to do this, saying they had no faith in that Department. Finally I made an arrangement with them personally, and undertook to purchase from them one-half of every thing they might find in the tombs; and I agreed that if they found nothing I would pay one-half of the actual cost of clearing away the stones and sand which blocked the entrances to the halls of the tombs. Close 150 The Papyri from Hermopolis. to these tombs were the ruins of a Coptic monastery and the graves of many of its monks. The Copts made no attempt to get the tombs cleared until the following summer, when the great heat usually paralysed the energies of the inspectors of the Service of Antiquities, and the contents of the tombs were left to take care of themselves. In September it became possible to enter the tombs of the lower series in the spur of the hill, and the searchers found that several of the coffins in them had been ransacked in ancient times by tomb robbers, who had broken up many mummies and left the pieces lying in the coffins. I kept in communication with the natives who were making the search for papyri, and I received from one of them in November, 1888, a letter saying that they had found some good-sized rolls of papyrus in a painted cartonnage box. The writer of this letter and two of his partners met me in Port Sa'id in April, 1889, for I had informed him from Aden when I expected to arrive there, and we discussed the purchase of all these papyri and they named their price. The papyri reached England in due course and the Trustees bought them, and immedi ately some busybodies accused me of wasting the funds of the Museum by paying a " fool-price " for the papyri, and others said I had taken advantage of the "poor natives" and robbed them by paying for the papyri less than they were worth. As a matter of fact the natives were paid more than they asked, and they were perfectly satisfied, and did business with me for at least twenty years more, in fact as long as they had anything to sell. But to return to my narrative. I left London on September 26th, 1890, embarked on the Messageries Maritimes s.s. " Niger " at Marseilles on the 2jth and sailed for Alexandria. The ship had her full comple ment of passengers, among whom were many Brothers and Sisters belonging to various Roman Catholic Orders, who were returning to their monasteries and nunneries in Egypt, Palestine and Syria. I made the acquaintance of Mr. Joyce, the Director of the Alexandria Water Roman Tomb at Alexandria. 151 Works, who told me many interesting stories of General Gordon, General Earle and other old military heroes, and in later years assisted me greatly in Alexandria. And I had several conversations with the Chief of the Jesuits at Berut, who gave me much valuable informa tion about Syria and the places where manuscripts were likely to be found. The voyage to Alexandria was quite delightful and came to an end all too soon. The fine ship kept a perfectly even keel the whole way. The sky was cloudless, and though the days were very hot the light easterly winds prevented the heat from becoming oppressive. We arrived at Alexandria at daybreak on October 2nd. I spent the day in visiting a splendid tomb of the Roman period which had been recently discovered a few miles outside the city, and was promptly called " Cleopatra's Tomb." The owner of the ground in which the tomb was found was most anxious to sell the sarcophagus in it to the British Museum, but the price he asked for it was ridiculous. There were very few tourists in Alexandria at the time, and of these the most remarkable was Miss Marsden, who was about to set out for Russia and Siberia, where she was going (if possible) to visit all the prisons through out the country by special permission of the Czar. She told me a great deal about her mission, and how she hoped to collect data which when published would stir up public opinion throughout Europe and force the Great Powers to make the Russian Government amelio rate the condition of its prisoners and also of the lepers. She was full of enthusiasm and of somewhat unpractical energy, and was fully convinced that prisoners in Russia were treated far worse than they were in the days of John Howard, though she had no proof that such was the case. She must have encountered great difficulties1 in fulfilling her self-imposed task. As there was nothing I could do in Alexandria to 1 See her On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers, London, 1895. Her life was published by H. Johnson at London in the same year her book appeared. 152 Kitchener and the Egyptian Sudan. forward my quest for the missing fragment of Aristotle's 1'A0r)va.ic»v TroXweia, I went to Cairo on the 3rd, and had to wait there until the morning of the 7th for a train to take me to Asyut. On the 5th I delivered certain letters to Colonel (later Lord) Kitchener, and renewed my acquaintance with him which had begun so far back as 1875. I spent a long afternoon with him and found that he was just as keenly interested in Oriental Archaeology as he was in the days when he was working for the Palestine Exploration Fund. He talked a great deal about Mesopotamia and Baghdad, and excavations in Egypt, which he thought were badly mismanaged, and he urged me to lose no chance of acquiring antiquities and taking them to England. He asked me many questions about the Egyptian Sudan and its ancient history, and was evidently very desirous of playing a prominent part in its restoration to Egypt. He walked round his garden with me and showed me the various flowers which he was trying to grow, then took me to his stable and talked to his horses, and when we reached the gate he wished me " good luck" and said, " If ever I get the job of smashing the Khalifah1 and taking Khartum you shall have your' look in' at the Sudan." And he kept his word, as the following copy of a letter of his will show : " CAIRO, "June I5th, 1897. " DEAR MR. BUDGE, " I am quite sure your military ability would be of great service to me at or about Merowi, so if you find yourself at Assuan without raising any vast amount of attention, means will be provided for you to proceed. " You can select your own time, but it appears to me that there is^less likelihood of your military expedition being talked about before September than later. " Yours sincerely, " (Signed) HERBERT KITCHENER." The result of this letter was that the Trustees sent me to the Sudan six weeks later, and when I arrived at 1 The Mahdi died June 22nd, 1885. His Collection of Greek Coins. 153 Aswan I was " taken over" and sent up to Marawi, where I spent some months in excavating.1 The following morning Kitchener sent me a message to the effect that he wished to go with me to the Egyptian Museum at Gizah, which had recently been opened to the public. We drove out early in the day and spent a long morning there, and I found that he was chiefly interested in the objects which illustrated the decorative powers of the Egyptians, and that he ad mired the bas-reliefs, etc., of the fourth dynasty far more than the sculpture of the eighteenth dynasty. He much regretted that the unstable condition of the old Bulak buildings made it necessary to remove the Egyptian collections from it to the palace at Gizah, for a more incongruous place for them could hardly have been found. The massive sculptures of the Ancient Empire and the mummies of Rameses II and other great kings looked sadly out of place in rooms with walls painted blue, and mouldings of salmon-pink picked out in gold, and ceilings decorated with panels, on which were painted Cupids, Venuses, etc. In the afternoon I took Kitchener out to Gizah village to see some anti quities, and then on to the Pyramids, in the neighbour hood of which lived various dealers, and they showed him their collections. On our return to Cairo we visited several shops where Greek coins were to be seen, and he purchased several examples at what seemed to me to be high prices. He was much interested in Greek coins, which he admired greatly, and in 1899 I saw two cabinets full of them in his house in Cairo. In the evening he took me to dine at the Khedivial Club with Dr. Sandwith, General Dormer, Tigrane Pasha and the German Consul-General. I left for Upper Egypt on the morning of the 7th, and began making enquiries among the natives who busied themselves with antiquities for the missing columns of the Aristotle papyrus. After many fruitless 1 An account of my missions to the Sudan will be found in my Egyptian Suddn 2 vols., London, 1907. 154 The Missing Fragment of the Aristotle Papyri Found. visits to villages on both sides of the Nile, I gained the information I sought at Beni Suwef, and finally found the piece of papyrus itself in the hands of a gentleman at Asyut. I had no difficulty at all in arranging the matter with him, and I took the fragment with me to Luxor. The next question was how to get it to London. It was quite hopeless to expect that the Service of Antiquities would allow it to leave the country, and I did not want to take it with me to Mesopotamia. At length I bought a set of Signer Beato's wonderful Egyptian photographs, which could be used for exhibition in the Egyptian Galleries of the British Museum, and having cut the papyrus into sections, I placed these at intervals between the photo graphs, tied them up in some of Madame Beato's gaudy paper wrappers, and sent the parcel to London by registered book-post. Before I left Egypt a telegram told me that the parcel had arrived safely, and that its contents were exactly what had been hoped for. I then spent a busy week in collecting Egyptian anti quities, and found in the various villages about Luxor and in the neighbourhood many objects of considerable interest. The weather was very hot and the atmo sphere, on account of the inundation, was damp and steamy. A strong southerly breeze, which seemed to grow hotter each day, made it difficult to saw wood and make the packing cases for my acquisitions, but with the help of the Rev. Chauncey Murch, who was a first-rate carpenter, this work was finished, and I handed over to Messrs. Thos. Cook and Son a considerable number of cases for transport to Cairo. I left Luxor at dawn on the i8th, and found the passage to Asyut full of interest. I had never seen the Nile in flood before and it was a most wonderful sight. In the Theba'id the waters reached almost to the hills on the western bank, and eastward the river appeared to have become an inland sea. Men, women, children and cattle were all huddled together on the little mounds on which the villages were built, and the great dykes, which also served as roads, were swallowed up in the The Nile in Flood. 155 waters. In many of the villages which we passed I saw whole families perched on planks which rested in the forked branches of the dum palms, and they appeared to be quite comfortable. At night time the stars of the wonderful Egyptian sky were reflected so vividly in the still waters out towards the hills, that there seemed to be two heavens of stars, one overhead and one on the ground. We tied up for the night at Girga, and the Rev. Chauncey Murch, who was going to Akhmim to ordain a native teacher, took me into the town to make the acquaintance of some wealthy Copts who possessed a good collection of Coptic manuscripts. We arrived at Asyut on Sunday afternoon, and I rode out on a donkey with one of Hicks's old officers who had escaped the onslaught of the Mahdi's troops in 1883, to see some early tombs in the hills which had recently been dis covered by the natives. We saw some very good painted wooden coffins of the twelfth dynasty, which I subsequently acquired. The journey by train from Asyut to Cairo was in those days perfectly detestable, as many will remember. Eleven hours were allowed for the journey of 210 miles, and the train stopped for five minutes at each of the sixty stations between Asyut and Cairo. I left Asyut at 9 p.m., but did not reach Cairo until the following evening, because our engine broke down several times, and because we were held up at one place for eight hours whilst they repaired the damage caused to the railway-bed by the inundation. Whilst in Cairo I enjoyed the hospitality of General Sir Francis and Lady Grenfell at Mustafa Pasha Fahmi. Having made arrangements with Brugsch Bey, Con- servateur of the Egyptian Museum at Gizah, for the sealing and despatch of the cases which were on their way down the river, I went to Alexandria on the 22nd. General Sir William Butler, who was then in com mand at Alexandria, sent his secretary, Mr. Magro, to bring me to his house, and showed me much kindness, and gave me letters to friends of his in Berut and Damascus. 156 Jaffa and Berut. Early on the 23rd I booked a passage to Jaffa1 (Japho in Joshua xix, 46, Joppa in Acts ix, 36) and intended to ride up from Jerusalem to Damascus. I embarked in a Khedivial steamer which called at all the ports on the Syrian coast between Port Sa'id and Iskan- darun (Alexandretta), and we left Alexandria at 10 a.m. Two hours later we met a stiff easterly breeze, and in a short time a high sea was running. Our little steamer made no progress and the engines were slowed down, and we did not arrive off Jaffa until the afternoon of the 25th. The captain whistled several times for boats to put off for the mails and passengers, but none came and nothing could be landed. Having already lost much time he decided to steam direct for Berut, and there was nothing else for me to do but to go with him. We had, unfortunately for us, run into one of the " three days' storms," for which the Eastern Mediterranean is famous, and all our passengers, Jews, Christians, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, with one voice, though in different languages, cursed the sea. We arrived at Berut early on the 26th, and as the Customs authorities and the Quarantine officers were very difficult to satisfy it took three hours to get free from the ship. The former confiscated my large re volver, medicine case, patent spirit stove, and many printed books, including a Kur'an, and I went to the British Consulate to obtain help in getting back my possessions. As the British Consul had gone to England to get married and his locum tenens was paying a visit in the Lebanon Mountains for a " few days " it seemed as if I should have to waste several days in Berut or lose my things. On my way back to the Hotel d'Orient an official of the Customs, who spoke French, saluted me and told me that all my belongings had been carefully kept together in the office of the Nazir (i.e., overseer), and that if he and his Excellency might do themselves 1 This old town is mentioned in the Tall al-'Amarnah Tablets, where the form of its name is " (alu) Ya-pu " ^|T £tTr ^"-- (Bezold's edition of the British Museum Group, p. 127,1. 20.) Festival of the Prophet's Birthday. 157 the honour of breakfasting with me at eleven o'clock at the hotel they would bring them with them. Both gentlemen appeared at the time stated with my things, and having paid them the " customary fees " we all enjoyed our meal, and we parted in a most friendly manner. As the Mulid an-Nabi, or festival of the Prophet's birthday, was being celebrated that day, the town was decorated with flags of all kinds, and the people were very merry. In the evening they all turned out to see the fireworks, and the town was very noisy. I took a guide recommended by the Turkish officials and went round the town. The bazar was not interesting, but I saw some very curious buildings in the old part of the town, and several quaint corners where the narrow streets joined. Berut was a very important town in the fifteenth century before Christ, and it is mentioned several times in the Tall al-'Amarnah Tablets.1 It was practically destroyed during the wars of Antiochus VII and Tryphon (about B.C. 140), but the Romans rebuilt it and it became once more a flourishing town with a theatre and amphitheatre, baths, etc. It was famous for its Law College, which was removed to Sidon after the earthquake that ruined the town in 551. The Arabs captured it about 634-36, and Baldwin I in 1125 ; the successors of the latter kept it for about sixty years. Salah ad-Din (Saladin) wrested it from the Crusaders2 in 1187, but they regained possession of it ten years later and kept it till about 1290. The Turks occupied it at the end of the seventeenth century and have held it ever since, except for nine years (1832-40), during which the Egyptians were masters of the city. I made enquiries with the view of visiting the interior of the mosque, which is said to have been originally a church built by the Crusaders, but was told that it was impossible. I therefore decided to devote the rest of the day to visiting the sculptures of Egyptian 1 The common forms of the name are (alu) Biruna -E^f >-< *JH >-/"f and (alu) Biruta -^f >~c ^fT z See Yakut, i, p. 785. 158 Monuments at the Dog River. and Assyrian kings at the mouth of the Nahr al-Kalb, or the " Dog River,"1 the " Lykus " or " Wolf River " of classical writers. These lie at the other end of St. George's Bay, about ten miles from Berut, and the drive there was said to be very pleasant. I called on Dr. Fritz Rosen, the German Consul at Berut, and invited him and his wife to join me in my proposed expedition, and they did so ; we hired a carriage and set out in the early afternoon for the Dog River. Just after leaving the old town we passed some ruins which are said to mark the spot where St. George slew the Dragon, and then drove through a long series of most beautiful gardens that came down close to the shore and reached almost to the Dog River. We crossed several small rivers, the Nahr Berut, the Nahr Mut (i.e., the " Death River "), etc., and in about two hours arrived at a quaint little inn at the northern end of the bridge over the Dog River. The sculptures are found high up on the rock on one side of the pass, and beneath them in ancient times ran the high road from the interior to the sea. The largest monuments are stelae of Rameses II with figures of the king sacrificing to the gods Ra and Amen, and hieroglyphic texts ; these marked the limit of his dominions in Syria. Near these are figures and inscriptions of Ashur-nasir-pal and his son Shalmaneser II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and two figures of As syrian kings which could not be identified.2 A little distance from these were fragments of one Greek and one Latin inscription. Close to the bridge, in a most prominent position, and cut on an old Egyptian stele, is a French inscription made by order of General de Beaufort de Hautpoul, who visited the place with Colonel Osmont and General Ducrat, and others in 1860-61. Dr. Rosen told me that there were inscriptions 1 My guide told me that there used to be a stone dog at the mouth of the river, which barked when an enemy attempted to enter it, but the source of this tradition is unknown to me. E For a general description see Lortet, La Syrie d'aujourd'hui, Paris, 1884, p. 657 ff. Dr. Schroder. 159 in Mismdrt, i.e., cuneiform, at many places in the neighbourhood, but without the materials for making paper impressions visits to them would have been useless. On our way back to Berut Dr. Fritz Rosen very kindly invited me to visit him that evening so that he might show me some maps of the various routes from Damascus to Mosul, which had been compiled by German travellers and were then in the Consulate, and I accepted. Dr. Fritz Rosen was the son of Dr. Georg Rosen,1 formerly Prussian Consul in Jerusalem, with whom my wife and I stayed during a long visit which we paid to Detmold in May and June, 1885. His wife, a daughter of Monsieur Roche, the eminent French examiner for the British Government, was a fellow-student with my wife at the National Training School for Music. I was very glad to meet my old friends again, and I went to the German Consulate after dinner and spent a very useful and pleasant evening there. Dr. Rosen had asked Dr. Schroder to meet me, and I learned from him many facts which I found most useful during my journey to Mosul. Dr. Schroder was a colossus of Semitic learning, and was as great an 1 It was of this gentleman and his wife that Holman Hunt told the following story: The Pasha, who had been courageous enough to allow Franghis to enter the Mosque As Sakreh, was a Moslem of singularly open mind. He came to Jerusalem not only without a handsome number of wives, but without one. He soon conceived a cordial friendship for Baron Rosen, the Prussian Consul, and visited him as an intimate. The Consul, who was of courteous and gentle manner, appreciated the desire of the Pasha to understand the life of a European house hold, and welcomed him at all times. The Pasha became specially interested in the household affairs which, without ceremony, Madame Rosen discharged in his presence. After a while, in a confidential talk with the Consul, he avowed that the European system of manag ing a house was distinctly to be preferred to that of the Oriental, in that dishonesty was completely checked in the servants; this, he declared, was truly excellent, but still, he added, " There is one point I cannot understand; your wife effectually guards you from dishonest servants, but what check have you to prevent her from defrauding you herself? " Pre-Raphaelilism, vol. ii, p. 33, London, 1905. 160 Lebanon Pass. authority on Phoenicia and its history and archseology as Movers. Like all the other great German scholars I met between 1880 and 1890, Noldeke, Rodiger, Dill- mann, Hoffmann, Schrader, Merx, Socin and others, he was very modest and gave me the information he had to give ungrudgingly. On my return to Berut I found that there was a seat vacant in the diligence which was going to leave the following morning for Damascus, and I secured it. We left the hotel at 4 a.m. and travelled smoothly and in comparative comfort, although the space allowed inside the coach per passenger was not excessive. But the vehicle itself was in good condition, and the animals looked as if they were fed regularly and sometimes groomed; it was drawn by six animals, three horses and three mules. The road to Damascus, seventy miles long, was made by French engineers soon after 1860, and it had been well maintained; it was, I believe, at that time the only good road in all Syria. It was quite dark when we left for Damascus and very cold, so little could be seen of the country through which we drove. When the day broke we saw that the road ran practically parallel with the old mule track, on which were many native travellers who could not afford to pay for permission to use the French road. When we began to ascend the slopes of Lebanon our pace decreased considerably. The growing light revealed a well culti vated country, and some of the views, especially those westward, were very beautiful. After passing 'Areyah the road winds the whole way to Maksah. We passed Khan Jamhur, Khan Budekhan and Khan Sufar and soon afterwards we entered country which was to all intents and purposes a desert. The top of the Lebanon Pass is marked by Khan Mizhir, and from this point we obtained magni ficent views in all directions, in the west the sea, in the north-east Ba'albak, and in the south Mount Hermon were easily visible. After Khan Murad the road ran by the side of the mountain and after passing Maksah we skirted the northern end of Al-Baka'a, i.e., the plain between Lebanon and Anti Lebanon. At Ashtura and Ba'albak. 161 eleven o'clock we reached Ashtura, or Shtora, where (as I intended to visit Ba'albak) I left the diligence. There was nothing of importance to see at Ashtura, which seemed to exist solely in the interests of the Berut- Damascus Road Company. The little inn was clean and well kept, and the innkeeper ordered a carriage to be got ready to take me to Ba'albak whilst lunch was served. I left Ashtura about one o'clock, and did not arrive at Ba'albak until sunset. I had the vehicle to myself, and when the driver found that I knew a little Arabic he invited me to sit by his side and then talked freely. At one point on the road he became very animated in his conversation, and wishing to have his hands free he tied the reins round one leg and went on talking for some time. When he paused to light his cigarette we found that the horses had stopped, but neither of us noticed it before. Soon after we passed the village of Mu'allakah he pointed out to me on the left Al-Karak Nuh, a large building which is said to be the Tomb of Noah. Several miles further on, this side of Tamnin, he pointed to a place on the left, where he said there were many ancient rock-hewn tombs. We passed through Tamnin and the road then ran over the plain more to the north-east. We crossed the river Lifani and next came to Talliyah, where we stopped for half an hour ; here the driver had many friends and they showed me much civility. It was now growing late, and when we came to Duris I could not visit the ruins which the driver said were quite near, but I saw them the next day. An hour later we arrived at Ba'albak and the ruins looked very fine in the light of the afterglow. The little inn was clean and tidy and was, I think, kept by a Greek. In the course of the evening some French Sisters who had a school there brought in and offered for purchase coloured purses and bags knitted by their pupils, and each guest bought several, and the Sisters went away happy. Ba'albak lies about thirty-five miles north-north west of Damascus, and there seems to be little doubt that the Romans called the site " Heliopolis," this m 162 The Temple of Ba'albak. name being probably a translation of its ancient name. It occupies an important position on the great road from Tyre to Aleppo and a city must always have stood here. The Romans maintained a garrison here, and Antoninus Pius and other emperors are said to have founded temples in the city and to have beautified it. Theodosius the Great turned the great temple into a church. It was besieged by the Arabs in the seventh century, and its inhabitants surrendered it and paid the conquerors tribute. The Seljuk princes captured it at the end of the eleventh century, Changiz Khan in 1140, Hulagu destroyed much of the city in 1260, and Timur sacked it in 1400. The Turks took possession of it early in the sixteenth century, and under their rule it has sunk to an unimportant village, and the trade which formerly made it rich has transferred itself to other routes. After the French Sisters had departed the innkeeper came in with a Turkish official, and brought him to me and told me that he was " Nazir Antikat," or Custo dian of the ruins of Ba'albak. This gentleman spoke French and was well acquainted with the history of the town under Arab rule, and after some talk he kindly proposed to walk about the ruins with me so that I might see them by starlight and moonlight. We set out at once, and as he knew all the short cuts we soon found ourselves in places where massive walls stood of old, and where good views of the temples might be obtained. The ruins looked much larger by night than by day, and seemed to cover a great deal of ground ; and as there was no strong light to show up all the damage which the pillars and columns had sustained, the general effect was very fine. In this way I spent a couple of enjoyable and instructive hours. Before the Nazir left me he promised to come for me at 5 a.m. and to show me the ruins by morning light, and true to his promise he came. I went with him, and I was glad to find by the opening in the wall of the temple a guardian who demanded 4^ francs for admission, and gave me a receipt for the money when I paid it. The Monoliths of Ba'albak. 163 The fees collected in this way were used for clearing the debris from the ruins. The Nazir quickly showed me the important parts of the ruins of the Great Temple,1 and then we passed on to the so-called Temple of the Sun, where there were many sculptures and reliefs that called for careful study. The Corinthian columns, which seemed to be nearly fifty feet high, were very handsome. I was anxious to see the three gigantic stones of which 1 had read and heard so much, and the Nazir, who thought the Temple of the Sun the most wonderful building in Syria (and he was right!), reluctantly led me away from it to the western outer wall where the three stones could be seen. He pointed out in the middle course of the wall those three6 huge blocks, the like 1 The first European to give us any account of the ruins of Ba'albak was Martin von Baumgarten in his Peregrinatio in Syriam, Noriberg, 1594, 4to. They were next described by (i) Peter Belon (born 1518, died 1564 ; see a reprint of his Travels in Ray's Collection, 2 vols., London, 1693); (2) Andre Thevet, Cosmographie Universelle, 2 vols., Paris, 1575 ; (3) Melchior von Seydlitz, Beschreibung des Wallfahrt nach dem heiligen Lande, Gorlitz, 1580, 4to ; (4) M. K. Radzi- will, Hierjsolymitana Peregrinatio, Brunsbergae, 1601, fol.; (5) F. Ouaresmius, Historica Theologica, 2 vols., Antwerp, 1639; (6) H. Maundrell, A Journey, 4th ed., Oxford, 1721; (7) Jean de la Roque, Voyage de Syrie, Paris, 1722 ; (8) Pococke, Description of the East, 2 vols., London, 1743-45 : and (9) B. de Moncony, Journal des Voyages, 3 pts., Lyons, 1765-66, 4to. The best of the books on Ba'albak is Robert Wood's Ruins of Balbec, otherwise Heliopolis, London, 1757, and every traveller who has had it with him there will admit this. Wood's account of the ruins has formed the base of all modern descrip tions of them, and it assisted Robinson (Biblical Researches, vol. iii) in arriving at some important conclusions. Arab writers have much to say about Ba'albak, which Yakut (i, p. 673) spells "Balabakku." It is frequently mentioned in the works of Istakhri, Ibn Hawkal and Mukaddasi (see De Goeje's Index Geographicus), and Yakut, having discussed the meaning of the name, gives a sketch of its conquest by the Muslims. Ibn Juber (ed. Wright, p. 259) speaks of its " strong fortress," Mas'udi speaks with respect of the great temple (iv, p. 87), and Ibn Batutah praises the sweetmeats, the textile fabrics, and the wooden pots and spoons which were made there (i, p. 185-187). * These are probably referred to in the Edict of Theodosius which ordered the Great Temple to be turned into a church for Christians : TO ifflov "HAinvTrriAous ... TO fjLtya. KOI Trtpifiorjrov, Kai TO Tpi\i6ov. See Chronicon Paschale, Olymp. cclxxxix. m 2 164 The Quarry at Ba'albak. of which for size have never been built into any other wall in the world. As I had sent on my luggage to Damascus the day before I had no tape with which to measure them. The Nazir gave me their dimensions in cubits, piks, palms and fingers, and his measurements showed the stones to be 64 feet 3 inches in length, 10 feet 4 inches in width, and 12 feet 10 inches in thick ness. And their position in the wall was quite 20 feet from the ground. Having seen how immense masses of granite are moved about in quarries by means of levers and hardwood wedges, I did not so much wonder at their position at this height in the wall as at the skill of the quarrymen who first selected the spot in the quarry to work at, and then got out these splendid monoliths. We next went to the little temple in the village ; judging by the crosses painted on the walls, this must have been used at one time for a church. Whilst we were there a messenger came to say that if I intended to go to Damascus that day I must leave at once, and we went to the carriage which was waiting close by. The Nazir insisted on the driver taking me to see the great undetached stone in the quarry, which was several feet longer than any one of the three in the outer western wall, and then drove back with me to Ashtura. On leaving the quarry we drove to the village of Duris, which we reached in about three-quarters of an hour. We walked to the ruins called "Kubbat Duris," i.e., " Dome " or " Shrine " of Duris, and admired the handsome granite columns which were standing there. These must have been removed from some temple at Ba'albak, and it was clear that they were far older than the remains round about them. No one knew anything about the holy man in whose honour the Kubbah was built, but the sarcophagus which stood upright and was used as a mikrab, or prayer niche, proved that he was a Muslim. We left Ashtura about one o'clock, and drove over the flat land of the " split " or " plain " of Al-Baka'a at a good pace. We crossed the river Litani, and in a little The Abana and, Pharpar. 165 over an hour arrived at Majdal 'Anjar; a little to the left were the ruins of a large town which was thought to be Chalcis. We next passed 'Ain Jadidah, and through the Wadi al-Karn. After leaving this pleasant little valley the scenery became wild and savage, and the crossing of the Sahrat Dimas was very uninteresting. The Sahrat is a stony desert, very much like the stony plateau .between the Nile and the Great Oasis. About 4.30 we arrived at Hamah, where we changed horses and obtained some refreshment. On leaving Hamah we seemed to enter another world. Our road lay through the Wadi Barada, i.e., the " Valley of Coolness," and from the point of entrance all the way to Damascus the drive was most pleasant. Wherever the waters of the Barada reached there were gardens and groves of trees of all the usual kinds found in Syria, and large patches of cultivation, which stretched right out to the edge of the desert. Damascus owes so much to the Barada1 (i.e., the Amanah, or Abhanah, of 2 Kings v, 12) and its fine water that there is some excuse for Naaman's boast that " Abana and Pharpar,2 rivers of Damascus " were " better than all the waters of Israel." Half an hour after we left Hamah we passed Dummar, a suburb of Damascus where rich Damascenes live, and then for some miles we drove through beautiful plantations and gardens, and suddenly the minarets and cupolas of the great mosque of Damascus came into view. Crossing the Barada. we skirted Salihlyah, another suburb of Damascus, and then passing over a region intersected with many little canals we entered Damascus a little after sunset, when the after-glow was beautifying every thing it fell upon. The terminus of the French road was near the Hotel Dimitri, and there I went with my belongings. 1 The Chrysorrhoas of Greek writers. 1 The Nahr Barbar of the Arabs. Robinson (Bill. Researches, iii, p. 447 f.) and others have identified the Parpar of the Bible with the 'Awaj or "crooked" river into which it flowed. i66 DAMASCUS TO MOSUL VIA PALMYRA, DER Az-ZOR AND SlNjAR. IN the morning of October 2Qth I went to the British Consulate at the north-west corner of Damascus and presented my letters of introduction to the Consul, Mr. John Dickson. He received me very kindly, told me that Sir William White had telegraphed to him and asked him to assist me in every way possible, and then proceeded to talk over my proposed journey to Mosul. My plan was to go to Mosul by way of Palmyra, thence to Der Az-Zur on the Euphrates, and across the desert to Mosul by whichever route was safest. When Mr. Dickson heard of this plan he shook his head and said it was impossible, both on account of the cholera which was said to be still raging in Northern Mesopotamia, and the unsettled state of the country. He thought it far safer and wiser for me to go to Baghdad by sea via Bombay and not to go to Mosul at all that winter. But I told him that I must go to Palmyra because I wanted to add to our collection of Palmyrene busts, and to Mosul because of the Syriac and Arabic manuscripts and the Kuyunjik tablets that were waiting for me there, and that if I could not go to Mosul I might as well return to England at once. I added that in addition to these business reasons for going to Palmyra and Mosul, 1 wanted to cross that " great and terrible wilderness " that lies between Syria and the Tigris, and that for many years I had longed to do so. Richard Burton had described it to me in unforgettable words in 1883, and his picture of its grim and splendid majesty and its ever-changing but always terrible face, had etched itself deeply on my mind. Mr. Dickson listened courteously and stated the reasons why I should not go, and finally said that as he really could not guarantee my safety if I went he Mr. John Dickson. 167 would take no responsibility for any attempt of mine to cross the desert. I told him that I intended to go all the same, that I was not going to waste my oppor tunity of doing so, being in Damascus, and that as he could not help me officially I begged him earnestly not to hinder or frustrate, officially or privately, any attempt I might make to go. After a pause he told me that there were certain French Sisters and others who were waiting in Damascus to set out for Mosul, but that neither the French Consul nor the Wall would allow them to start. " How then," said he, " can I possibly assist you to go to Mosul ? Your presence in the city is already well known, and the Turkish police have reported that you are a German railway engineer on your way to Persia by way of Mosul, to make surveys for the German Government. You cannot set out on such a journey without making preparations, you cannot hide the making of these preparations, and if you could you could not possibly get out of the city without the knowledge of the watchmen and the police." These arguments seemed to be unanswerable, and I was in despair. But whilst we were still discussing the matter a kawwas, or consular servant, brought into Mr. Dickson a letter from the Sarayah. He opened it and read it, and as he read his face cleared, and he said, " This is good: it is a letter from the Wall Pasha, who says that the English ' father of antikas,' whom he saw in Baghdad nearly two years ago, has come to Damascus on his way to Mosul and Baghdad, and he hopes that you will go with me to see him without delay and drink coffee with him." The kawwas evidently knew the contents of the letter, for he waited for an answer, and Mr. Dickson told him to say that he and the English " father of antikas " would come " on the wings of haste." Then dropping the mask of the responsible official and showing the man he said to me : " Now I see a way of managing the matter, ana I can help you. But the Wall must help us also." We set out at once for the Sarayah and were taken to the Wall's private office, and in a few minutes he i68 Kindness of the Walt of Damascus. appeared and welcomed us warmly. He asked me many questions about Colonel Talbot, who was acting Consul- General when I was in Baghdad, and about the anti quities and manuscripts which I had taken home from there in 1889. It was clear that he was on as good terms with Mr. Dickson at Damascus as he had been with Colonel Talbot at Baghdad, and he seemed to be really anxious to " get on " with the representatives of all the Great Powers. He asked me what I was doing in Damascus, and where I was going, and I explained my plans to him, and asked him to help me to carry them out. He turned to Mr. Dickson and had a conversation with him in an undertone, and then told me that officially he was unable to help me, for he had refused to sanction the departure of the French Sisters for Mosul and of other Europeans to other towns; that the " yellow wind," i.e., the cholera, was still raging in many parts of Meso potamia, and that every town and large village had a cordon drawn round it, and that any attempt to bribe the police would certainly fail. " Such," said he, " is my official attitude. But you did me a kindness in Baghdad and I will do you a kindness in Damascus. I cannot and dare not authorize you to set out for Mosul, and I ought to detain you here in quarantine, but I can arrange the matter in such a way that you will have the opportunity of doing what you want only at your own risk. I have need to send letters to the shekh of the camel fair at Sukhnah, two or three days' journey beyond Tudmur, and though the business is not urgent, I will send them this week. Allah has already sent the man to carry them, and He now sends the opportunity. The man to carry them is Muhammad an-Nasir ibn Idris, who for many years was one of the ablest of the camel-postmen who carried the mail for the English between Baghdad and Damascus.1 (The camel-postmen 1 The Government camel-post between Baghdad and Damascus was a development of the private camel-post which was established by Lynch Bros, soon after 1860. Captain Lynch made arrange ments with the shekhs of the various districts through which the post passed, and the Arab tribes kept their obligations loyally. Between The Damascus-Baghdad Camel-Post. 169 often allowed Englishmen and natives who were in a hurry to ride with them, even though this was strictly forbidden by the Government, both in Damascus and in Baghdad.) I will send Muhammad to the British Consulate and if you can arrange to ride with him to Sukhnah do so, but you will do so at your own risk ; I know nothing about it and have given you no authority to do so. To reach Sukhnah you must pass through Tudmur, and so you can complete your business there. Although I am sending my camel-postman to Sukhnah and to Sukhnah only, I shall not expect him to return at once, so that if you can arrange with him to take you through the Sinjar mountains to Mosul that is his and your affair, and not mine. You will find travelling with Muhammad, if you go with him, very hard work, may Allah protect thee ! for he rides day and night." As he walked to the door of his room with us, he turned to me and said, " Muhammad will guide thee safely. Keep silence and use haste. Take few animals and little baggage. Leave Damascus before the third day 1870 and 1884 the official camel-post was managed by the British Consul-General at Baghdad, but in the latter year the Turkish Govern ment established a camel-post, and the English Government weakly agreed to withdraw theirs. The result was easily foreseen. The Turkish Government broke faith with the shekhs, and refused to pay them the subsidies which the British had paid, and the Arabs in return robbed the mails and ill-treated the postmen. Finally the Baghdad merchants found other ways of sending their letters, and the Turkish camel-post came to an end. My camel-postman told me that he used to ride from eighteen to twenty-two hours a day on an average, and that he rarely rested more than two hours at a time on the road. The distance from Damascus to Baghdad is between 400 and 450 miles, and he usually traversed it in five and a half days in the summer and six and a half or seven in the spring and winter. He once performed the journey in five days. He took a camel to carry water, and if a traveller accompanied him, he took two. The places he mentioned on his route were: Turner (25 miles), Khan Ash- Shamah (15 miles), Kasr As-Segal, the deserts of Ha'il, Marrah, Shami, Lakitah and Sha'alan (50 miles), Wadi al-Walij, Shu'eb Samhan (45 miles), Jabal Malusah, where there are wells (45 miles), Kasr'Ewar in the Wadi Hawran (53 miles), Rijm as-Sabun (45 miles), Kabesah village (38 miles), Hit (12 miles), Kasr Fallujah (85 miles), Baghdad (50 miles). 170 The Garden of Damascus. is ended. Sleep when Muhammad bids you sleep, ride when he bids you ride, camp where he camps, and avoid houses. So shall Allah protect thee. I will give Muhammad papers which will help thee as far as Tudmur." We then left him and Mr. Dickson took me to his house to lunch. When we came out of the Consulate in the afternoon we found Muhammad waiting for us, and we at once discussed business with him. He understood the posi tion of things thoroughly well, and though he thought we should have trouble with the quarantine officials between Damascus and Tudmur, he seemed to fear more the unsettled state of the country beyond the Euphrates. The point of importance was that he was willing to take me beyond Sukhnah to Mosul. Mr. Dickson then called one of his clerks and drew up a formal con tract. Muhammad said it would be necessary to take two camels, two mules to carry baggage and fodder, a good horse and a donkey; and as a sort of after thought he added his nephew to this company. He proposed to select the animals that afternoon and then to feed them well and carefully for three days, and I gave him money on account and he departed. Mr. Dickson then most kindly offered to show me the things best worth seeing in Damascus, and we set off to visit some of his friends who possessed old and beautifully decorated houses. We walked through the city eastwards and soon came to a region of beautiful gardens and plantations. The portion of each garden which contained the house was surrounded by mud walls that were in many cases in a terrible state of ruin. It was impossible to imagine that merchants of wealth and position lived within such, but as soon as we passed through the outer tumble down doors and gates and entered the immediate precincts of the houses we found ourselves in beautiful paradises. Each courtyard was paved with slabs of marble of different colours, and in its centre was a fountain of water which came from the Barada river, and all the walls about were covered with flowering The Importance of Damascus. 171 creepers, and the masses of flowers on them looked like so many clusters of jewels set in living green, and there were doves and wood-pigeons everywhere. Paths led away into luxuriant gardens girt about with groves of fruit trees, and in all parts of these the pleasing sound of the trickle of running water could be heard. Many of the reception rooms that we entered contained masterpieces of the craft of the carpenter and inlayer. The roof and walls of some of these were panelled with cedar, and were wholly covered with intricate geometrical patterns inlaid in ivory, mother-of-pearl, some kind of metal which looked like silver, and vivid vermilion. The frames of the diwans, Kur'an stands, etc., were made of walnut wood or ebony, and were inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory ; the coverings of the diwan cushions were of richly embroidered silk, shot with silver-gilt threads, and many of the carpets were of silk and were dated. Mr. Dickson was every where a welcome guest, and his beautiful Arabic and sympathetic attitude towards the Muslims won their profound respect and, I sometimes thought, affection. As there was little I could do to forward my affairs until I saw Muhammad I devoted the early morning 'hours of the 3oth to a walk about the city. This was considerably smaller than I expected. It seemed to me that there was not then, nor ever could have been, anything in any of the cities which have successively occupied the site for the last 4,000 years, that could account for the great fame and renown which Damascus has gained in the world. It must always have owed its importance chiefly to its position on the western edge of the great Syrian Desert, where from time immemorial it has formed a fine trading centre and clearing place for caravans from all parts of Western Asia, Arabia, Egypt, Persia and Eastern Europe. Nothing is known about the early history of Damascus and the country round about it, and when and by whom the first city was built there is also unknown. Local tradition associates the founding of the city with Abraham, but that is only a way of expressing belief hi its great antiquity. The 172 The Darb al-Mustaktm or " Straight Street." Bible calls it " Dammesek " (Gen. xiv, 15), " Dummeselj " (z Kings xvi, 10), " D'meshek," or " D'mesek " (Amos iii, 12), and " Darmesek "* (i Chron. xviii, 5). The first of these forms is clearly the oldest, because it is most in accordance with the Egyptian form of the name, " T-m[e]s-qu,"2 and with the forms " Dimashqa " and " Timashgi " which are given in the Tall al-'Amarnah Tablets.3 The Assyrians adopted the oldest form,4 and the Muslims likewise, who called the city " Dimeshk," or " Dimishk ash-Sham." The size too of the city was disappointing, for it was only about i£ mile long, and little more than half a mile wide ; and its whole area is quite flat. Apart from the lower portion of the south wall of the city there seemed to be little that was ancient in it; parts of its eight gates may be old Arab work, but the greater number of them, and most of the wall, are clearly of modern building. The one interesting thoroughfare in the town is the street which is identified with that " which is called Straight," where Saul of Tarsus lodged during his temporary blindness (Acts ix, i-u). It runs right through the town from east to west, and in one or two places I was shown the bases of columns which probably formed parts of the double colonnade that existed on each side of it in ancient days. The Arabs still call it " Darb al-Mustakim," i.e., "Straight Street,"1 1 This form with an r inserted exists also in Egyptian (B.C. noo) thus Jl', (I) P S5 *»*W* = Tar-m[e]s-ki } (| ^ ft P gj Mflller thinks this Egyptian form is the result of an attempt to Aramaicize )l fl) ^\ (Asien, p. 234). And in Syriac the form " Darmasuk " is common. 1 | JT| ^\ It occurs in the list (No. 13) of places and peoples conquered by Thothmes III about B.C. 1550 ; see Marietta, Karnak, pll. 17-21. 3 (Alu) Di-mash-ka -tTT