Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon

by Austen Henry Layard

Such were the discoveries in the ruined palace of Sennacherib at the time of my departure for Europe. In this magnificent edifice I had opened no less than seventy-one halls, chambers, and passages, whose walls, almost without an exception, had been panelled with slabs of sculptured alabaster recording the wars, the triumphs, and the great deeds of the Assyrian king. By a rough calculation, about 9880 feet, or nearly two miles, of bas-reliefs, with twenty-seven portals, formed by colossal winged bulls and lion-sphinxes, were uncovered in that part alone of the building explored during my researches. The greatest length of the excavations was about 720 feet, the greatest breadth about 600 feet.[237] The pavement of the chambers was from 20 to 35 feet below the surface of the mound.

Only a part, however, of the palace has been explored, and much still remains underground of this enormous structure. Since my return to Europe other rooms and sculptures have been discovered.

Assyrian Pedestal, from Kouyunjik.

The excavations were not limited to the corner of Kouyunjik containing the palace. Deep trenches and tunnels were opened, and experimental shafts sunk in various parts of the mound. Enormous walls and foundations of brick masonry, fragments of sculptured and unsculptured alabaster, inscribed bricks, numerous small objects, and various other remains, were discovered.[238] To the north of the ruins on the same level, and resting upon a pavement of limestone slabs, were found four circular pedestals. They appeared to form a part of a double line of similar objects, extending from the edge of the platform to an entrance to the palace, and may have supported the wooden columns of a covered way, or have served as bases to an avenue of statues.[239] The earth not having been sufficiently cleared away around them, I was unable to ascertain whether there was more than a double row. They were amongst the very few architectural remains dug out at Nineveh. The ornament upon them is not inelegant, and is somewhat Saracenic in its character.

I will now describe some of the most interesting small objects discovered in the earth and rubbish during the excavations at Kouyunjik. It must be borne in mind that the mound within which was the buried palace, was used more than once, and by more than one distinct people, for the site of a castle, if not of a town. We know that Nineveh was utterly destroyed by the united armies of the Medes and Babylonians; yet we find Meherdates taking the castle of Ninos, and the same place is mentioned by several later authors.[240]

Coins of more than one Roman emperor were, according to the superscription, struck at Nineveh. One bears the head of Trajan, and, on the reverse, the legend AUG. FELI. NINI. CLAV. (col.), round an eagle with expanded wings between two military standards. Another has on one side the head of the Emperor Maximinus, and on the reverse a naked figure holding an object resembling a bull’s head in one hand, with the legend COL. NINIVA CLAVD. It would appear from these coins that Claudius, who established many colonies in the East, was the founder of one called after him Niniva Claudiopolis.

As buildings thus appear to have been erected at various times on the mound, we accordingly find in the rubbish remains of various periods. Amongst the relics occasionally brought to me by the workmen were a few fragments of pottery, and coins, and ill-cut gems with inscriptions in the Pehlevi character, of the time of the Sassanian kings of Persia, that is, from the first half of the third to the seventh century after Christ. Of the Roman period we have terracotta figures and lamps, and a hoard of eighty-nine silver denarii of the Emperors Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Trajan, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus, Commodus, and Septimius Severus, according to the dates on the coins themselves, from A. D. 74 to A. D. 201. Mr. R. Stuart Poole, of the British Museum,—to whom I am indebted for a list and description of these coins,—conjectures, with much probability, that they were buried by a Roman soldier during the second expedition undertaken by Severus against the Arabs of Mesopotamia (A. D. 202), or during the Parthian war, carried on by the same emperor. The number of coins of Commodus, and the fact that there are none of any emperor after Severus, lead to the belief that the hoard was buried about this time. It is worthy of remark, too, that the latest have few, if any, marks of having been in circulation. Unfortunately there are no coins amongst them actually struck at Nineveh, although they mostly belong to Eastern cities.

Of the time of the Seleucidæ and of the Greek occupation of Assyria and Babylonia, we have several relics: amongst them a small head of Hercules, with the eyes inlaid in ivory, one or two figures in terracotta, some copper and glass vessels, and various objects in pottery and bronze. To this period I am now inclined to attribute the earthen sarcophagi, the great jars, and other sepulchral remains found at Nimroud, Kalah Sherghat, Kouyunjik, and in other Assyrian mounds, which, when my former work was written, I believed to belong to a much earlier epoch. Since my return to England, Mr. Vice-consul Rassam has discovered at Kouyunjik several tombs built of slabs of stone, and apparently of even a later date, for in one of them, I understand, was found a gold coin of the Emperor Maximinus. They contained, however, very interesting relics in the same precious metal and in glass.

It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the most careful search, in all parts of the country around Mosul, I have been unable to find one undoubted Assyrian tomb, nor can I conjecture how or where the people of Nineveh buried their dead. The sepulchral chambers in the hills, so frequently described in these pages, are unquestionably of a comparatively late period. The rocky gullies outside and between the inclosure walls of Kouyunjik have been examined over and over again with the greatest care for traces of tombs, but in vain. In the numerous isolated conical mounds scattered over the face of the country, I have detected nothing to show that they were places of sepulture. It must, however, be confessed that they have not yet been sufficiently excavated. Further experiments should be made in them, and tunnels opened into their very foundations. The only Assyrian sepulchre hitherto discovered is probably the vaulted chamber in the high mound of Nimroud, which may have once contained the remains of the royal builder of the north-west palace. Did the Assyrians, like the fire-worshippers of Persia, expose their dead until nought remained but the bleached bones, or did they burn them and then scatter their ashes to the winds? Not a clue is given to their customs in this matter by any bas-relief or monument hitherto discovered. The Assyrians appear to have avoided all allusions to their dead and to their funeral rites; unlike the Egyptians, who portrayed the ceremonies observed after death, and even the events of a future state, upon the walls of almost every temple and tomb.