Part IV

That the mounds scattered along the Tigris and in the valley of the Euphrates contained ancient remains The could be concluded from the potsherds and fragments of bricks and stones with which the surface was in many cases strewn, or which came to view on penetrating a short distance beneath the surface, but the question as to the identification of the settlements that once flourished on the site of those vast rubbish heaps could not be answered by such surface examinations. Tradition that invariably survives after accurate knowledge has disappeared had connected a series of mounds opposite Mosul with the site of 'Nineveh.

One of these mounds bore the name of Nebbi Yunus, i.e., "the prophet Jonah", and a little chapel surmounting it is revered by the natives as the tomb of the prophet who announced the destruction of Nineveh. The tomb is fictitious, but the association of Jonah with Nineveh embodies the recollection of the fact as was established by excavations that Nebbi Yunus indeed concealed a portion of the great capital of Assyria. In the south, some 40 miles from Baghdad, there was another series of mounds, one of which bore the name of Babil a recollection of the fact that the great capital of the southern empire once stood there. Such were the clues on which the early travellers and explorers had to work.

In the 16th and 17th centuries these and other mounds in the region began to attract the attention of numerous travellers. Indeed, several centuries previous a famous traveller, Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela (1160 A.D.) made a brief reference in his itinerary ^[1] to the ruins of both Babylon and Nineveh.

Passing by a number of English travellers, who visited the region during the latter part of the 16th century, we come to the Italian Pietro della Valle who early in the 17th century made extensive travels in the east, and besides furnishing a detailed account of the famous ruins at Persepolis and copying a specimen of the cuneiform The inscriptions there, examined the mounds of Babylon and Mugheir the site of Ur in the Euphrates Valley. He was the first to bring back to Europe a few of the inscribed bricks. ^[2]

Among the travellers of the following century whose curiosity was aroused by the mounds along the Tigris, and in the Euphrates Valley, it is sufficient for our purposes to mention two, (1) the famous Danish scholar Carsten Niebuhr, ^[3] to whom we owe the definite identification of the site of ancient Babylon at the mounds near Hillah, and (2) the Abbe de Beauchamp, who at the close of the 18th century specified in a more detailed fashion than any of his predecessors had done, the large extent of the mounds covering the remains of the city of Babylon. He also speaks of finding within the rubbish heaps enamelled bricks, pieces of cylinders covered with writing, and bits of statuettes.

The desire to put a spade into these mounds after it had been definitely ascertained that they contained remains of antiquity must have burned strong in the breast of the traveller who allowed his fancy to speculate on the nature of the treasures hidden for two millenniums.

Attempts on a very small scale were made by an Englishman, Claudius James Rich, who utilized a residence of about thirteen years in the region as the resident agent of the East India Company, with his headquarters at Baghdad, to make a thorough study of the mounds of Babylon and Nineveh as well as of the topography of the entire region from Baghdad to Mosul. This investigation far surpassed in its results anything that had previously been done.

Rich's death in 1821 at the early age of thirtyfour cut short an activity that included the collection of such specimens as he was able to secure from The scratchings in the mounds and through purchase from natives who had rummaged them more successfully. Rich's collections of Babylonian and Assyrian antiquities, though not large in comparison with what was soon to be secured, were valuable by virtue of their variety revealing the various kinds of objects buried beneath the mounds. He published accounts of his researches,^[4] and after his untimely death, the antiquities gathered by him, as well as a large collection of oriental manuscripts and coins, were purchased by the British Museum.

In 1827-28 another Englishman, Robert Magnan, also in the employ of the East India Company, in the course of a careful study of many of the mounds in the south, cut trenches into a number of them, chiefly with a view of ascertaining their age and character. Quite a number of antiquities were discovered, but such sporadic attempts counted for little. In 1835-37 an important survey of the region of the Euphrates andTigris was undertaken by the English government, but the credit of having organized the first excavating expedition belongs to France.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

First published in 1543 in Constantinople. See M. N. Adler, "The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela" (Jewish Quarterly Review, roi xviii.)

[2]:

In his " Viaggi" (Rome, 1650), Pietro della Valle reproduces some of these inscriptions and gives hjis reasons why they should be read from left to right, in which supposition he was correct.

[3]:

Niebuhr gave a detailed account of his travels in his Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umligenden Landern( Copenhagen, 1774-1837), 3 vols.

[4]:

His two Memoirs on the Ruins of Bdbylon(London, 1816-1818) were republished in 1839 by his widow, together with Rich's diaries and an account of a journey to Persepolis a few years previous under the title Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan and on the Site of Ancient Nineveh (London, 1836), 2 vols.