This statue originally stood on a pedestal of reddish limestone, which, with the figure itself, was found broken into several pieces. They have been restored, and are now in the British Museum.
The two interesting buildings just described, the only undoubted remains of temples hitherto found at Nimroud, complete the discoveries at the northern extremity of the mound. They enable us, as will hereafter be seen, to restore part of the group of edifices raised on the grand platform in this quarter of Nineveh.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SUMMER.—ENCAMPMENT AT KOUYUNJIK.—VISITORS.—MODE OF LIFE.—DEPARTURE FOR THE MOUNTAINS.—AKRA.—ROCK-TABLETS AT GUNDUK.—DISTRICT OF ZIBARI.—NAMET AGHA.—DISTRICT OF SHIRWAN—OF BARADOST—OF GHERDI—OF SHEMDINA.—MOUSA BEY.—NESTORIAN BISHOP.—CONTENT OF MAR HANANISHO.—DIZZA.—AN ALBANIAN FRIEND.—BASH-KALAH.—IZZET PASHA.—A JEWISH ENCAMPMENT.—HIGH MOUNTAIN PASS.—MAHMOUDIYAH.—FIRST VIEW OF WAN.
The difficulties and delay in crossing the Tigris, now swollen by the melting of the mountain snows, induced me to pitch my tents on the mound of Kouyunjik, and to reside there with all my party, instead of daily passing to and fro in the rude ferry-boats to the ruins. The small European community at Mosul was increased in June by the arrival of a large party of travellers. Two English gentlemen and their wives, who passed through on their way to Baghdad: the Hon. Mr. Walpole, who has since published an account of his adventures in the East; the Rev. Mr. Malan, to whom I am indebted for many beautiful sketches; the Rev. Mr. Bowen, an English clergyman, on a tour of inspection to the Eastern churches, with whom I spent many agreeable and profitable hours amongst the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, and his companion, Mr. Sandresky, were our visitors, and were most of them my guests.
Our tents were pitched at the northern corner of Kouyunjik. The spring was now fast passing away; the heat became daily greater; the corn was cut, and the plains and hills put on their summer clothing of dull parched yellow. “The pasture is withered, the tender herb faileth, the green herb is no more.”[154] It was the season, too, of the sherghis, or burning winds from the south, which occasionally sweep over the face of the country, driving, in their short-lived fury, everything before them. Their coming was foretold by a sudden fall in the barometer, which rose again as soon as they had passed.
At Nimroud the excavations had been almost stopped: at Kouyunjik they were still carried on as actively as my means would permit. I was now occupied in moving and packing sculptures from both ruins. From Nimroud the beautiful bas-relief of the king in the arched frame, described in the previous chapter, the good spirit driving out the evil principle, the fish-god, the colossal lion from the small temple, and several other interesting sculptures, were taken to the river-bank, and sent on rafts to Busrah. At Kouyunjik none of the slabs could be removed entire. I could only pack in fragments several of the bas-reliefs. The cases were dragged in carts to the Tigris, unloaded below the piers of the ancient bridge, and there placed on rafts prepared to receive them.
During the day, when not otherwise occupied, I made drawings of the bas-reliefs discovered in the subterranean passages. My guests, choosing some convenient place underground near the parties who were at work, spread their carpets beneath the crumbling sculptures. We all went below soon after the sun had risen, and remained there, without again seeking the open air, until it was far down in the western horizon. The temperature in the dark tunnels was cool and agreeable, nearly twenty degrees of Fahrenheit lower than that in the shade above but I found it unwholesome, the sudden change in going in and out causing intermittent fever.
After the sun had set we dined outside the tents, and afterwards reclined on our carpets to enjoy the cool balmy air of an Eastern night. We slept under the open sky, making our beds in the field.