apprehension of undermining the houses above. In another small room, not far distant, and parallel with the passage before mentioned, an inscription was seen, which was the more curious, because it seemed to occupy its original position: for it was discovered on building the room, and left just where it was found. At Kouyunjik, Rich also saw a piece of coarse grey stone, shaped like the capital of a column, such as at this day surmounts the wooden pillars or posts of Turkish or Persian verandahs. On the south side, or face of the enclosure, and not far from Nebbi Younis, some people who had been digging for stones had turned up many large hewn stones, with bitumen adhering to them. The excavation was about ten feet deep, and consisted of huge stones laid in separate layers of bitumen and lime mortar; there were also some very thick layers of red clay, which had become as hard as burnt brick, but without any indication of reeds or straw having been used, sandstone cut into blocks, and large slabs of inscription with bitumen adhering to the under side. Rich's opinion was, that all the vestiges of the building were of the same period; that they did not mark the entire extent of the great city itself; but that these mounds and ruins were either the citadel or royal precincts. He finally inferred that very few bricks were used in building Nineveh, but that the walls, &c., were formed of the rubbish of the country, well rammed down with a wash of lime poured upon it, which in a short time would convert the whole into a solid mass. At the present day the natives mix pebbles, lime, and red earth, or clay, together, and after exposure to water, they become like the solid rock.1

Rich made Nineveh the subject of a further paper, but all the results he arrived at were that a granite lion at Babylon, the fragment of a statue at Kalah Sherghat on the banks of the Tigris, and a bas-relief at the mouth of the Nahr-el-Kelb, near Beyrout, were productions of Assyrian art. In the various museums of Europe a small number of seals and cylinders, covered with mythological emblems, were carefully collected, which prove that the Assyrians were acquainted with the process of working the hardest materials, but which were, generally, little calculated to give us a just idea of the skill they had acquired in the art of representing objects. In a word, it may be said that though we had some belief in the existence of Assyrian 1 Rich's "Residence in Koordistan."

6

NINEVEH AND ITS DISCOVERERS.

art, Assyrian architecture and Assyrian sculpture were totally unknown to us.

As to inscriptions, we were no richer in them than in other Assyrian works. The chief were an inscription engraven upon a stone sent to London by Sir Harford Jones, and preserved in the Museum of the East India Company; a circular-headed tablet; two egg-shaped stones; and still more recently the cast from the Nahr-el-Kelb monument, in the British Museum : and another of the same form in the Cabinet des Antiques of the National Library of Paris, known by the name of Caillou de Michaud. The mottoes of a few cylinders and some insignificant fragments completed all that was known in Europe. Copies of inscriptions were more numerous, but they all came from monuments situated beyond the limits of Assyria, properly so called. M. Schulz had collected a considerable number on the banks of the lake Van, and the Assyrian transcriptions of the inscriptions of Persepolis had also been more or less faithfully copied.

Thus although up to within a short time we possessed nothing which could add to what the ancient writers had handed down to us concerning the history and the arts of Assyria; yet all interested in the subjects anticipated far different results when favourable circumstances should allow the ground to be more attentively explored.

That these hopes were not disappointed is now a matter of history, and the two following chapters will therefore be devoted to a description of the labours of those whose exertions have revealed the monuments of ancient Assyrian civilisation, of which all trace seemed to be lost.

BOTTA, in the narrative of his researches at Nineveh, which has been published in five handsome folio volumes through the liberality of the French government, after summing up the amount, or rather the deficiency, of our knowledge of the great Assyrian cities before the period of the recent excavations, prefaces his adventures at Khorsabad by an account of the circumstances that led him to the neighbourhood of that place.

The French government having come to the conclusion that it was advisable to send a consular agent to Mósul, chose Botta to fulfil that office, -a selection that reflected the highest credit on its judgment. Botta, the nephew of the celebrated historian of Italy, was himself entirely devoted to science. His long residence in Egypt, Sennaar, El Yemen, and Syria, undertaken regardless of difficulties, or of the dangers of climate, solely to further his scientific pursuits, had eminently adapted him for an appointment in the East. He could assimilate himself to the habits of the people; was conversant with their language; possessed energy of character; and was besides an

8

NINEVEH AND ITS DISCOVERERS.

intelligent and practised observer: with such qualifications it was obvious that his residence in the vicinity of a spot that history and tradition agreed in pointing out as the site of Nineveh could not but be productive of important results. Accordingly upon his departure for Mósul, in the beginning of the year 1842, his friend Monsieur J. Mohl, the accomplished translator of "Firdousi," called his attention to the archæological interest of the place, and strongly pressed him to make excavations in the neighbourhood.

Botta promised that he would not forget this good advice, but he felt that before being enabled to keep his promise, the definitive establishment of the consulship at Mósul must place at his disposal both more considerable pecuniary resources, and more powerful means of action than he then possessed. In the meanwhile he employed himself in collecting every small object of antiquity which appeared to be at all interesting, and made the necessary inquiries for pitching upon a favourable spot for really serious researches.

Botta was not so fortunate in his acquisition of antiquities as he could have hoped from the report of Rich, who had had the good fortune to purchase in the neighbourhood of Mósul several objects of interest. Botta had, in consequence, pictured to himself the locality as a most fruitful mine, but a residence of several years caused him to entertain a different opinion. Mr. Rich, being the first to enter upon the still virgin ground, had at once collected all that chance had amassed in the hands of the inhabitants during a long series of years, and no conclusion, therefore, as to the real abundance of objects of antiquity to be found in the neighbourhood of Mósul could properly be drawn from this fact. With the exception of a few fragments of bricks and pottery, Botta had never been able to collect anything in the way of antiquities which he could be sure were indigenous (so to speak); and as he spared neither time nor expense to procure them, he had good reason to believe that they were not common; the cylinders in particular, those relics of Assyria so curious on account of the emblems with which they are covered, were very rare at Mósul, and out of all those which fell into his hands, there was not one that he knew of, which had been found upon the territory of Nineveh. All those which he could trace and this was the case with the greater number-had been brought from