Discoveries among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon Part 18

We left Shokh on the 17th August by a bridge crossing the princ.i.p.al stream. The Mudir rode with us up a steep mountain, rising on the very outskirts of the town. After a long and difficult ascent we came to a broad green platform called Tagu, the pastures of the people of Shattak, and now covered with their tents and flocks. This high ground overlooked the deep valleys, through which wound the two streams, and on whose sides were many smiling gardens and villages.

Crossing a high mountain pa.s.s, on which snow still lingered, we descended into a deep valley like that of Shattak, chiefly cultivated by Armenians.

We crossed a small stream, and ascended on the opposite side to Ashkaun, whose inhabitants were outside the village, near a clear spring, was.h.i.+ng and shearing their sheep. We had now entered Nourdooz, a district under a Mudir appointed by the Pasha of Wan, and living at a large village called Pir-bedelan.

Our ride on the following day was over upland pastures of great richness, and through narrow valleys watered by numerous streams. Here and there were villages inhabited by Kurds and Armenians. We were now approaching the Nestorian districts. The first man of the tribe we met was an aged buffalo-keeper, who, in answer to a question in Kurdish, spoke to me in the Chaldee dialect of the mountains. Hormuzd and my servants rejoiced at the prospect of leaving the Armenian settlements, whose inhabitants, they declared, were for stupidity worse than Kurds, and for rapacity worse than Jews. Chilghiri was the first Nestorian village on our way. The men, with their handsome wives and healthful children, came out to meet us. We did not stop there, but continued our journey to Merwanen, which we found deserted by its inhabitants for the Zomas, or summer pastures. Although poor and needy, the people of Merwanen were not less hospitable than other Nestorians I had met with. They brought us as the sun went down smoking messes of millet boiled in sour milk and mixed with mountain herbs.

The next day we came to a large encampment of Hartus.h.i.+ Kurds, near the outlet of a green valley, watered by many streams, forming the most easterly sources of the Tigris.[170] Abd-ur-Rahman, the chief, was absent from his tents collecting the annual salian or revenue of the tribe. In his absence we were very hospitably treated, and were witnesses of the activity and industry of the Kurdish community.

The mountain rising above us was the boundary between the pashalics of Wan and Hakkiari and the watershed of the Tigris and Zab. On the opposite side the streams uniting their waters flowed towards the latter river. The first district we entered was that of Lewen, inhabited chiefly by Nestorians. The whole population with their flocks had deserted their villages for the Zomas. We ascended to the encampment of the people of Billi, a wretched a.s.semblage of dirty hovels, half tent and half cabin, built of stones and black canvas. Behind it towered, amidst eternal snows, a bold and majestic peak, called Karnessa-ou-Daoleh.[171] Round the base of this mountain, over loose stones and sharp rocks, and through ravines deep in snow, we dragged our weary horses next day. The Kurdish shepherds that wander there, a wild and hardy race, have no tents, but, during the summer months, live in the open fields with their flocks, without any covering whatever.

After a wearisome and indeed dangerous ride, we found ourselves on a snowy platform variegated with Alpine plants. The tiny streams which trickled through the ice were edged with forget-me-nots of the tenderest blue, and with many well-remembered European flowers. I climbed up a solitary rock to take bearings of the princ.i.p.al peaks around us. A sight as magnificent as unexpected awaited me. Far to the north, and high above the dark mountain ranges which spread like a troubled sea beneath my feet, rose one solitary cone of unspotted white sparkling in the rays of the sun. Its form could not be mistaken; it was Mount Ararat. My Nestorian guide knew no more of this stately mountain, to him a kind of mythic land far beyond the reach of human travel, than that it was within the territories of the Muscovites, and that the Christians called it Bashut-tama-hamda. From this point alone was it visible, and we saw it no more during our journey.[172]

We descended rapidly by a difficult track, pa.s.sing here and there encampments of Kurds and the tents and flocks of the people of Julamerik.

To the green pastures succeeded the region of cultivated fields, and we seemed to approach more settled habitations. Following a precipitous pathway, and mounted on a tall and st.u.r.dy mule, we spied an aged man with long robes, black turban, and a white beard which fell almost to his girdle. We at once recognised the features of Mar Shamoun, the Patriarch of the Nestorians, or, as he proudly terms himself, "of the Chaldaeans of the East." He had not known of our coming, and he shed tears of joy as he embraced us. Kochhannes, his residence, was not far distant, and he turned back with us to the village. Since I had seen him misfortune and grief, more than age, had worn deep furrows in his brow, and had turned his hair and beard to silvery grey.

The garments of the Patriarch were worn and ragged. Even the miserable allowance of 300 piastres (about 2_1._ 10_s._), which the Porte had promised to pay him monthly on his return to the mountains, was long in arrears, and he was supported entirely by the contributions of his faithful but poverty-stricken flock. Kochhannes was, moreover, still a heap of ruins. At the time of the ma.s.sacre Mar Shamoun sacredly saved himself by a precipitous flight before the ferocious Kurds of Beder Khan Bey entered the village and slew those who still lingered in it, and were from age or infirmities unable to escape.

Mar Shamoun, at the time of my visit, had no less cause to bewail the misfortunes of his people than his personal sufferings. The latter were perhaps partly to be attributed to his own want of prudence and foresight.

Old influences, which I could not but deeply deplore, and to which I do not in Christian charity wish further to allude[173], had been at work, and I found him even more bitter in his speech against the American missionaries than against his Turkish or Kurdish oppressors. He had been taught, and it is to be regretted that his teachers were of the Church of England, that those who were endeavoring to civilise and instruct his flock were seceders from the orthodox community of Christians, heretical in doctrine, rejecting all the sacraments and ordinances of the true faith, and intent upon reducing the Nestorians to their own hopeless condition of infidelity. His fears were worked on by the a.s.surance that, ere long, through their means and teaching, his spiritual as well as his temporal authority would be entirely destroyed. I found him bent upon deeds of violence and intolerant persecution, which might have endangered, for the second time, the safety of this people as well as his own. I strove, and I trust not without success, to set before the old man his true interest in regard to educating his clergy and people, circulating the Scriptures, reforming abuses, &c.

The Nestorian community had greater wrongs to complain of than their Patriarch. The Turkish government, so far from fulfilling the pledges given to the British emba.s.sy, had sent officers to the mountains who had grievously ill-treated and oppressed the Christian inhabitants; and they had suffered all kinds of outrage and oppression which the rapacious Turks could inflict. There was no tribunal to which they could apply for redress. A deputation sent to the Pasha had been ill-treated, and some of its members were still in prison. There was no one in authority to plead for them. They had even suffered less under the sway of their old oppressors, for, as a priest touchingly remarked to me, "The Kurds took away our lives, but the Turks take away wherewith we have to live."

We remained a day with the Patriarch, and then took the road to Julamerik, three caravan hours distant from Kochhannes. This town has been more than once visited and described by English travellers.

Near Julamerik we met many poor Nestorians flying, with their wives and children, they knew not whither, from the oppression of the Turkish governors.

The direct road by Tiyari to Mosul is carried along the river Zab, through ravines scarcely practicable to beasts of burden. It issues into the lower valleys near the village of Lizan. On the banks of the Zab, I found the remains of an ancient road, cut in many places in the solid rock. It probably led from the a.s.syrian plains into the upper provinces of Armenia.

There are no inscriptions or ruins to show the period of its construction; but, from the greatness of the work, I am inclined to attribute it to the a.s.syrians.

We picked our way over the slippery pavement as long as we could find some footing for ourselves and our beasts, but in many places, where it had been entirely destroyed, we were compelled to drag our horses by main force over the steep rocks and loose detritus, which sloped to the very edge of the river. Before reaching the first Nestorian village in the valley of Diz, we had to ford an impetuous torrent boiling and foaming over smooth rocks, and reaching above our saddle-girths. One of the baggage mules lost its footing. The eddying waters hurried it along and soon hurled it into the midst of the Zab. The animal having, at length, relieved itself from its burden, swam to the bank. Unfortunately it bore my own trunks; my notes and inscriptions, the fruits of my labors at Wan, together with the little property I possessed, were carried far away by the stream. After the men from the village had long searched in vain, the lost load was found about midnight, stopped by a rock some miles down the river.

We pa.s.sed the night in the miserable village of Rabban Audis.h.i.+o. On the opposite side of the valley, but high in the mountains, was the village of Seramus. The pathway to it being precipitous, and inaccessible even to mules, we turned to Madis, the residence of the Melek, or chief, of the district of Diz. The villages of Diz, like those of the Nestorian valleys in general, stand in the midst of orchards and cultivated terraces. They were laid waste, and the houses burnt, during the first ma.s.sacre. Diz was the first Christian district attacked by Beder Khan Bey. The inhabitants made a long and determined resistance, but were at length overpowered by numbers.

We continued our journey through a deep and narrow valley hemmed in by high mountains and by perpendicular cliffs. The Melek met us on the road near the village of Cherichereh, or Klissa. The old man had the too common tale to tell us, of oppression and wrong on the part of the Turks.

Melek Beniamen implored me to help him in his difficulties; but I could do no more than offer words of sympathy and consolation. Leaving the Melek to pursue his tax-gathering, we rode through a magnificent valley, now narrowing into a wild gorge walled with precipitous cliffs, then opening into an amphitheatre of rocks encircling a village imbedded in trees. The valley at length was abruptly closed by the towering peaks and precipices of the Jelu mountain. At its foot is the village of Khouresin, where we encamped for the night. The inhabitants were, for the most part, like the other people of Diz, in the Zomas, or summer pastures.

Not far from the Zomas of Diz were the tents of the villagers of Jelu.

They also had encamped on the very verge of eternal snow, but within the boundaries of Diz, as there were no pastures on the other side of the pa.s.s in their own district. They were better clothed, and showed more signs of comfort, if not of wealth, than their unfortunate neighbours. Many of the men spoke a little Arabic, and even Turkish, learnt during their yearly visits as basket-makers to the low country.

We were still separated from the valley of Jelu by a shoulder jutting from the lofty Soppa-Durek mountain. Before reaching this rocky ridge, we had to cross a broad tract of deep snow, over which we had much difficulty in dragging our heavily laden mules. When on the crest of the pa.s.s we found ourselves surrounded on all sides by rugged peaks, the highest being that known as the Toura Jelu, of which we had scarcely lost sight from the day we had left Mosul. It is probably the highest mountain in central Kurdistan, and cannot be under, if it be not indeed above, 15,000 feet.

The pa.s.s we crossed before descending into the valley of Jelu is considered the highest in the Nestorian country, and is probably more than 11,000 feet above the level of the sea.

From the top of the pa.s.s we looked down into a deep abyss. The pathway was fearfully dangerous, and over steep and slippery rocks. Down this terrible descent we had to drag our jaded horses, leaving our track marked in blood. I have had some experience in bad mountain roads, but I do not remember to have seen any much worse than that leading into Jelu. After numerous accidents and great labor we left a rocky gully, and found ourselves on a slope ending, at a dizzy depth, in a torrent scarcely visible from our path. The yielding soil offered even a more difficult footing for our beasts than the polished rocks.

The wild mountain ravine was now changed for the smiling valley of Jelu.

Villages, embowered in trees, filled every nook and sheltered place. We descended to Zerin or Zerayni, the princ.i.p.al settlement, and the residence of the Melek. To our left were two other villages, Alzan and Meedee.

As my large caravan descended the hill-side, the inhabitants of Zerin took us at once for Turks, whose appearance is the signal for a general panic.

The women hide in the innermost recesses to save themselves from insult; the men slink into their houses, and offer a vain protest against the seizure of their property. When, at last, we had satisfied the trembling people of Zerin that we were not Mussulmans, they insisted upon our being Americans, of whom they had, at that moment, for certain religious reasons, almost as great a distrust. At length they made out that I was the Balios[174] of Mosul, and the Melek arriving at this crisis, we were received with due hospitality. Our baggage was carried to the roof of a house, and provisions were brought to us without delay.

Although, during his expedition into Tiyari, Beder Khan Bey had seized the flocks of the people of Jelu, and had compelled them, moreover, to pay large contributions in money and in kind, he had not been able to enter their deep and well-guarded valleys.

The Nestorians of Jelu have no trade to add to their wealth. Many of the men, however, wander during the winter into Asia Minor, and even into Syria and Palestine, following the trade of basket-making, in which they are very expert; but their travels, and their intercourse with the rest of the Christian world have not improved their morals, their habits, or their faith.

The district of Jelu is under a bishop whose spiritual jurisdiction also extends over Baz. He resides at Martha d'Umra (the village of the church) separated by a bold rocky ridge from Zerin. It was Sunday as we descended through orchards, by a precipitous pathway, to his dwelling. The bishop was away. He had gone lower down the valley to celebrate divine service for a distant congregation. The inhabitants of the village were gathered round the church in their holiday attire, and received us kindly and hospitably. From a belfry issued the silvery tones of a bell, which echoed through the valley, and gave an inexpressible charm to the scene. It is not often that such sounds break upon the traveller's ear in the far East, to awaken a thousand pleasant thoughts, and to recall to memory many a happy hour.

This church is said to be the oldest in the Nestorian mountains, and is a plain, substantial, square building, with a very small entrance. To me it was peculiarly interesting, as having been the only one that had escaped the ravages of the Kurds, and as containing therefore its ancient furniture and ornaments. Both the church and the dark vestibule were so thickly hung with relics of the most singular and motley description, that the ceiling was completely concealed by them. Notwithstanding the undoubted antiquity of the church and its escape from plunder, I searched in vain for ancient ma.n.u.scripts.

We followed the valley to the village of Nara, where the bishop was resting after his morning duties. A young man of lofty stature and handsome countenance, dressed in the red-striped loose garments of the Kurds, and only distinguished by a turban of black silk from those around him, came out to meet us. A less episcopal figure could scarcely be imagined; but, although he seemed some Kurdish hunter or warrior, he gave us his benediction as he drew near.

It was difficult to determine whom the poor bishop feared most, the Turks or the American missionaries; the first, he declared, threatened his temporal, the others his spiritual, authority. I gave him the best advice I was able on both subjects, and urged him not to reject the offer that had been made to instruct his people, but identify himself with a progress on which might be founded the only reasonable hope for the regeneration of his creed and race. Unfortunately, as in the case of Mar Shamoun, strange influences had been at work to prejudice the mind of the bishop.

We were now in the track I had followed during my former visit to the mountains.[175] Crossing the precipitous pa.s.s to the west of Baz, which, since my first visit, had been the scene of one of the bloodiest episodes of the Nestorian ma.s.sacre, we entered the long narrow ravine leading into the valley of Tkhoma. We stopped at Gunduktha, where, four years before, I had taken leave of the good priest Bodaka, who had been amongst the first victims of the fury of the Kurdish invaders. The Kasha, who now ministered to the spiritual wants of the people, the Rais of the village, and the princ.i.p.al inhabitants, came to us as we stopped in the churchyard. But they were no longer the gaily dressed and well-armed men who had welcomed me on my first journey. Their garments were tattered and worn, and their countenances haggard and wan. The church, too, was in ruins; around were the charred remains of the burnt cottages, and the neglected orchards overgrown with weeds. A body of Turkish troops had lately visited the village, and had destroyed the little that had been restored since the Kurdish invasion. The same taxes had been collected three times, and even four times, over. The relations of those who had ran away to escape from these exactions had been compelled to pay for the fugitives. The chief had been thrown, with his arms tied behind his back, on a heap of burning straw, and compelled to disclose where a little money that had been saved by the villagers had been buried. The priest had been torn from the altar, and beaten before his congregation. Men showed me the marks of torture on their body, and of iron fetters round their limbs. For the sake of wringing a few piastres from this poverty-stricken people, all these deeds of violence had been committed by officers sent by the Porte to protect the Christian subjects of the Sultan, whom they pretended to have released from the misrule of the Kurdish chiefs.

The smiling villages described in the account of my previous journey were now a heap of ruins. From four of them alone 770 persons had been slain.

Beder Khan Bey had driven off, according to the returns made by the Meleks, 24,000 sheep, 300 mules, and 10,000 head of cattle; and the confederate chiefs had each taken a proportionate share of the property of the Christians. No flocks were left by which they might raise money wherewith to pay the taxes now levied upon them, and even the beasts of burden, which could have carried to the markets of more wealthy districts the produce of their valley, had been taken away.[176]

We remained a night in Tkhoma to see the Meleks who came to us from Tkhoma Gowaia. Leaving the valley, we crossed the high mountain inclosing Tkhoma to the south, and pa.s.sed through Pinianish into Chaal, a district inhabited by Mussulmans, and which had consequently not suffered from the ravages of the Kurdish chiefs. It presented, with its still flouris.h.i.+ng villages surrounded by gardens and vineyards, a vivid contrast to the unfortunate Christian valley we had just left.

A rapid descent through a rocky gorge brought us to the Zab, over which there were still the remains of a bridge, consisting of two poles fastened together by osier bands placed across the stone piers. It almost required the steady foot and practised head of a mountaineer to cross the roaring stream by this perilous structure. The horses and mules were with much trouble and delay driven into the river, and after buffeting with the whirlpools and eddies reached, almost exhausted, the opposite bank.

We now entered the valley of Berwari, and, crossing the pa.s.s of Amadiyah, took the road to Mosul, through a country I had already more than once visited. Leaving the caravan and our jaded horses, I hastened onwards with Hormuzd, and travelling through a night reached Mosul in the afternoon of the 30th of August, after an absence of seven weeks.

CHAPTER XX.

DISCOVERIES AT KOUYUNJIK DURING THE SUMMER.--DESCRIPTION OF THE SCULPTURES.--CAPTURE OF CITIES ON A GREAT RIVER.--POMP OF a.s.sYRIAN KING.--ALABASTER PAVEMENT.--CONQUEST OF TRIBES INHABITING A MARSH.--THEIR WEALTH.--CHAMBERS WITH SCULPTURES BELONGING TO A NEW KING.--DESCRIPTION OF THE SCULPTURES.--CONQUEST OF THE PEOPLE OF SUSIANA.--PORTRAIT OF THE KING.--HIS GUARDS AND ATTENDANTS.--THE CITY OF SHUSHAN.--CAPTIVE PRINCE.--MUSICIANS.--CAPTIVES PUT TO THE TORTURE.--ARTISTIC CHARACTER OF THE SCULPTURES.--AN INCLINED Pa.s.sAGE.--TWO SMALL CHAMBERS.--COLOSSAL FIGURES.--MORE SCULPTURES.

Whilst I had been absent in the mountains the excavations had been continued at Kouyunjik, notwithstanding the summer heats. Nearly all the Arabs employed in the spring at Nimroud had been removed to these ruins, and considerable progress had consequently been made in clearing the earth from them. Several chambers, discovered before I left Mosul, had been emptied, and new rooms with interesting sculptures had been explored.

It has been seen that the narrow pa.s.sage leading out of the south-west corner of the great hall containing the bas-reliefs representing the moving of the winged bulls turned to the left, and by another gallery connected this part of the edifice with a second hall of even larger proportions than that first discovered.

The sculptures panelling the western wall were for the most part still entire. They recorded, as usual, a campaign and a victory, and were probably but a portion of one continuous subject carried round the entire hall. The conquered country appeared to have been traversed by a great river, the representation of which took up a third of the bas-relief.

Next came the siege and capture of a city standing on the opposite bank of the same great river, and surrounded by a ditch edged with lofty reeds.

The a.s.syrian footmen and cavalry had already crossed this dike, and were closely pressing the besieged, who, no longer seeking to defend themselves, were asking for quarter. On the other side of the river, Sennacherib in his gorgeous war chariot, and surrounded by his guards, received the captives and the spoil. It is remarkable that this was almost the only figure of the king which had not been wantonly mutilated, probably by those who overthrew the a.s.syrian empire, burned its palaces, and levelled its cities with the dust.[177]

In this bas-relief the furniture of the horses was particularly rich and elaborate. Above the yoke rose a semicircular ornament, set round with stars, and containing the image of a deity. The chariot of the a.s.syrian monarch, his retinue, and his attire, accurately corresponded with the descriptions given by Xenophon of those of Cyrus, when he marched out of his palace in procession, and by Quintus Curtius of those of Darius, when he went to battle in the midst of his army. The Greek general had seen the pomp of the Persian kings, and could describe it as an eye-witness.[178]

The description of Quintus Curtius is no less ill.u.s.trative of the a.s.syrian monuments. "The doryphori (a chosen body of spearmen) preceded the chariot, on either side of which were the effigies of the G.o.ds in gold and silver. The yoke was inlaid with the rarest jewels. _From it projected two golden figures of Ninus and Belus_, each a cubit in length.... The king was distinguished from all those who surrounded him, by the magnificence of his robes, and by the cidaris or mitre upon his head. By his side walked two hundred of his relations. Ten thousand warriors bearing spears, whose staffs were of silver and heads of gold, followed the royal chariot.

The king's led horses, forty in number, concluded the procession."[179]

Allowing for a little exaggeration on the part of the historian, and for the conventional numbers used by the a.s.syrian sculptor to represent large bodies of footmen and cavalry, we might suppose that Quintus Curtius had seen the very bas-reliefs I am describing, so completely do they tally with his description of the appearance and retinue of the Persian king.

The captives, bearing skins probably containing water and flour to nourish them during a long and hara.s.sing march, were fettered in pairs, and urged onwards by their guards. The women were partly on foot, and partly with their children on mules and in carts drawn by oxen. Mothers were represented holding the water-skins for their young ones to quench their thirst, whilst in some instances fathers had placed their weary children on their shoulders, for they were marching during the heat of a Mesopotamian summer, as the sculptor had shown by introducing large cl.u.s.ters of dates on the palms. Thus were driven the inhabitants of Samaria through the Desert to Halah and Habor, by the river of Gozan and the cities of the Medes,[180] and we may see in these bas-reliefs a picture of the hards.h.i.+ps and sufferings to which the captive people of Israel were exposed when their cities fell into the hands of the a.s.syrian king, and their inhabitants were sent to colonise the distant provinces of his empire.

On the south side of the hall, parts of four slabs only had been preserved; the sculpture upon the others had been so completely destroyed, that even the subject could no longer be ascertained. The fragments still remaining, graphically depicted the pa.s.sage of the river by the great king. The bas-reliefs represented very accurately a scene that may be daily witnessed, without the royal warrior, on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates.