Still, the search has been fairly thorough. The excavators however, left one of the great human-headed bulls above ground; and it may be of interest to record that this monument (which was presumably the property of the British Museum) first generously parted with its head to mend a mill; and was subsequently sold for the sum of three shillings and six pence by the Vali of Mosul (not worthy old Tahir Pasha, but his predecessor), and burnt into lime by its purchaser.
The second mound, Nebi Yunus--alas, one can but gnash one's teeth in envy and anger when one knows that the favourite palace of Esarhaddon lies beneath it--that king whose smaller house elsewhere has yielded the finest specimens of Assyrian art yet known. And this, his _chef d'oeuvre_, cannot be examined, because of the mosque of Nebi Yunus (Jonah the Prophet) that stands in the midst of the Turkoman village that crowns it. The Prophet will be very angry if you disturb him, say the Mussulmans, and will take vengeance dire![40] If it were indeed Jonah that lies there, there might be something in the argument; for the Prophet is known to have had a temper. But it is not he. After all, seeing that his prophecy of the destruction of Nineveh was not fulfilled, the top of the mound that covers the ruins of the city is perhaps the one spot of earth where it is quite impossible for him to be buried! As a matter of fact, the mosque is an old Nestorian church, once the cathedral of that body in the days when their independent patriarchate was in Mosul; and the occupant of the tomb is John the Lame, a worthy Patriarch of the thirteenth century, who now gets compensation for a life of hardship in his posthumous honours as Jewish Prophet and Mussulman Saint.
Mar John the Lame was a friend to knowledge and learning in his life; and it must be a real annoyance to the good old man to think that his corpse has been made into an obstacle to both of them now that he has done with it!
Only one of the treasures of the palace has ever come to light, viz. a pair of bronze oxen, found in the process of cleaning out the well in the court of the mosque. These "idols" were promptly melted down; and they now, in the form of a window grating, keep thieves from a gentleman's house in Mosul.