es by the
inhabitants of the surrounding country, from time immemorial, without
disclosing to other eyes than those of the wild occupier of the soil
the monuments they must have served to support or cover. Though
carefully explored by Niebuhr and Claudius James Rich, no other traces
of buildings than a few portions of walls, of which they could not
understand the plan, had been presented; if, however, the
investigations of these travelers produced few immediate results, the
first-named certainly has the merit of being the first to break the
ground, and by his intelligence, to have awakened the enterprise of
others. Rich, who was the East India Company's resident at Baghdad,
employed his leisure in the investigation of the antiquities of
Assyria. He gave his first attention to Babylon, on which he wrote a
paper, originally published in Germany--his countrymen apparently
taking less interest in such matters than did the scholars of Vienna.
In a note to a second memoir on Babylon, printed in London in 1818, we
find Nineveh thus alluded to by Rich. He says: "Opposite the town of
Mosul is an enclosure of rectangular form, corresponding with the
cardinal points of the compass; the eastern and western sides being
the longest, the latter facing the river. The area, which is now
cultivated, and offers no vestiges of building, is too small to have
contained a town larger than Mosul, but it may be supposed to answer
to the palace of Nineveh. The boundary, which may be perfectly traced
all round, now looks like an embankment of earth or rubbish, of small
elevation; and has attached to it, and in its line, at several places,
mounds of greater size and solidity. The first of these forms the
southwest angle, and on it is built the village of Nebbi Younis, the
prophet's tomb (described and delineated by Niebuhr as Nurica), where
they show the tomb of the prophet Jonah, much revered by the
Mohammedans. The next, and largest of all, is the one which may be
supposed to be the monument of Ninus. It is situated near the centre
of the western face of the enclosure, and is joined like the others by
the boundary wall;--the natives call it Kouyunjik Tepe. Its form is
that of a truncated pyramid, with regular steep sides and a flat top;
it is composed, as I ascertained from some excavations, of stones and
earth, the latter predominating sufficiently to admit of the summit
being cultivated by the inhabitants of the village of Kouyunjik, which
is