volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

20 Smith's Second Mission.
a collection of contract tablets. He returned to Mosul
on April 2nd, and then went to Nimrud, where he excavated
the temple of Nebo and other sites until May 4th.
He began work at Kujmnjik on May 7th, and on May 14th
he discovered a fragment of the " Deluge Tablet," containing
" the greater portion of seventeen lines of inscription
belonging to the first column of the Chaldean account
of the Deluge, and fitting into the only place where there
was a serious blank in the story. "^ He closed the works
at Kuyunjik early the following month, and on June 9th
he left Mosul, and arrived in England on July 19th.
The tablets, etc., which he tried to bring with him were
seized by the Customs' authorities at Alexandretta, and
were only released by them some weeks later after a
protest to the Porte by the British Ambassador.
The permit from the Porte under which Smith had
been working expired on the gth or loth of March, 1874,
and the results of his excavations were so important that
the Trustees of the British Museum decided to send him
to Nineveh on their own accoimt. He therefore left
London on November 25th, and arrived in Mosul on
January ist, 1874. He confined his operations entirely
to Kuyunjik, but even so the local authorities gave him
a good deal of trouble, and his difficulties with them
and with his workmen became so pronounced that he
was obliged to close the excavations on March 12th.
Before he left Mosul on April 4th the Pasha took from him,
by order of the Porte, all the duplicates of his collection
for the Imperial Ottoman Museum in Constantinople.
The reasons for the obstruction which he encountered at
M6sul, and the refusal of the authorities to let him carry
off all his treasures, are things easily understood if they
be looked at from the Turkish point of view. Smith's
discoveries were " boomed " in the papers in England,
and every small fragment which he brought from Nineveh
was described as " priceless " and " unique." All such
descriptions found their way into Continental papers,
through which they reached the Porte, and the
^ Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, London, 1875, p. 97.