In the course of research undertaken with M. Louise Scott in Mosul and Baghdad in early 1987 I had the great privilege of making the acquaintance of Sd. Mohammed Ali Mustafa, who went out of his way to help us in all that he could, and whose wonderful knowledge and generosity we shall always remember. Among the material which he unearthed for us were photographs of inscribed stone troughs from Nineveh and his own copies of their inscriptions.
These troughs came to light in 1954, when a section of the ancient city walls of Nineveh just North of the mound of Nebi Yunus was destroyed. At that time Mohammed Ali Mustafa was already involved in work at Nineveh and was able to carry out an emergency investigation. Unfortunately, there is no map surviving which shows the exact location of the troughs, but an examination of photographs taken at the time (Plate XXI, in which latter note especially the “pagoda” roof in the background to the left: this still stands) and of the area as it now appears, along with consideration of details provided by Mohammed Ali Mustafa, allows us to fix the position of the troughs just within the walls at the place marked on Fig. 1. The error is not likely to be more than 15 metres up or down the length of the walls.