volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

His Excavations at Khorsabad. 15
bricks and some small and unimportant objects, he
found nothing. He carried on his excavations at his
own expense, and as his means were small he began to
wonder if it were worth while continuing the work.
Whilst his men were digging they were watched by many
people from the town and country round about, and they
all wondered at the care with which every brick and
fragment of alabaster were set aside to be kept. One day,
when Botta was examining a number of such fragments, a
Christian from the village of Khorsabad, by trade a dyer,
asked him why he preserved such things. When the
dyer heard that he was digging for alabaster slabs with
figures sculptured upon them, he told Botta that he
ought to come to his village, where they frequently dug
up such things. In no very hopeful spirit Botta sent
two or three men to dig at Khorsabad on March 20th,
1843, and three days later they came upon the top of a
Wall, one side of which was covered with sculptured
alabaster bas-reliefs. A week's work showed Botta that
he had discovered the remains of a huge Assyrian palace,
containing a large number of chambers and corridors,
all the walls of which were lined with slabs bearing
sculptured representations of gods and kings, and battles,
and religious ceremonies. Side by side with these representations
were long inscriptions in the cuneiform character.
Botta sent despatch after despatch to his patron
Mohl, and, thinking that he had discovered Nineveh, he
announced to him that "Ninive etait retrouvee." It
was not Nineveh that he had discovered, but the palace
of Sargon II, King of Assyria, B.C. 721-705. Before the
end of May Botta definitely abandoned Kuyunjik, and
devoted all his energies to the excavations at Khorsabad.
In 1845, having completely cleared out Khorsabad, he
returned to France with a magnificent collection of
Assyrian sculptures and cuneiform inscriptions.
In 1845 Stratford Canning undertook to provide
Layard with funds sufficient to begin excavating the
great mound of Nimrud, which lies about twenty miles
south of Mosul, and he further promised that if important
sculptures were discovered there he would find the means