volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

The Ruins of Nimr^d. 91
hold up water for irrigation purposes. In his opinion
it was not dangerous for rafts that were worked by
skilled raftsmen.*
As soon as the raft righted itself we saw that
one comer 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 aU 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 -cyy tTT? -Tl.', the Kelakh rh^ of Genesis x, 11,
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 disappointment
to me, for they seemed to consist of series of low,
irregularly-shaped flat mounds, with a prominent pyramidal
mound at the north-west corner of the platform
on which the palaces were built. The sides of all the
mounds were furrowed 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 j^ its length
is about 2,500 feet, and its width 1,000 feet.^ 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 ;
^ Reisebeschreibung, ii, p. 355.
^ Felix Jones, Topography, p. 451.
' Smith's measurements were : North to South, 600 yards ; West to
East, 400 yards. {Assyrian Discoveries, p. 70.)