Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/28

 io A History of Art in Ciialdj;a and Assyria. after exploring the village I was rather puzzled as to what I should find for my men to do — we had already been so often deceived. At Kouyundjik we had raised no end of dust and found hardly anything. While turning over this question in my mind I had my supper before the door of one of the houses, and after the meal was over, I was idly scratching the ground by the side of the mat on which I was lying, with my knife. Suddenly I felt the blade strike against something very hard ; I withdrew it, and thrusting my finger into the hole, I felt a stone. Working away with the knife I soon enlarged the hole, and then saw that the stone was worked and chiselled with great care. Next morning I brought my workmen to the spot, and watched them closely to see that they advanced with sufficient precaution. A few strokes of the pick-axe brought to light the head of one of the bulls. Off I went at full gallop to Mossoul, and came back next day with M. Botta." Whether this be a truthful narrative or not I cannot say. Michel was born in the Levant, of French parents, and I always forgot to ask whether, by any chance, his father was a Gascon. In any case, it was to Botta's honour that he understood the value and significance of a discovery due, in the first place, to the idle scratchings of a subaltern, and that he pushed on his explora- tions in the face of Turkish ill-will and pecuniary difficulties, and that before he had received any encouragement from Paris. Botta soon recognized the true character of the building, even although he clung to the erroneous notion that he had disinterred the historical capital of Assyria, the Nineveh of classic writers and Hebrew prophets. 1 The excavations of his successor and the decipherment of the cuneiform texts have clearly proved his mistake. The monument found and partly excavated by Botta, was never included in Nineveh, vast though that city may have been. It was part of what may be called a caprice of Sargon's put into execution between the years 722 and 705 b.c. That prince was not content with founding a new dynasty ; he determined to pass the intervals between his campaigns in a palace and city which should be entirely his own creation, and should bear his 1 This preconceived notion explains the erroneous title he gave to his great work : Monument de Ninive, découvert et décrit par P. E. Botta, mesuré et dessiné par E. Flandin, published at the expense of the state at the Imprimerie nationale, Paris, 1849, 5 vols, folio (1 volume of text, 4 of plates).