volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

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,^ 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 Ku5mnjik 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 clandestine
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 W^n
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 Clayton'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, i88g, the Trustees purchased the collection of tablets,
nearly 700 in number, which I saw in Baghdad the previous year ;
most of them came from DIr.
^ See Asshur and the Land of Nimrod, pp. 244-6.