volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

66 The Mound of KuyAnjik
new grazing ground for the sheep, the money I gave him
was well invested, for he caused me no further trouble.
The minor official formalities having been complied
with, Nimrud and I rode over to Kuyiinjik^ to look at
the mound, and to settle upon a plan of work. We walked
up the mound at the south-west corner and followed
the ruins of the western wall of Nineveh as far as the
ruins of the buildings at the north-west corner, and then
having turned a little to the east we made our way back
over the heaps of rubbish which had been thrown up by
the early excavators. Nimrud showed me the places
where, as he had been told, Botta and Layard had made
excavations, and a number of depressions in the ground
which represented the " trial shafts " they had sunk, and
the trenches they had dug with the view of locating
large monuments. It seemed to me that they had been
guided to the places which they dug out, entirely by the
natives, who had searched through many parts of thie
mound in order, to find limestone bas-reliefs, statues,
etc., to break up and burn into lime for building purposes.
In fact, as the searchers for bricks from Hillah were the
true discoverers of the ruins of Babylon, so the natives
who lived near Kuyunjik and searched the mound for
limestone slabs were the true discoverers of the ruins
of Nineveh. I could not ascertain that either Botta
(1842) or Layard (1844, 1849 and 1850) had dug out any
building or any part of the mound completely. On the
other hand, the excavations made at Kuyunjik by Loftus
and Rassam between 1852 and 1854 under the direction
of Rawlinson, were carried out systematically, and the
result was the splendid discovery of the mass of inscribed
tablets which are now known to have formed the library
of Ashur-bani-pal. Of the excavations made by Smith
in the years 1874-76 there were many traces. His
object was to find inscribed tablets and fragments, and
1 The natives pronounce the name thus. I have seen the name
written iJVJy Kuyunjik, (3!y> KHyAnjik.
An old name of the mound is 'Armushiyah C^Sl' ^^^ there was a
village of this name on the mound in 1889.