volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Survey of Nineveh by Felix Jones. 13
the hope of finding a gem, or a fragment of a tablet to sell.
In fact. Rich did for the tablets at Nineveh what the Abbe
Beauchamp did for the cylinders of Nebuchadnezzar II
from Babylon, i.e., he made it worth the while of the
native to preserve " anticas."
The next important survey of the ruins of Nineveh
was made by Commander Felix Jones, I.N.,^ in 1852.
He showed that the principal wall was on the east side
of the city, and that it was 16,000 feet long, and that the
north wall was 7,000 feet long. The west wall, close to
which the Tigris flowed, was 13,600 feet long, and the
south wall 3,000 feet long. He described the area of
Nineveh as an irregular triangle, or trapezium, having its
apex abruptly cut off to the south. Its total circuit was
13,200 yards, or 7J miles, which is not greatly in excess
of the dimensions assigned to the city in Sennacherib's
inscription, though Felix Jones was not aware of that.
The area of Nineveh from the above measurements is
8,712,000 square yards, or 1,800 English acres of land.
These facts disposed once and for all of the theories, both
ancient and modem, which had been current about the
size of the city of Nineveh.
The principal mounds within the area of the city of
Nineveh are Kuyunjik and Nabi Yunis, which are
situated in the north-west and south-west angles of the
city respectively, and are close to its western wall.
Kuyunjik is the larger mound, and is about one hundred
acres in extent ; the buildings on it were protected on
the north-east and south sides by the river Khusur, and
on the west side by the Tigris, which in ancient times
flowed close to the great city wall. Felix Jones regarded
the mound as the Acropolis of Nineveh. During the
Middle Ages it was commonly called "Kal'at Ninawi,"
or the " Castle of Nineveh," and a fortress or stronghold of
some kind stood on it for many centuries. The shape of
Kuyunjik is that of an irregular oval, somewhat elongated
at its north-eastern extremity, which rises ninety-six
feet above the Khusur near its junction with the Tigris.''
^ Topography of Nineveh, p. 404, and Jnl. R. A. S., vol. xv, p. 297.
^ Topography of Nineveh, p. 436.