Note 40 — Chapter IV · VAN

With one exception no systematic excavations have yet been made upon any of the sites of the cities and strongholds of the Vannic kings. When these shall have been undertaken we may expect to have drawn an impressive picture of the attainments of their people in the arts. The single instance of such efforts—and it is not one of which we need be proud40—has been directed to the low limestone hills which overlook the gardens of Van upon the north, and which in their neighbourhood bear the name of Toprak Kala. In or about the years 1879 and 1880 operations were conducted upon this eminence under the direction, as I have gathered, of Captain Clayton, then our consul at Van, and of Mr. Hormuzd Rassam.41 Tunnels were opened into that part of the site which disclosed the buried remains of an ancient settlement, and which was found to have been covered with buildings composed for the most part of sun-dried bricks. The most important result of the enterprise was the laying bare of a temple, still containing quite a number of bronze shields with cuneiform inscriptions, embossed and chased with ornamental designs and the figures of animals. Some of these may be seen in the British Museum and others in the Museum at Berlin. They represent votive offerings on the part of the kings, and were suspended upon the walls in the manner shown by an existing bas-relief from the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad. Indeed that sculpture portrays the destruction by the Assyrians of the temple of Khaldis in the city of Mutsatsir, not very far from the present town of Rowanduz. The dimensions of the edifice were small, only 69 feet by 44 feet, measured at the foundations. But the walls were built of great blocks of hewn stone, and traces of a pavement in a kind of mosaic were found. The doors appear to have been of bronze. Outside the entrance stood a block of marble which was hollowed out and was probably used for sacrifices. At the time of my visit little was to be seen of this interesting structure, for the vandal townspeople had removed its masonry for building purposes. Large faced blocks, taken thence and perhaps from other edifices, were being rolled down the hillside. Only a fraction of the objects found was brought away by Messrs. Clayton and Rassam; their workmen abstracted the remainder, from whose hands some portions have filtered into Europe. Toprak Kala has quite recently (1898) been the scene of further excavations, this time on the part of Messrs. Belck and Lehmann. They have dug out the substructures of the temple to its foundations, cleared away the rubbish which obstructed a long subterraneous passage, debouching into a large chamber which may have served as a reservoir, and which was fed by an artificial duct deriving its water from a neighbouring spring; and discovered a wine-cellar containing colossal vats, some engraved with Vannic writing and one with a Persian cuneiform inscription. We also owe to their labours the discovery not far from the temple of a space which seems to have been set apart to receive the bones of the sacrificial animals and of the human beings, captives of war, who had been offered up to the god. They have acquired numerous objects, of silver as well as of bronze and iron, including weapons and ornaments of various kinds. But the principal service which they have rendered is the identification of Toprak Kala with the city of Rusas mentioned in the stele near Keshish Göl on the slopes of Mount Varag. The inscription on that monument, if rightly deciphered, leaves little doubt that King Rusas, probably the first of that name, made use of that little lake as a partly natural and partly artificial reservoir, and conducted its waters along the foot of the Toprak Kala heights to the region occupied by the present site of the garden town. The earliest ruler mentioned on the shields is Rusas the Second; while we know from their contents that the temple was built or restored by Rusas the Third in honour of the god Khaldis. All the indications favour the assumption that in consequence of the depredations of Tiglath-Pileser the Third some change was made in the disposition of the city. The heights of Toprak Kala seem in some degree to have usurped the importance of the citadel, and to have been used as defences for the extension of the gardens in that direction.42