volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

158 Monuments at the Dog River.
and Assyrian kings at the mouth of the Nahr al-Kalb,
or the " Dog River,"i 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 Shahnaneser
11, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon,
syrian kings which could not
and two figures of As-
be identified.* 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 Egjrptian 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
' 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.
^ For a general description see Lortet, La Syrie d'aujourd'kui,
Paris, 1884, p. 657 ff.