Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/62

44 A History of Art in Chald^ea and Assyria. of the circumstance, he gives a plan of these remains, and goes so far as to express his belief that the arrangements shown in the plan were repeated on the three other faces of a tower of which he encountered the summit, still partly preserved. 1 Although Calah was never abandoned, it fell, after the accession of the Sargonids, from the first place among Assyrian cities ; on the other hand Sargon's attempt to fix the seat of government in his own town of Dour-Saryoukin does not seem to have met with permanent success. From the eighth century to the end of the seventh the Assyrian kings appear to have made Nineveh their favourite place of residence. The site of this famous city has been much discussed, 2 but at last the question appears to be settled. Nineveh was built on the left bank of the Tigris, opposite to the site occupied by modern Mossoul. Two great mounds rising some five-and-thirty feet above the level of the plain, represent the substructures upon which the royal homes of the last Assyrian dynasty were raised ; they are now famous as Kouyundjik and Nebbi-Younas. Like the mound of Khorsabad these two artificial hills were in juxta-position with the city Fig. 17.— Upper chambers walls, which may still be traced in almost "omLayar? Nimroudî their whole extent by the ridge of earth formed of their materials (Fig. 18), The mound of Nebbi-Younas has so far remained almost unexplored. It is fortified against the curiosity of Europeans by the little building on its summit and the cemetery covering most of its surface. The inhabitants of the country, Mussulman as well as Christian, believe that Jonah lies under the chapel dome, and they themselves hope to rest as near his body as possible. Some slight excavations, little more than a few strokes of the pickaxe, have been made in the scanty spots where no graves occur, but enough evidence has been found to justify us in 1 Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. pp. 14-16. 2 All the passages by ancient writers bearing on the subject will be found collected in the first of those articles of Hœfer, of which we have already had occasion to speak. Its title is : Textes anciens sur V Histoire et la Position de Ninive. It is certain that even in the Roman period its site was not positively known. Lucian, who was born at Samosata, less than a hundred leagues from Nineveh, says : " Nineveh has perished ; no trace of it remains, and we cannot say where it stood" {Charon, c. xxiii).