Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/130

90 insignificant rill flowing from Ter Jilla. From this it results that we must look for the site of Larissa on this side of the Zab and Khazir, and supposing Xenophon to have crossed the former river by the present ferry, which is about ten miles distant from Nimrood, on the day he reached Larissa, his army must have marched seven miles (three miles from the Zab having been accomplished the day before), a reasonable distance, considering the annoyance which they received from the pursuing Persians.

"The position of Nimrood corresponds, therefore, with that of ancient Larissa, and the fact that the former is situated only half a mile from the Tigris is another argument in favour of its identity, for Xenophon describes Larissa as being on the Tigris.

"The relative position of Mes-Pylæ and Larissa, as given by the Grecian historian, is a further coincidence to strengthen our argument. Mes-Pylæ is by Ainsworth identified with the mounds upon which the modern village of Nebi Yoonas is built, and generally thought to be the site of ancient Nineveh. After referring to the intermediate distance between the Zab and Nebi Yoonas in proof of his opinion, he adds, 'a strongly corroborative proof of the identity of the Mes-Pylæ of Xenophon with the Nineveh of antiquity may be derived from the circumstance of the existence of shells in the stone of which the plinth of the wall was fabricated, it being a fact that the common building stone of this neighbourhood (Nebi Yoonas) is highly fossiliferous, while a similar stone is not met with to the northward or southward of Mes-Pylæ.' If then it is not to be doubted that Mes-Pylæ was Nineveh, or occupied its site, the distance between that place and Nimrood exactly corresponds with the six parasangs which separated Larissa from Mes-Pylæ, and there being no other mound of note existing at this distance from Mes-Pylæ, it results that Nimrood must be Larissa.

"A further coincidence corroborative of this identity, is the existence of the cone at the north-eastern angle of the mound of Nimrood, which not improbably forms the remains of the pyramid mentioned by Xenophon as standing close to the city of Larissa.

"In stating, as I have done, that Khorsabad was contemporary