The centenary year of Rassam's Jirjib sounding seemed an appropriate occasion on which to reconsider, and perhaps to some extent resolve, a rather odd set of problems to which this little-known operation had given rise. The matter is not one of great intrinsic importance, but does provide a useful cautionary tale for those scholars who have to deal with nineteenth-century records. What happened, essentially, was that in April 1882 Hormuzd Rassam, director of the British Museum excavations in Mesopotamia, passed through Der ez-Zor on the middle Euphrates. There, he reported to his employers, “I heard that some important antiquities had been found near Ras Alain, or the source of the Khaboor, in northern Mesopotamia on the river Jirjib. I sent at once, therefore, an agent thither to examine the spot”. Before the end of May, however, the kaimakam (or local governor) of Ra's al-‘Ain had stopped the work, and confiscated the “head of a black statue” which the agent had found “in the small space he was allowed to excavate”.

Other unpublished reports by Rassam are slightly more specific. There are said to have been “some statuettes in black basalt and bas-reliefs representing, I believe, hunting scenes”, or “sculptures in black basalt in which are represented antelopes, horses, armed men, bulls, and other figures”. Another report says: “the head of one of the statuettes representing a man was taken away from him [the agent] by the said Kayamakam, but he has brought a piece of a broken bas-relief with him to Mosul, which I have sent for to forward to England”. It is plain that Rassam, by then in Baghdad, never visited the mound in person.