scholar on his Eastern travels, passing through Mosul in 1842, found Mr.
Botta engaged on his first and unpromising attempts at Koyunjik, and
subsequently wrote to him from Constantinople exhorting him to persist
and not give up his hopes of success. He was one of the first to hear of
the astounding news from Khorsabad, and immediately determined to carry
out a long-cherished project of his own, that of exploring a large mound
known among the Arabs under the name of NIMRUD, and situated somewhat
lower on the Tigris, near that river's junction with one of its chief
tributaries, the Zab. The difficulty lay in procuring the necessary
funds. Neither the trustees of the British Museum nor the English
Government were at first willing to incur such considerable expense on
what was still looked upon as very uncertain chances. It was a private
gentleman, Sir Stratford Canning, then English minister at
Constantinople, who generously came forward, and announced himself
willing to meet the outlay within certain limits, while authorities at
home were to be solicited and worked upon. So Mr. Layard was enabled to
begin operations on the mound which he had specially selected for
himself in the autumn of 1845, the year after that in which the building
of Khorsabad was finally laid open by Botta. The results of his
expedition were so startlingly vast and important, and the particulars
of his work on the Assyrian plains are so interesting and picturesque,
that they will furnish ample materials for a separate chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Layard's "Discoveries at Nineveh," Introduction.
[B] In five huge folio volumes, one of text, two of inscriptions, and
two of illustrations. The title shows that Botta erroneously imagined
the ruins he had discovered to be those of Nineveh itself.
II.
LAYARD AND HIS WORK.
1. In the first part of November, 1845, we find the enthusiastic and
enterprising young scholar on the scene of his future exertions and
triumphs. His first night in the wilderness, in a ruinous Arab village
amidst the smaller mounds of Nimrud, is vividly described by him:--"I
slept little during the night. The hovel in which we had taken shelter,
and its inmates, did not invite slumber; but such scenes and companions
were not new to me; they could have been forgotten, had my brain been
less excited. Hopes, long-cherished, were now to be realized, or were to
end in disappointment. Visions of palaces underground, of gigantic
monsters, of sculptured figures, and endless inscriptions floated before
me. After forming plan after plan for removing the earth, and
extricating these treasures, I fancied myself wandering in a maze of
chambers from which I could find no outlet. Then again, all was
reburied, and I was standing on the grass-covered mound."
2. Although not doomed to disappointment in the end, these hopes were
yet to be thwarted in many ways before the visions of that night became
reality. For many and various were the difficulties which Layard had to
contend with during the following months as well as during his second
expedition in 1848. The material hardships of perpetual camping out in
an uncongenial climate, without any of the simplest conveniences of
life, and the fevers and sickness repeatedly brought on by exposure to
winter rains and summer heat, should perhaps be counted among the least
of them, for they had their compensations. Not so the ignorant and
ill-natured opposition, open or covert, of the Turkish authorities. That
was an evil to which no amount of philosophy could ever fully reconcile
him. His experiences in that line form an amusing collection. Luckily,
the first was also the worst. The pasha whom he found installed at Mosul
was, in appearance and temper, more like an ogre than a man. He was the
terror of the country. His cruelty and rapacity knew no bounds. When he
sent his tax-collectors on their dreaded round, he used to dismiss them
with this short and pithy instruction: "Go, destroy, eat!" (i.e.
"plunder"), and for his own profit had revived several kinds of
contributions which had been suffered to fall into disuse, especially
one called "tooth-money,"--"a compensation in money, levied upon all
villages in which a man of such rank is entertained, for the wear and
tear of his teeth in masticating the food he condescends to receive from
the inhabitants."
3. The letters with which Layard was provided secured him a gracious
reception from this amiable personage, who allowed him to begin
operations on the great mound of Nimrud with the party of Arab workmen
whom he had hired for the purpose. Some time after, it came to the
Pasha's knowledge that a few fragments of gold leaf had been found in
the rubbish and he even procured a small particle as sample. He
immediately concluded, as the Arab chief had done, that the English
traveller was digging for hidden treasure--an object far more
intelligible to them than that of disinterring and carrying home a
quantity of old broken stones. This incident, by arousing the great
man's rapacity, might have caused him to put a stop to all further
search, had not Layard, who well knew that treasure of this kind was not
likely to be plentiful in the ruins, immediately proposed that his
Excellency should keep an agent at the mound, to take charge of all the
precious metals which might be discovered there in the course of the
excavations. The Pasha raised no objections at the moment, but a few
days later announced to Layard that, to his great regret, he felt it his
duty to forbid the continuation of the work, since he had just learned
that the diggers were disturbing a Mussulman burying-ground. As the
tombs of true believers are held very sacred and inviolable by
Mohammedans, this would have been a fatal obstacle, had not one of the
Pasha's own officers confidentially disclosed to Layard that the tombs
were _sham ones_, that he and his men had been secretly employed to
fabricate them, and for two nights had been bringing stones for the
purpose from the surrounding villages. "We have destroyed more tombs of
true believers," said the Aga,--(officer)--"in making sham ones, than
ever you could have defiled. We have killed our horses and ourselves in
carrying those accursed stones." Fortunately the Pasha, whose misdeeds
could not be tolerated even by a Turkish government, was recalled about
Christmas, and succeeded by an official of an entirely different stamp,
a man whose reputation for justice and mildness had preceded him, and
whose arrival was accordingly greeted with public rejoicings. Operations
at the mound now proceeded for some time rapidly and successfully. But
this very success at one time raised new difficulties for our explorers.
4. One day, as Layard was returning to the mound from an excursion, he
was met on the way by two Arabs who had ridden out to meet him at full
speed, and from a distance shouted to him in the wildest excitement:
"Hasten, O Bey! hasten to the diggers! for they have found Nimrod
himself. It is wonderful, but it is true! we have seen him with our
eyes. There is no God but God!" Greatly puzzled, he hurried on and,
descending into the trench, found that the workmen had uncovered a
gigantic head, the body to which was still imbedded in earth and
rubbish. This head, beautifully sculptured in the alabaster furnished by
the neighboring hills, surpassed in height the tallest man present. The
great shapely features, in their majestic repose, seemed to guard some
mighty secret and to defy the bustling curiosity of those who gazed on
them in wonder and fear. "One of the workmen, on catching the first
glimpse of the monster, had thrown down his basket and run off toward
Mossul as fast as his legs could carry him."
[Illustration: 2.--TEMPLE OF ÊA AT ERIDHU (ABU-SHAHREIN). BACK-STAIRS.
(Hommel.)]
5. The Arabs came in crowds from the surrounding encampments; they could
scarcely be persuaded that the image was of stone, and contended that it
was not the work of men's hands, but of infidel giants of olden times.
The commotion soon spread to Mosul, where the terrified workman,
"entering breathless into the bazars, announced to every one he met
that Nimrod had appeared." The authorities of the town were alarmed, put
their heads together and decided that such idolatrous proceedings were
an outrage to religion. The consequence was that Layard was requested by
his friend Ismail-Pasha to suspend operations for awhile, until the
excitement should have subsided, a request with which he thought it
wisest to comply without remonstrance, lest the people of Mosul might
come out in force and deal with his precious find as they had done with
the sculptured figure at Koyunjik in Rich's time. The alarm, however,
did not last long. Both Arabs and Turks soon became familiar with the
strange creations which kept emerging out of the earth, and learned to
discuss them with great calm and gravity. The colossal bulls and lions
with wings and human heads, of which several pairs were discovered, some
of them in a state of perfect preservation, were especially the objects
of wonder and conjectures, which generally ended in a curse "on all
infidels and their works," the conclusion arrived at being that "the
idols" were to be sent to England, to form gateways to the palace of the
Queen. And when some of these giants, now in the British Museum, were
actually removed, with infinite pains and labor, to be dragged down to
the Tigris, and floated down the river on rafts, there was no end to the
astonishment of Layard's simple friends. On one such occasion an Arab
Sheikh, or chieftain, whose tribe had engaged to assist in moving one of
the winged bulls, opened his heart to him. "In the name of the Most
High," said he, "tell me, O Bey, what you are going to do with these
stones. So many thousands of purses spent on such things! Can it be, as
you say, that your people learn wisdom from them? or is it as his
reverence the Cadi declares, that they are to go to the palace of your
Queen, who, with the rest of the unbelievers, worships these idols? As
for wisdom, these figures will not teach you to make any better knives,
or scissors, or chintzes, and it is in the making of these things that
the English show their wisdom."
6. Such was the view very generally taken of Layard's work by both Turks
and Arabs, from the Pasha down to the humblest digger in his band of
laborers, and he seldom felt called upon to play the missionary of
science, knowing as he did that all such efforts would be but wasted
breath. This want of intellectual sympathy did not prevent the best
understanding from existing between himself and these rangers of the
desert. The primitive life which he led amongst them for so many months,
the kindly hospitality which he invariably experienced at their hands
during the excursions made and the visits he paid to different Bedouin
tribes in the intervals of recreation which he was compelled to allow
himself from time to time--these are among the most pleasurable memories
of those wonderful, dreamlike years. He lingers on them lovingly and
retraces them through many a page of both his books[C]--pages which, for
their picturesque vividness, must be perused with delight even by such
as are but slightly interested in the discovery of buried palaces and
winged bulls. One longs to have been with him through some of those
peerless evenings when, after a long day's work, he sat before his cabin
in the cool starlight, watching the dances with which those
indefatigable Arabs, men and women, solaced themselves deep into the
night, while the encampment was lively with the hum of voices, and the
fires lit to prepare the simple meal. One longs to have shared in some
of those brisk rides across plains so thickly enamelled with flowers,
that it seemed a patchwork of many colors, and "the dogs, as they
returned from hunting, issued from the long grass dyed red, yellow, or
blue, according to the flowers through which they had last forced their
way,"--the joy of the Arab's soul, which made the chief, Layard's
friend, continually exclaim, "rioting in the luxuriant herbage and
scented air, as his mare waded through the flowers:--'What delight has
God given us equal to this? It is the only thing worth living for. What
do the dwellers in cities know of true happiness? They never have seen
grass or flowers! May God have pity on them!'" How glorious to watch the
face of the desert changing its colors almost from day to day, white
succeeding to pale straw color, red to white, blue to red, lilac to
blue, and bright gold to that, according to the flowers with which it
decked itself! Out of sight stretches the gorgeous carpet, dotted with
the black camel's-hair tents of the Arabs, enlivened with flocks of
sheep and camels, and whole studs of horses of noble breed which are
brought out from Mosul and left to graze at liberty, in the days of
healthy breezes and fragrant pastures.
7. So much for spring. A beautiful, a perfect season, but unfortunately
as brief as it is lovely, and too soon succeeded by the terrible heat
and long drought of summer, which sometimes set in so suddenly as hardly
to give the few villagers time to gather in their crops. Chaldea or
Lower Mesopotamia is in this respect even worse off than the higher
plains of Assyria. A temperature of 120° in the shade is no unusual
occurrence in Baghdad; true, it can be reduced to 100° in the cellars of
the houses by carefully excluding the faintest ray of light, and it is
there that the inhabitants mostly spend their days in summer. The
oppression is such that Europeans are entirely unmanned and unfitted for
any kind of activity. "Camels sicken, and birds are so distressed by the
high temperature, that they sit in the date-trees about Baghdad, with
their mouths open, panting for fresh air."[D]
8. But the most frightful feature of a Mesopotamian summer is the
frequent and violent sand-storms, during which travellers, in addition
to all the dangers offered by snow-storms--being buried alive and losing
their way--are exposed to that of suffocation not only from the
furnace-like heat of the desert-wind, but from the impalpable sand,
which is whirled and driven before it, and fills the eyes, mouth and
nostrils of horse and rider. The three miles' ride from Layard's
encampment to the mound of Nimrud must have been something more than
pleasant morning exercise in such a season, and though the deep trenches
and wells afforded a comparatively cool and delightful retreat, he soon
found that fever was the price to be paid for the indulgence, and was
repeatedly laid up with it. "The verdure of the plain," he says in one
place, "had perished almost in a day. Hot winds, coming from the desert,
had burnt up and carried away the shrubs; flights of locusts, darkening
the air, had destroyed the few patches of cultivation, and had completed
the havoc commenced by the heat of the sun.... Violent whirlwinds
occasionally swept over the face of the country. They could be seen as
they advanced from the desert, carrying along with them clouds of dust
and sand. Almost utter darkness prevailed during their passage, which
lasted generally about an hour, and nothing could resist their fury. On
returning home one afternoon after a tempest of the kind, I found no
traces of my dwellings; they had been completely carried away. Ponderous
wooden frame-works had been borne over the bank and hurled some hundred
yards distant; the tents had disappeared, and my furniture was scattered
over the plain."
9. Fortunately it would not require much labor to restore the wooden
frames to their proper place and reconstruct the reed-plaited,
mud-plastered walls as well as the roof composed of reeds and
boughs--such being the sumptuous residences of which Layard shared the
largest with various domestic animals, from whose immediate
companionship he was saved by a thin partition, the other hovels being
devoted to the wives, children and poultry of his host, to his own
servants and different household uses. But the time came when not even
this accommodation, poor as it was, could be enjoyed with any degree of
comfort. When the summer heat set in in earnest, the huts became
uninhabitable from their closeness and the vermin with which they
swarmed, while a canvas tent, though far preferable in the way of
airiness and cleanliness, did not afford sufficient shelter.
10. "In this dilemma," says Layard, "I ordered a recess to be cut into
the bank of the river where it rose perpendicularly from the water's
edge. By screening the front with reeds and boughs of trees, and
covering the whole with similar materials, a small room was formed. I
was much troubled, however, with scorpions and other reptiles, which
issued from the earth forming the walls of my apartment; and later in
the summer by the gnats and sandflies which hovered on a calm night over
the river." It is difficult to decide between the respective merits of
this novel summer retreat and of the winter dwelling, ambitiously
constructed of mud bricks dried in the sun, and roofed with solid wooden
beams. This imposing residence, in which Layard spent the last months of
his first winter in Assyria, would have been sufficient protection
against wind and weather, after it had been duly coated with mud.
Unfortunately a heavy shower fell before it was quite completed, and so
saturated the bricks that they did not dry again before the following
spring. "The consequence was," he pleasantly remarks, "that the only
verdure on which my eyes were permitted to feast before my return to
Europe, was furnished by my own property--the walls in the interior of
the rooms being continually clothed with a crop of grass."
[Illustration: 3.--VIEW OF EUPHRATES NEAR THE RUINS OF BABYLON.
(Babelon.)]
11. These few indications are sufficient to give a tolerably clear idea
of what might be called "Pleasures and hardships of an explorer's life
in the desert." As for the work itself, it is simple enough in the
telling, although it must have been extremely wearisome and laborious in
the performance. The simplest way to get at the contents of a mound,
would be to remove all the earth and rubbish by carting it away,--a
piece of work which our searchers might no doubt have accomplished with
great facility, had they had at their disposal a few scores of thousands
of slaves and captives, as had the ancient kings who built the huge
constructions the ruins of which had now to be disinterred. With a
hundred or two of hired workmen and very limited funds, the case was
slightly different. The task really amounted to this: to achieve the
greatest possible results at the least possible expense of labor and
time, and this is how such excavations are carried out on a plan
uniformly followed everywhere as the most practical and direct:
12. Trenches, more or less wide, are conducted from different sides
towards the centre of the mound. This is obviously the surest and
shortest way to arrive at whatever remains of walls may be imbedded in
it. But even this preliminary operation has to be carried out with some
judgment and discernment. It is known that the Chaldeans and Assyrians
constructed their palaces and temples not upon the level, natural soil,
but upon an artificial platform of brick and earth, at least thirty feet
high. This platform was faced on all sides with a strong wall of solid
burned brick, often moreover cased with stone. A trench dug straight
from the plain into the lower part of the mound would consequently be
wasted labor, since it could never bring to anything but that same blind
wall, behind which there is only the solid mass of the platform. Digging
therefore begins in the slope of the mound, at a height corresponding to
the supposed height of the platform, and is carried on straight across
its surface until a wall is reached,--a wall belonging to one of the
palaces or temples. This wall has then to be followed, till a break in
it is found, indicating an entrance or doorway.[E] The burrowing process
becomes more and more complicated, and sometimes dangerous. Shafts have
to be sunk from above at frequent intervals to introduce air and light
into the long and narrow corridor; the sides and vault have to be
propped by beams to prevent the soft earthy mass from falling in and
crushing the diggers. Every shovelful of earth cleared away is removed
in baskets which are passed from hand to hand till they are emptied
outside the trench, or else lowered empty and sent up full, through the
shafts by means of ropes and pulleys, to be emptied on the top. When a
doorway is reached, it is cleared all through the thickness of the
wall, which is very great; then a similar tunnel is conducted all along
the inside of the wall, the greatest care being needed not to damage the
sculptures which generally line it, and which, as it is, are more or
less injured and cracked, their upper parts sometimes entirely destroyed
by the action of fire. When the tunnel has been carried along the four
sides, every doorway or portal carefully noted and cleared, it is seen
from the measurements,--especially the width--whether the space explored
be an inner court, a hall or a chamber. If the latter, it is sometimes
entirely cleared from above, when the rubbish frequently yields valuable
finds in the shape of various small articles. One such chamber,
uncovered by Layard, at Koyunjik, proved a perfect mine of treasures.
The most curious relics were brought to light in it: quantities of studs
and small rosettes in mother-of-pearl, ivory and metal, (such as were
used to ornament the harness of the war-horses), bowls, cups and dishes
of bronze,[F] besides caldrons, shields and other items of armor, even
glass bowls, lastly fragments of a royal throne--possibly the very
throne on which King Sennacherib sat to give audience or pronounce
judgments, for the palace at Koyunjik where these objects were found was
built by that monarch so long familiar to us only from the Bible, and
the sculptures and inscriptions which cover its walls are the annals of
his conquests abroad and his rule at home.
[Illustration: 4.--MOUND OF BABIL. (RUINS OF BABYLON.) (Oppert.)]
A description of the removal of the colossal bulls and lions which were
shipped to England and now are safely housed in the British Museum,
ought by rights to form the close of a chapter devoted to "Layard and
his work." But the reference must suffice; the vivid and entertaining
narrative should be read in the original, as the passages are too long
for transcription, and would be marred by quoting.
[Illustration 5.--BRONZE DISH.]
FOOTNOTES:
[C] "Nineveh and its Remains," and "Discoveries in Nineveh and Babylon."
[D] Rawlinson's "Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient World," Vol. I.,
Chap. II.
[E] See Figure 15, on p. 53.
[F] See Figures 5, 6, and 7.
III.
THE RUINS.
"And they said to one another, Go to, let us make brick, and
burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and slime
for mortar."--_Gen._ xi. 3.
1. It is a principle, long ago laid down and universally recognized,
that every country _makes_ its own people. That is, the mode of life and
the intellectual culture of a people are shaped by the characteristic
features of the land in which it dwells; or, in other words, men can
live only in a manner suited to the peculiarities of their native
country. Men settled along the sea-shore will lead a different life,
will develop different qualities of mind and body from the owners of
vast inland pasture-grounds or the holders of rugged mountain
fastnesses. They will all dress differently, eat different food, follow
different pursuits. Their very dwellings and public buildings will
present an entirely different aspect, according to the material which
they will have at hand in the greatest abundance, be it stone, wood or
any other substance suitable for the purpose. Thus every country will
create its own peculiar style of art, determined chiefly by its own
natural productions. On these, architecture, the art of the builder,
will be even more dependent than any other.
[Illustration: 6.--BRONZE DISH (RUG-PATTERN).]
2. It would seem as though Chaldea or Lower Mesopotamia, regarded from
this point of view, could never have originated any architecture at all,
for it is, at first sight, absolutely deficient in building materials of
any sort. The whole land is alluvial, that is, formed, gradually,
through thousands of years, of the rich mud deposited by the two
rivers, as they spread into vast marshy flats towards the end of their
course. Such soil, when hardened into sufficient consistency, is the
finest of all for cultivation, and a greater source of wealth than mines
of the most precious ore; but it bears no trees and contains no stone.
The people who were first tempted to settle in the lowlands towards the
Persian Gulf by the extraordinary fertility of that region, found
nothing at all available to construct their simple dwellings--nothing
but reeds of enormous size, which grew there, as they do now, in the
greatest profusion. These reeds "cover the marshes in the summer-time,
rising often to the height of fourteen or fifteen feet. The Arabs of the
marsh region form their houses of this material, binding the stems
together and bending them into arches, to make the skeletons of their
buildings; while, to form the walls, they stretch across from arch to
arch mats made of the leaves."[G]
[Illustration: 7.--SECTION OF BRONZE DISH.]