By courtesy of R. Campbell Thomson
THE DESOLATION OF NINEVEH. THIS HILL WAS ONCE ONE OF THE WALLS OF THE CAPITAL OF ASSYRIA
“Nimrod,” said the Arab, referring to the great mythical god of the past.
The stones of the dam were locked securely together. The waters poured over it in a cataract. Layard visioned the men in past ages building that dam, saw the waters held back and flowing into the canals to make the desert into a fertile plain. He galloped over the desert and saw traces of the silted-up canals, and he knew that the fertile land of the past and the desolate land through which he rode were one and the same. The neglect of man, the passage of time, and the absence of water were responsible for the change.
He left Mosul on a raft of goatskins, floating down the Tigris to Baghdad as men had floated down for thousands of years. As he glided by on the slow-moving river the hillocks on the banks were beckoning to him, and he vowed to lay bare the past with a spade at the very first opportunity.
It was two years before that opportunity arrived. When he got back to Mosul he found a Frenchman, M. Botta, was digging. For a long time Botta found little to encourage him to proceed with the work. A few fragments of brick and other trifles were all that turned up under the pick.
Then one day an Arab gazed down on the trenches that Botta’s workmen were digging, wondering what on earth his compatriots from Mosul were searching for, and why they were going to all the trouble.
“What are you looking for?” he asked at last.
The labourer who was digging straightened his back, and glancing round among the rubbish he had turned up, picked up a piece of brick with a few cuneiform characters on it. “This,” he said.