Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/258

204 as to what tribe they belonged to, they replied in the negative; several of the Jews at Mosul profess to be descendants of the tribe of Levi. There is another smaller synagogue and a "house of prayer" belonging to the Jews at Amedia besides that already described, but these I did not visit.

We next went to inspect what Ainsworth describes as the remains of a "Persian temple," situated about the centre of the area upon which the town is built. To my great disappointment I could discover no vestiges there of "sepulchral caves or truncated obelisks," but a mere oblong ditch or trench, measuring eighty feet by forty-six, cut out of the solid rock, in which ten rough and misshapen masses of the parent stone were left as if to serve for the basements of as many pillars. This ditch, which is from six to eight feet high, lies in a deep hollow, and I have no doubt was intended for a cistern, of which there are many more of much smaller dimensions about the town. The following exact plan of the excavation will show at once that it never could have been designed for a temple; its low position, as well as the irregularity of its internal construction, are both at variance with any such notion.



From the cistern we walked through the remains of an old bazaar and a heap of ruined houses, now the receptacle of noisome filth and ordure, to the eastern gate called Bâb-ooz-Zeibâr, from its being the entrance into the fortress from the district of that name. Here we saw a number of natives engaged in repairing