volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

l6 Ross's Excavations at Kuyunjik.
for clearing out the site. Layard had visited Nimriid
on two previous occasions, and contrary to the teaching of
Arabian and Syrian historians and ancient local tradition,
believed that the ruins of Nineveh were buried under
the mound of Nimrud, and there he betook himself and
began his remarkably successful excavation of the site.
Though the works at Nimrud necessitated his constant
supervision, he managed to watch the excavations which
the new French Consul at Mosul, Botta's successor, was
carrying on at Kuyunjik. Before Botta left Mosul in
1845 Layard had made an arrangement with him whereby
he could excavate at Kuyunjik on behalf of Stratford
Canning, but when he began work the new French Consul
protested, and claimed to possess the sole right to excavate
the mound. In spite of this Layard continued to
open trenches in the south side of the mound, and the
French Consul went on digging little pits a few feet deep
in another direction. Both excavators worked in this
way for about a month, but neither found anything of
importance, and Layard stopped digging at Kuyunjik
temporarily, and went to Nimrud. During the years
1845-47 Layard succeeded in digging through a great
many parts of the mound of Kuyunjik, and in the courseof
this work he discovered many fine sculptures. ^ He
was ably assisted by Mr. Ross, a British resident in
Mosul, who, in spite of the opposition of the Pasha and
the French Consul, managed to keep the excavation
of Kuyunjik going during Layard's long absences. When
Layard returned to England in 184.7 ^^e Trustees of the
British Museum asked Mr. Ross to carry on the excavations
at Kuyunjik on a limited scale, and for nearly two
years he did so with conspicuous success." When he
^ The chambers excavated by Layard in 1845-47 ^''^^ 1849-51
are clearly marked on the plan published with Rassam's paper in
Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., vol. vii, p. 37 ff. Mr. Ross's discoveries,
acknowledged by Layard (Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii, p. 138 ff.),
are not noticed in this plan.
' We owe to Mr. Ross our earliest good general description of the
sculptures of Sennacherib at Bavian, which Ues about thirty miles northeast
of Mosul. The first European who visited them in modern times