Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

110 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
principally on the western side of the mound, brought to
light only a mutilated but very interesting sitting figure in
black basalt, of life size, and on three sides covered with a
cuneiform inscription of Shalmaneser II., inscribed bricks
of the same ruler, bits of boundary stones, fragments of slabs
with cuneiform characters, and a few tombs with their usual
contents belonging to a late period. Layard tried to have
researches at this much exposed site continued under the
superintendence of a
Nestorian Christian, even after his departure,
but repeated attacks from the Bedouins forced his
workmen soon to withdraw. The sitting figure, as the first
Assyrian statue discovered, was later sent by Mr. Ross, whom
we have mentioned above, to London.
A small sum of money still remained after Layard had
closed his trenches at Nimrud. He proposed, therefore,
to devote it to a renewed personal search for the ruins
of Nineveh in the mounds opposite Mosul. The prejudices
of the Mohammedan population forbidding explorations
at Nebi Yunus, as we have seen in connection with
Botta's attempts, he devoted a month of concentrated
attention to the mound of Ooyunjuk, where he had cut a
few trenches in the previous vear. His Arab basket men
pitched their tents on the summit of the mound, the Nestorian
diggers at its foot, while he himself spent the nights
in the town and the davs in the field. Well acquainted
with the nature and position of Assyrian palaces as he was
from his
experience at Nimrud, he now set to work at first
to discover the platform of sun-dried bricks upon which
large edifices were generally constructed. At a depth of
twenty feet he reached it, as he had expected. His next
move was to open long trenches to its level in different
directions near the southwest corner, until one morning
the workmen came upon a wall, and following it,
found an
entrance formed by winged bulls, and leading into a hall.
After four weeks' labor, nine long and narrow chambers of