THE CAPITAL.
“Fuit et Ninus, imposita Tigri, ad solis occasum spectans, quondam
clarissima.”--PLIN. H. N. vi. 13.
The site of the great capital of Assyria had generally been regarded as
fixed with sufficient certainty to the tract immediately opposite Mosul,
alike by local tradition and by the statements of ancient writers, when
the discovery by modern travellers of architectural remains of great
magnificence at some considerable distance from this position, threw a
doubt upon the generally received belief, and made the true situation of
the ancient Nineveh once more a matter of controversy. When the noble
sculptures and vast palaces of Nimrud were first uncovered, it was
natural to suppose that they marked the real site; for it seemed
unlikely that any mere provincial city should have been adorned by a
long series of monarchs with buildings at once on so grand a scale and
so richly ornamented. A passage of Strabo, and another of Ptolemy, were
thought to lend confirmation to this theory, which placed the Assyrian
capital nearly at the junction of the Upper Zab with the Tigris; and for
awhile the old opinion was displaced, and the name of Nineveh was
attached very generally in this country to the ruins at Nimrud.
Shortly afterwards a rival claimant started up in the regions further to
the north. Excavations carried on at the village of Khorsabad showed
that a magnificent palace and a considerable town had existed in
Assyrian times at that site. In spite of the obvious objection that the
Khorsabad ruins lay at the distance of fifteen miles from the Tigris,
which according to every writer of weight anciently washed the walls of
Nineveh, it was assumed by the excavator that the discovery of the
capital had been reserved for himself, and the splendid work
representing the Khorsabad bas-reliefs and inscriptions, which was
published in France under the title of “Monument de Ninive,” caused the
reception of M. Botta’s theory in many parts of the Continent.
After awhile an attempt was made to reconcile the rival claims by a
theory, the grandeur of which gained it acceptance, despite its
improbability. It was suggested that the various ruins, which had
hitherto disputed the name, were in fact all included within the circuit
of the ancient Nineveh; which was described as a rectangle, or oblong
square, eighteen miles long and twelve broad. The remains of Khorsabad,
Koyunjik, Nimrud, and Keremles marked the four corners of this vast
quadrangle, which contained an area of 216 square miles--about ten times
that of London! In confirmation of this view was urged, first, the
description in Diodorus, derived probably from Ctesias, which
corresponded (it was said) both with the proportions and with the actual
distances; and next, the statements contained in the book of Jonah,
which (it was argued) implied a city of some such dimensions. The
parallel of Babylon, according to the description given by Herodotus,
might fairly have been cited as a further argument; since it might have
seemed reasonable to suppose that there was no great difference of size
between the chief cities of the two kindred empires.
Attractive, however, as this theory is from its grandeur, and harmonious
as it must be allowed to be with the reports of the Greeks, we have
nevertheless to reject it on two grounds, the one historical and the
other topographical. The ruins of Khorsabad, Keremles, Nimrud, and
Koyunjik bear on their bricks distinct local titles; and these titles
are found attaching to distinct cities in the historical inscriptions.
Nimrud, as already observed, is Calah; and Khorsabad is Dur-Sargina, or
“the city of Sargon.” Keremles has also its own appellation Dur-* * *,
“the city of the God [--].” Now the Assyrian writers do not consider
these places to be parts of Nineveh, but speak of them as distinct and
separate cities. Calah for a long time is the capital, while Nineveh is
mentioned as a provincial town. Dur-Sargina is built by Sargon, not at
Nineveh, but “near to Nineveh.” Scripture, it must be remembered,
similarly distinguishes Calah as a place separate from Nineveh, and so
far from it that there was room for “a great city” between them. And the
geographers, while they give the name of Aturia or Assyria Proper to the
country about the one town, call the region which surrounds the other by
a distinct name, Calachene. Again, when the country is closely examined,
it is found, not only that there are no signs of any continuous town
over the space included within the four sites of Nimrud, Keremles.
Khorsabad, and Koyunjik, nor any remains of walls or ditches connecting
them, but that the four sites themselves are as carefully fortified on
what, by the theory we are examining, would be the inside of the city as
in other directions. It perhaps need scarcely be added, unless to meet
the argument drawn from Diodorus, that the four sites in question are
not so placed as to form the “oblong square” of his description, but
mark the angles of a rhombus very munch slanted from the perpendicular.
The argument derived from the book of Jonah deserves more attention than
that which rests upon the authority of Diodorus and Ctesias. Unlike
Ctesias, Jonah saw Nineveh while it still stood; and though the writer
of the prophetical book may not have been Jonah himself, he probably
lived not very many years later. Thus his evidence is that of a
contemporary, though (it may be) not that of an eye-witness; and, even
apart from the inspiration which guided his pen, he is entitled to be
heard with the utmost respect. Now the statements of this writer, which
have a bearing on the size of Nineveh, are two. He tells us, in one
place, that it was “an exceeding great city, of three days’ journey;” in
another, that “in it were more than 120,000 persons who could not
discern between their right hand and their left.” These passages are
clearly intended to describe a city of a size unusual at the time; but
both of them are to such an extent vague and indistinct, that it is
impossible to draw front either separately, or even from the two
combined, an exact definite notion. “A city of three days’ journey” may
be one which it requires three days to traverse from end to end, or one
which is three days’ journey in circumference, or, lastly, one which
cannot be thoroughly visited and explored by a prophet commissioned to
warn the inhabitants of a coming danger in less than three days’ time.
Persons not able to distinguish their right hand from their left may (if
taken literally) mean children, and 120,000 such persons may therefore
indicate a total population of 600,000; or, the phrase may perhaps with
greater probability be understood of moral ignorance, and the intention
would in that case be to designate by it all the inhabitants. If Nineveh
was in Jonah’s time a city containing a population of 120,000, it would
sufficiently deserve the title of “an exceeding great city;” and the
prophet might well be occupied for three days in traversing its squares
and streets. We shall find hereafter that the ruins opposite Mosul have
an extent more than equal to the accommodation of this number of
persons.
The weight of the argument from the supposed parallel ease of Babylon
must depend on the degree of confidence which can be reposed in the
statement made by Herodotus, and on the opinion which is ultimately
formed with regard to the real size of that capital. It would be
improper to anticipate here the conclusions which may be arrived at
hereafter concerning the real dimensions of “Babylon the Great;” but it
may be observed that grave doubts are entertained in many quarters as to
the ancient statements on the subject, and that the ruins do not cover
much more than one twenty-fifth of the space which Herodotus assigns to
the city.
We may, therefore, without much hesitation, set aside the theory which
would ascribe to the ancient Nineveh dimensions nine or ten times
greater than those of London, and proceed to a description of the group
of ruins believed by the best judges to mark the true site.
The ruins opposite Mosul consist of two principal Mounds, known
respectively as Nebbi-Yunus and Koyunjik. [PLATE XXXVI., Fig. 2.] The
Koyunjik mound, which lies to the north-west of the other, at the
distance of 900 yards, or a little more than half a mile, is very much
the more considerable of the two. Its shape is an irregular oval,
elongated to a point towards the north-east, in the line of its greater
axis. The surface is nearly flat; the sides slope at a steep angle, and
are furrowed with numerous ravines, worn in the soft material by the
rains of some thirty centuries. The greatest height of the mound above
the plum is towards the south-eastern extremity, where it overhangs the
small stream of the Khosr; the elevation in this part being about
ninety-five feet. The area covered by the mound is estimated at a
hundred acres, and the entire mass is said to contain 14,500,000 tons of
earth. The labor of a man would scarcely excavate and place in position
more than 120 tons of earth in a year; it would require, therefore, the
united exertions of 10,000 men for twelve years, or 20,000 men for six
years, to complete the structure. On this artificial eminence were
raised in ancient times the palaces and temples of the Assyrian
monarchs, which are now imbedded in the debris of their own ruins.
[Illustration: PLATE 37]
The mound of Nebbi-Ymus is at its base nearly triangular: [PLATE
XXXVII., Fig. 1.] It covers an area of about forty acres. It is loftier,
and its sides are more precipitous, than Koyunjik, especially on the
west, where it abutted upon the wall of the city. The surface is mostly
flat, but is divided about the middle by a deep ravine, running nearly
from north to south, and separating the mound into an eastern and a
western portion. The so-called tomb of Jonah is conspicuous on the north
edge of the western portion of the mound, and about it are grouped the
cottages of the Kurds and Turcomans to whom the site of the ancient
Nineveh belongs. The eastern portion of the mound forms a burial-ground,
to which the bodies of Mahometans are brought from considerable
distances. The mass of earth is calculated at six and a half millions of
tons; so that its erection would have given full employment to 10,000
men for the space of five years and a half.
These two vast mounds--the platforms on which palaces and temples were
raised--are both in the same line, and abutted, both of them, on the
western wall of the city. Their position in that wall is thought to have
been determined, not by chance, but by design; since they break the
western face of the city into three nearly equal portions. The entire
length of this side of Nineveh was 13,600 feet, or somewhat more than
two and a half miles. Anciently it seems to have immediately overhung
the Tigris, which has now moved off to the west, leaving a plain nearly
a mile in width between its eastern edge and the old rampart of the
city. This rampart followed, apparently, the natural course of the
river-bank; and hence, while on the whole it is tolerably straight, in
the most southern of the three portions it exhibits a gentle curve,
where the river evidently made a sweep, altering its course from
south-east nearly to south.
The western wall at its northern extremity approaches the present course
of the Tigris, and is here joined, exactly at right angles, by the
northern, or rather the north-western, rampart, which runs in a
perfectly straight line to the north-eastern angle of the city, and is
said to measure exactly 7000 feet. This wall is again divided, like the
western, but with even more preciseness, into three equal portions.
Commencing at the north-eastern angle, one-third of it is carried along
comparatively high ground, after which for the remaining two-thirds of
its course it falls by a gentle decline towards the Tigris. Exactly
midway in this slope the rampart is broken by a road, adjoining which is
a remarkable mound, covering one of the chief gates of the city.
At its other extremity the western wall forms a very obtuse angle with
the southern, which impends over a deep ravine formed by it winter
torrent, and runs in a straight line for about 1000 yards, when it meets
the eastern wall, with which it forms a slightly acute angle.
It remains to describe the eastern wall, which is the longest and the
least regular of the four. Tins barrier skirts the edge of a ridge of
conglomerate rock, which here rises somewhat above the level of the
plain, and presents a slightly convex sweep to the north east. At first
it runs nearly parallel to the western, and at right angles to the
northern wall; but, after pursuing this course for about three quarters
of a mile, it is forced by the natural convexity of the ridge to retire
a little, and curving gently inwards it takes a direction much more
southerly than at first, thus drawing continually nearer to the western
wall, whose course is almost exactly south-east. The entire length of
this wall is 16,000 feet, or above three miles. It is divided into two
portions, whereof the southern is somewhat the longer, by the stream of
the Khosr-Su; which coming from the north west, finds its way through
the ruins of the city, and then runs on across the low plain to the
Tigris.
The enceinte of Nineveh forms thus an irregular trapezium, or a
“triangle with its apex abruptly cut off to the south.” The breadth,
even in the broadest part--that towards the north--is very
disproportionate to the length, standing to it as four to nine, or as 1
to 2.25. The town is thus of an oblong shape, and so far Diodorus truly
described it; though his dimensions greatly exceed the truth. The
circuit of the walls is somewhat less than eight miles, instead of being
more than fifty and the area which they include is 1100 English acres,
instead of being 112,000!
It is reckoned that in a populous Oriental town we may compute the
inhabitants at nearly, if not quite, a hundred per acre. This allows a
considerable space for streets, open squares, and gardens, since it
assigns but one individual to every space of fifty square yards.
According to such a mode of reckoning, the population of ancient
Nineveh, within the enceinte here described, may be estimated at 175,000
souls. No city of Western Asia is at the present day so populous.
In the above description of the ramparts surrounding Nineveh, no account
has been given of their width or height. According to Diodorus, the wall
wherewith Ninus surrounded his capital was 100 feet high, and so broad
that three chariots might drive side by side along the top. Xenophon,
who passed close to the ruins on his retreat with the Ten Thousand,
calls the height 150 feet, and the width 50 feet. The actual greatest
height at present seems to be 46 feet; but the _debris_ at the foot of the
walls are so great, and the crumbled character of the walls themselves
is so evident, that the chief modern explorer inclines to regard the
computation of Diodorus as probably no exaggeration of the truth. The
width of the walls, in their crumbled condition, is from 100 to 200
feet.
The mode in which the walls were constructed seems to have been the
following. Up to a certain height--fifty feet, according to
Xenophon--they were composed of neatly-hewn blocks of a fossiliferous
limestone, smoothed and polished on the outside. Above this, the
material used was sun-dried brick. The stone masonry was certainly
ornamented along its top by a continuous series of battlements or
gradines in the same material [PLATE XXXVII., Fig. 2] and it is not
unlikely that a similar ornamentation crowned the upper brick structure.
The wall was pierced at irregular intervals by gates, above which rose
lofty towers; while towers, probably of lesser elevation, occurred also
in the portions of the wall intervening between one gate and another. A
gate in the north-western rampart has been cleared by means of
excavation, the form and construction of which will best appear from the
annexed ground-plan. [PLATE XXXVII., Fig. 3.] It seems to have consisted
of three gateways, whereof the inner and outer were ornamented with
colossal human-headed hulls and other figures, while the central one was
merely panelled with slabs of alabaster. Between the gateways were two
large chambers, 70 feet long by 23 feet wide, which were thus capable of
containing a considerable body of soldiers. The chambers and gateways
are supposed to have been arched over, like the castles’ gates on the
bas-reliefs. The gates themselves have wholly disappeared: but the
debris which filled both the chambers and the passages contained so much
charcoal that it is thought they must have been made, not of bronze,
like the gates of Babylon, but of wood. The ground within the gate-way
was paved with large slabs of limestone, still bearing the marks of
chariot wheels.
The castellated rampart which thus surrounded and guarded Nineveh did
not constitute by any means its sole defence. Outside the stone basement
wall lay on every side a water barrier, consisting on the west and south
of natural river courses; on the north and east, of artificial channels
into which water was conducted from the Khosr-su. The northern and
eastern walls were skirted along their whole length by a broad and deep
moat, into which the Khosr-su was made to flow by occupying its natural
bed with a strong dam carried across it in the line of the eastern wall,
and at the point where the stream now enters the enclosure. On meeting
this obstruction, of which there are still some remains, the waters
divided, and while part flowed to the south-east, and reached the Tigris
by the ravine immediately to the south of the city, which is a natural
water-course, part turned at an acute angle to the north-west, and,
washing the remainder of the eastern and the whole of the northern wall,
gained the Tigris at the north-west angle of the city, where a second
dam kept it at a sufficient height. Moreover, on the eastern face, which
appears to have been regarded as the weakest, a series of outworks were
erected for the further defence of the city. North of the Khosr, between
the city wall and that river, which there runs parallel to the wall and
forms a sort of second or outermost moat, there are traces of a detached
fort of considerable size, which must have strengthened the defences in
that quarter. South and south-east of the Khosr, the works are still
more elaborate. In the first place, from a point where the Khosr leaves
the hills and debouches upon comparatively low ground, a deep ditch, 200
feet broad, was carried through compact silicious conglomerate for
upwards of two miles, till it joined the ravine which formed the natural
protection of the city upon the south. On either side of this ditch,
which could be readily supplied with water from the Khosr at its
northern extremity, was built a broad and lofty wall; the eastern one,
which forms the outermost of the defences, rises even now a hundred feet
above the bottom of the ditch on which it adjoins. Further, between this
outer barrier and the city moat wall interposed a species of demilune,
guarded by a double wall and a broad ditch and connected (as is
thought) by a covered way with Neneveh itself. Thus the city was
protected on this, its most vulnerable side, towards the centre by five
walls and three broad and deep moats; towards the north, by a wall, a
moat, the Khosr, and a strong outpost; towards the south by two moats
and three lines of rampart. The breadth of the whole fortification on
this side is 2200 feet, or not far from half a mile. [PLATE XXXVIII.]
[Illustration: PLATE 38]
Such was the site, and such were the defences, of the capital of
Assyria. Of its internal arrangements but little can be said at present,
since no general examination of the space within the ramparts has been
as yet made, and no ancient account of the interior has come down to us.
We can only see that the side of the city which was most fashionable was
the western, which immediately overhung the Tigris; since here were the
palaces of the kings, and here seem also to have been the dwellings of
the richer citizens; at least, it is on this side in the space
intervening between Koyunjik and the northern rampart, that the only
very evident remains of edifices--besides the great Mounds of Koyunjik
and Nebbi-Yunus--are found. The river was no doubt the main attraction;
but perhaps the western side was also considered the most secure, as
lying furthest frown the quarter whence alone the inhabitants expected
to be attacked, namely, the east. It is impossible at present to give
any account of the character of the houses or the the direction of the
streets. Perhaps the time may not be far distant when more systematic
and continuous efforts will be made by the enterprise of Europe to
obtain full knowledge of all the remains which still lie buried at this
interesting site. No such discoveries are indeed to be expected as those
which have recently startled the world but patient explorers would still
be sure of an ample reward, were they to glean, after Layard in the
field from which he swept so magnificent a harvest.