volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

The Ruins at 'Ardbdn. 205
'Ariban. There was a good deal of water in the river
and the pHnth on which the bull stood was partly
covered by it. Rain and wind had obliterated the traces
of many of the shafts and tunnels which Layard made,
but the position of some of them could be guessed. It
is a great pity that he did not dig out the three large
mounds, for the things which he found^ suggest that
important discoveries were to be made there. It has
been said that the second bull is hidden away in the
cellars of the British Museum, but such is not the case.
It is quite possible that Layard may have had it dragged
across the desert to Mosul, though the work would have
been very difficult to perform, but if he did, and it came
to England, it was not sent to the British Museum.
The mass of ruins was, even in 1890, more than 60 feet
high, and proves, in my opinion, that the earliest town
which stood here was older than the Assyrian kingdoms
founded by Shalmaneser I (b.c. 1320), Ashur-nasir-pal
(B.C. 885), and Sargon II (b.c. 720). The site of 'Axaban
must always have been an important place and a great
trading centre, and the numerous Egyptian scarabs,^
etc., which Layard found there suggest a considerable
trade between the Khabur* and Egypt. In the Middle
Ages "Araban was famous for its cotton industry, and it
is possible that in ancient days it exported cotton stuffs
to Eg57pt on a large scale. There is abundant proof
that the Romans maintained several garrisons on the
' They are described in Nineveh and Babylon, p. 276 ff.
^ Described by Birch (Layard, op. cii., p. 280) and by me in my
Mummy, pp. 251,252. Another scarab from 'Araban was presented
to the British Museum by Mrs. Garratt in 1917. It was given by
Layard to Miss de Salis, and bears on it a figure of Anubis or Set.
^ This king states in his Annals that he received tribute from several
peoples on the Khabur yj jQt ^{ ^^ (nam) Kha-bur, among them
being the Kardikanai, -^| V ^T^ *=^ Tf T? ('^^^) Kar-di-kan-ai,
and some Assyriologists think that Kardikan was the town on the
site of which ' Araban now stands. See Rawlinson, Cun. Inscrip., i,
pi. 19, 1. 78, and Hommel, Geschichte, pp. 557, 558. The Khabur,
i.e., the " Fish-river," is the l^in of 2 Kings xvii, 6, and not the
Kebhar of Ezekiel iii, 15, which was a canal in Babylonia.