volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Rassam's Attempt to Excavate Nabi Y^nis. 29
never succeeded in finding it, and Hamdi Bey told me
that he had never seen it.
Nothing more was done at Nabi Yunis until 1879,
when Mr, H. Rassam returned to Mosul. In that year
some of the villagers offered to let him dig under their
houses, and others offered to sell him their houses so
that he might dig under them. As the owners of the
houses could not sell them without the permission of the
keepers of the Mosque, Rassam went to them, and told
them that he proposed to buy certain houses, and they
gave him authority to do so. He bought several houses,
and began to dig under them, but a few days after he
started some natives in the village said they objected to
his excavations, and petitioned the local authorities ta
stop the works. The Wall Pasha inquired into the matter,
and was prepared to allow the digging to go on, but when
the Mutasarrif, or District Governor, called the attention
of the Minister of Public Instruction at Stambul to the
petition against the works, the Porte ordered them to be
stopped, and the Wall was obliged to obey the order.
• See Rassam's account in Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., vol. viii, p. 195 r
and in Asshur avd the Land ofNimrod, p. 292.