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

12 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
side, which formerly he had mistaken for a chain of low
hills. Niebuhr's account was brief, but it contained all the
essential elements of a correct description of the ruins, and
by its very brevity and terse presentation of facts stands
out prominently from the early
literature as a silent protest
against the rubbish so often contained in the works of previous
travellers.
To a certain degree, therefore, D'Anville
was justified in
summing up the whole question concerning the site of
Nineveh, at the close of the eighteenth century, by making
the bold statement in his geographical work, " The Euphrates
and Tigris " :
*
" We know that the opposite or
left bank of the river has preserved vestiges of Nineveh,
and that the tradition as to the preaching of Jonah by no
means has been forgotten there."
BABYLON
The case of Babylon was somewhat different. The
powerful influence which for nearly two thousand years this
great Oriental metropolis had exercised upon the nations of
Western Asia, no less by its learning and civilization than
by its victorious battles ; the fame of its former splendor
and magnitude handed down by so many different writers ;
the enormous mass of ruins still testifying to its gigantic
temples and palaces ; and the local tradition continuing to
live among the inhabitants of that desolate region with
greater force and tenacity than in the district of Mosul,
prevented its name and site from ever being forgotten
entirely. At the end of the first Christian century the city
was in ruins and practically deserted. But even when
Baghdad had risen to the front, taking the place of Babylon
and Seleucia as an eastern centre of commerce and civilization,
Arabian and Persian writers
1
V Euphrate et le Tigre, Paris, 1779, p. 88.
occasionally speak of the