volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

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 tablets^ 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
TaU 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 Baliwat 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 believe
he spoke the truth, and I came to the conclusion
that the above-mentioned antiquities had been found
^ I published the text of these with a translation in Trans. Soc.
Bihl. Arch., vol. vii, p. 59 ff.