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THE CONSTANT OF NINEVEH 23
to go to Istanbul on a diplomatic mission, and anyway neither he
nor Botta had the means for serious digging. Nothing came of
this first project, but that did not discourage Botta. In 1843 he
received a grant and started to dig up the Khorsabad hill next to
Kuyunjik. He found the first Assyrian palace ever discovered, the
castle of King Sargon II, who built this edifice as his summer residence
in the vicinity of Nineveh in 709 B.C.,
after he conquered
Babylon. This palace yielded a very rich reward of artifacts, basreliefs
in huge quantities, statues of winged lions and v^nged
bulls, and more. Most of it landed in the Louvre Museum in
Paris, with the exception of a boatload of treasures that sank in
the middle of the Tigris when the current tore a large barge
from its moorings.
No matter how many fabulous finds were later made by his
successors, Botta will be remembered forever as the discoverer of
the Assyrian civilization. He also enabled Layard to find Nineveh
and the palace of King Assurbanipal, v^th its
tens of thousands
of clay tablets. When Botta left Mosul in 1846 he asked the
new French consul, an architect by the name of Victor Place, to
continue digging for treasures along the Tigris and to send all
the loot to the Louvre.
When Layard returned to Mosul he started to lay bare the
mound of Nimrud (ancient Calah) where he found a considerable
quantity of bas-reliefs and statues, which he shipped to
the British Museum in London. But Layard's success at Nimrud
hill did not make him forget his primary interest—the site of
Kuyunjik, where he hoped to find Nineveh, the ancient capital of
Assyria. So he went digging there again. First he sank an 18-footdeep
shaft straight down until he hit a solid layer of brick. From
there Layard ordered tunnels dug in several directions. He found
a grand hall with a massive portal flanked by two winged bulls.
After a month of terracing the Kuyunjik, Layard discovered nine
great chambers of the palace of Sennacherib, who reigned from
704 to 681 B.C. and who was one of the most cruel and powerful
kings the Assyrians ever had.
Each day brought new finds. Statues, bas-reliefs, whole walls
covered by magnificent glazed brick, mosaics of cuneiform signs
in dazzling white on turquoise blue. It was here that Layard's
crew found the famous alabaster bas-relief of the wounded