102 HORMUZD RASSAM, ESQ., 
I have no doubt if a well organised geological survey be 
conducted in that country there would be traces found of 
that precious ore. Whether we read of the golden beds of 
Sardanapalus, the fabulous treasure found in Nineveh when 
it was captured, the massive golden statue of Jupiter and 
its altar in the temple of Belus, and the image which 
Nebuchadnezzar set up in the plain of Dura, three score 
cubits in height, and six in breadth, we cannot but conclude 
that gold must have existed in abundance somewhere in the 
Assyrian and Babylonian Dominions.* 
We now come to the bdellium that existed in Havilah and 
about the meaning of which there has been much discussion 
amongst the learned; but one thing is certain that the 
majority of commentators have agreed that it was a kind of 
gum orresin. With reference to this I can point out two 
kinds of valuable secretion of trees which are to be found in 
the country compassed by the Zab or Pison. The first is the 
Mann-as-Samma (two Arabic words which mean Manna of 
Heaven). It is collected at a certain time of the year from 
off rocks and trees and taken to Mossul for sale. When it is 
melted together it becomes like toffee and is very much 
appreciated both in Mesopotamia and Assyria. 
silver vases and ornaments in enormous quantities, and purple and many 
coloured raiments (Athenwus, lib. xii). When Nineveh was taken it con- 
tained, according to some absurd tradition, £26,000,000,000 sterling in 
gold !—Nineveh and Its Remains, vol. ii, 416.) 
* Herodotus mentions in his account about the temple of Belus in 
Babylon thus : “ Below in the same precinct, there is a second temple, in 
which is a sitting figure of Jupiter, all of gold. Before the figure stands 
a large golden table, and the throne whereon it sits, and the base on which 
the throne is placed, are likewise of gold. The Chaldzans told me that all 
the gold together was eight hundred talents’ weight. Outside the temple 
are two altars, one of solid gold, on which it is only lawful to offer suck- 
lings; the other a common altar, but of great size, on which the full- 
grown animals are sacrificed. It is also on the great altar that the 
Chaldzans burn the frankincense, which is offered to the amount of a 
thousand talents’ weight, every year, at the festival of the god. In the 
time of Cyrus there was likewise in this temple the figure of a man, twelve 
cubits high, entirely of solid gold. I myself did not see this figure, but I 
relate what the Chaldeans report concerning it. Darius, the son of 
Hystaspes, plotted to carry the statue off, but had not the hardihood to 
lay his hands upon it. Xerxes, however, the son of Darius, killed the 
priest who forbade him to move the statue, and took itaway. Besides the 
ornaments which I have mentioned, there are a large number of private 
offerings in this holy precinct. (Rawlinson’s Herodotus, Book i, 183.) 
The idea that exists at Mossul and its surroundings in regard to the 
production of Mann-as-Samma is, that during the summer months, when- 
ever heat lightning flashes at night, the whole mountainous district below 
