[Illustration:  PLATE 37]

The mound of Nebbi-Ymus is at its base nearly triangular:  [PLATE XXXVII., Fig. 1.] It covers an area of about forty acres.  It is loftier, and its sides are more precipitous, than Koyunjik, especially on the west, where it abutted upon the wall of the city.  The surface is mostly flat, but is divided about the middle by a deep ravine, running nearly from north to south, and separating the mound into an eastern and a western portion.  The so-called tomb of Jonah is conspicuous on the north edge of the western portion of the mound, and about it are grouped the cottages of the Kurds and Turcomans to whom the site of the ancient Nineveh belongs.  The eastern portion of the mound forms a burial-ground, to which the bodies of Mahometans are brought from considerable distances.  The mass of earth is calculated at six and a half millions of tons; so that its erection would have given full employment to 10,000 men for the space of five years and a half.

These two vast mounds—­the platforms on which palaces and temples were raised—­are both in the same line, and abutted, both of them, on the western wall of the city.  Their position in that wall is thought to have been determined, not by chance, but by design; since they break the western face of the city into three nearly equal portions.  The entire length of this side of Nineveh was 13,600 feet, or somewhat more than two and a half miles.  Anciently it seems to have immediately overhung the Tigris, which has now moved off to the west, leaving a plain nearly a mile in width between its eastern edge and the old rampart of the city.  This rampart followed, apparently, the natural course of the river-bank; and hence, while on the whole it is tolerably straight, in the most southern of the three portions it exhibits a gentle curve, where the river evidently made a sweep, altering its course from south-east nearly to south.

The western wall at its northern extremity approaches the present course of the Tigris, and is here joined, exactly at right angles, by the northern, or rather the north-western, rampart, which runs in a perfectly straight line to the north-eastern angle of the city, and is said to measure exactly 7000 feet.  This wall is again divided, like the western, but with even more preciseness, into three equal portions.  Commencing at the north-eastern angle, one-third of it is carried along comparatively high ground, after which for the remaining two-thirds of its course it falls by a gentle decline towards the Tigris.  Exactly midway in this slope the rampart is broken by a road, adjoining which is a remarkable mound, covering one of the chief gates of the city.

At its other extremity the western wall forms a very obtuse angle with the southern, which impends over a deep ravine formed by it winter torrent, and runs in a straight line for about 1000 yards, when it meets the eastern wall, with which it forms a slightly acute angle.