Chapter VIII: An Arrival (2)

Marion smiled quietly. “I should have said,” he replied, “that in the history of Italy, both past and present, there had been more pride felt and expressed than can be found in the histories of all the other nations of the earth put together; and that, besides this self-gratulation, no other nation on earth had been so praised, and loved, and feared, and sought as Italy. It has had every kind of boast――war-like, splendid, learned, poetic, and artistic. It has gone on through the centuries supreme in beauty and in interest, never failing to draw all hearts and eyes, and changing one attraction into another, instead of losing attraction. And all its changes have been ordered and harmonious till now. But I find neither beauty nor dignity in a manufacturing, trading Rome. She throws away her own _unique_ advantages in seeking to vie with her younger and more vigorous sisters. The _rôle_ does not suit her.”

“We will see!” the Italian said hotly. “We will make the trial, and find out for ourselves if our life and strength are so decayed that we can no longer boast of anything but ruins.”

“I beg your pardon; but you have already tried, and failed,” the other returned. “You have proved yourselves only strong in complaint, but worthless in action. The only vigor I have heard of as shown by liberal Rome was in throwing flowers on Victor Emanuel when he entered, and now in cursing him for having taxed you to the verge of starvation. He isn’t afraid of you, and takes no pains to conciliate you. The only vigor here, of the kind you praise, is in the northern men he has brought down with him; and in another generation, if they should stay so long, the blood in their hearts will have thickened to the rich, slow ichor of Roman veins. No, sir! You cannot succeed in being yourselves and everybody else. You are no longer the world, but only a part of it, and must be content to see yourselves surpassed in many things. Your true dignity is in not contending for the prize which you will never win. If you had sat here quietly, a mere looker-on, a judge, perhaps, of the contests going on in the world, who could have said surely that you might not win any success by the mere half trying? You have proved your own weakness, and merely exchanged an easy master for a hard one. You do not govern yourselves so much under the king as you did under the pope, and the complaints which were listened to in the old time nobody listens to now. You have been coaxed and petted for generations; now you are treated with contempt.”

The Italian was pale, less with anger at such plain speaking than with the bitter consciousness that it was true. “You have not seen the end yet,” was all he could say. “Great changes are not wrought here so easily as in America. There it was simply Greek meeting Greek, and there was no history or tradition in the way. Here, besides our visible opponents, who may be half a dozen nations, we have to fight against generations of ghosts.”

“O my country! how you have bewitched the world,” exclaimed the American. “I grant you there is a difference, sir, and it is even greater than you think; for it is a difference of nature as well as of circumstances. Italy is Calliope, with the scroll in her hand, and her proper position is a meditative and studious one; America is Atalanta, the swift runner, young, strong, and disdainful, with apples of gold to fling and stop her pursuers. Do you wish your muse to come down and join in the dusty race?”

“Do you know,” the Signora asked of Marion, joining the two, “Victor Emanuel, they say, has a special devotion to the good thief?”

The Italian rose. He had a great regard for the Signora, but, as she never spared him when politics was in question, he thought discretion the better part of valor.

“How odd it is,” the lady remarked, when they were left alone with Marion, “that when we are best pleased we are sometimes most impatient! I am exceedingly well contented to-night, yet I do not know when I have been so sharp toward Mr. Coleman or Leonardo. I begin to feel premonitory symptoms of compunction. What is the philosophy of it, Mr. Vane?”

“Marion could answer such a question better than I,” he replied. “But may not the reason be that, your mood and some of your circumstances being perfect, you cannot bear that all should not accord?――as, when we are listening to beautiful music, and are particularly inclined, to listen just then, the smallest interruption, especially if it be discordant, is intolerable.”

Marion had been saying good-night to the sisters, who stood before him arm in arm, speaking with, or rather listening to, him. He turned on being appealed to.

“Is it true,” he asked, “that the mood is one of perfect contentment? May it not be an exalted mood which demands contentment? I think we may sometimes feel an excitement and delight for which we can give no reason, unless it may be some rare moment of perfect physical health, like that which our first parents enjoyed in Eden. Naturally, in such a moment, we feel earth to be a paradise, and are impatient of anything which reminds us that it is not.”

The Signora was surprised to find herself blushing, and annoyed when she perceived that the others observed it and seemed, also, to be surprised. Only Marion, bowing a good-night as soon as he spoke, appeared not to see.

“Did you ever blush for nothing, dear?” she asked of Bianca, when the two went to their rooms together. “I can’t imagine what set me blushing to-night. I didn’t mean to blush, I had no reason, I didn’t know I was going to do so, and I have no idea what it was about.”

“I never blush at the right moment,” Bianca replied rather soberly. “When embarrassing incidents occur, and, according to the books and speakers, one would be doing the proper thing to be confused, I am almost always cool. And then all at once, just for nothing, for a surprise, for a thing which would find other people cool, I am as red as――”

“A rose,” finished the Signora, and kissed the girl’s cheek. “Good-night, dear. I like your friend exceedingly. I do not know when I have liked any one so much on short acquaintance.”

“He is very agreeable,” Bianca returned, and echoed the good-night without another word.

“That is one of the times you should have blushed, and didn’t,” thought her friend, and wondered a little.

TO BE CONTINUED.

ROMA――AMOR

“Strength is none on earth save Love.”
――AUBREY DE VERE.

SUGGESTED BY A STATUE BY MISS A. WHITNEY EXHIBITED IN BOSTON,
APRIL, 1876.

I.

Upon the statue’s base I read its name――
“Rome,” nothing more; so leaving to each thought
To mould in mind the form the sculptor wrought,
The living soul within the dead clay’s frame.
And was this Rome, so weak and sad and old,
So crouching down with withered lip and cheek,
With trembling fingers stretched as if to seek,
The thoughtless wanderers’ idly-given gold?――
Some Roman coins loose-lying in her lap,
Some treasure saved from out her ancient wealth,
Or begged with downcast look as if by stealth,
Fearing her end, and wishing still, mayhap,
Enough to hold to pay stern Charon’s oar
When the dead nations o’er the Styx it bore.

II.

And was this Rome――this shrunken, shivering form,
This beggared greatness sitting abject down;
Her throne a broken shaft’s acanthus crown
Whose crumbling beauty still outlived the storm?
Where were her legions? eagles? where her pride?
The conqueror’s laurel binding once her head?――
She, the world’s mistress, begging so her bread
At her own gates, her empire’s wreck beside!
Withered and old, craven in form and face,
Yet keeping still some gift from out the past
In the broad mantle o’er her shoulders cast,
Where lingered yet her ancient, haughty grace――
Conscious each fold of that far-sounding name,
Imperial still in spite of loss and shame.

III.

And was this Rome? Nor faith, nor hope, nor love
Writ in the wrinkled story of her face,
Where weariness and sad old age had place,
For earthly days no cheer, no light above!
All earthly greatness to this measure shrunk?
With burning heart I gazed. Was this the thought
The sculptor in the answering clay had wrought――
Cæsar’s proud impress in the beggar sunk
For men to mock at in her weak old age?
Was this a living Rome, or one, long dead,
That waked to life a modern Cæsar’s tread,
Claiming with outstretched hand her heritage?
While the strong nations she once triumphed o’er
Scarce heeded her they served with awe before!

IV.

Where, then, was she that was Eternal called?
Bore she no likeness of immortal youth?
Did she lament her cruel dower in truth
As once Tithonus by that gift enthralled?
All joy of youth long perished, living on
In dread possession of the pitiless gift,
In hopeless age set helplessly adrift,
Her bread the bitter thought of days bygone!
No word immortal on the statue writ,
Save the deep bitterness of graven name;
No trumpet telling dumbly of her fame,
Nor unquenched lamp by vestal virgin lit――
Youth, empire, and her people’s love all o’er,
Unqueened, and still undying, evermore!

V.

O artist! lurks there in your sculptured thought
No vision of another Rome than this?
Along the antique border of her dress
I sought in vain to see the symbol wrought
That she has steadfast borne since first its touch
Did her, the holy one, e’er consecrate
The tender mother of the desolate,
Consoler of poor hearts o’erburdened much,
Pure spouse of Him who is Eternal Life,
Inheritor of beauty ever new
Yet ever ancient, ’missioned to subdue
Beneath love’s yoke the nations lost in strife――
Rome’s eagles shadowed not a realm so wide
As lights the cross, her trust from Him that died.

VI.

O Rome! imperial lady, Christian queen!
Art thou discrowned and desolate indeed?
All vainly doth thy smitten greatness plead?
Reads none the sorrow of thy brow serene?
Perished thy eagles, and o’erthrown thy cross?
Thou banished from possession of thine own,
While they who rob thee fling thee mocking down
An ancient Roman robe to hide thy loss,
That the world, seeing thy fair-seeming state,
Shall greet the Cæsar who gives thee such grace,
Nor heed the appealing sorrow in thy face,
Nor hear thy cry like His who at the gate
Of Jericho cried out! Bide thou thy day――
Thy Western children for thee weep and pray.

VII.

So once in Pilate’s hall thy Master stood
In Roman purple robed, and none divined
The holy mystery in those folds enshrined――
The sorrowing God-head lifted on the Rood.
Such was his portion here; with thee he shares
His grief divine. Ah! grandly art thou crowned――
Fair in the light of truth thy brows around――
With thorns like his, while thy strong hand uprears
His wide-armed cross, thou leaning on its strength!
What though thy constant sorrow shade thine eyes?
Undying hope about thy sweet mouth lies;
That faith is thine that has been all the length
Of centuries past, that shall be centuries o’er;
And on thy bosom writ I read――_Amor_.

VIII.

Each letter seeming with a ruddy hue――
Won from His Passion who is Perfect Love――
To glow the whiteness of thy robe above,
Thy own heart staining red thy raiment through.
What though thy hands are fettered as they lift
The blessing of the cross? They still can guide,
Like Israel’s cloud, thy children scattered wide;
Still are they warning to lost flocks adrift
On mist-enshrouded slopes; still can they bless
Thy faithful ones who, weeping, peace implore,
Who, striving, spread thy realm far countries o’er.
Still rulest thou while kings, as shadows, pass;
And still the weary, craving love and home,
Peace in thy bosom seek, Eternal Rome!

CHALDEAN ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION.

In no portion of the world will the adventurous traveller feel himself more impressed by a sense of mystery and of awe than in that vast plain which rises from the Persian Gulf and stretches away northwestwardly along the mountains of Kurdistan until it reaches those of Armenia. From the rivers which water it the Greeks called one portion of it Mesopotamia. Other portions are known as Chaldea and Assyria. In this plain it was that the Lord God planted the Garden of Eden, bringing forth all manner

“Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit.
Blossoms and fruit at once of golden hue
Appeared, with gay enamel’d colors mixed,
On which the sun more glad impress’d his beams
Than in the fair ev’ning cloud or humid bow,
When God shower’d the earth; so lovely seemed
That landskip.”――_Par. Lost_, b. iv.

Here still How the Euphrates and the Tigris, named in Holy Writ as two of the rivers of Eden. Their waters still fertilize a soil which, desolate and accursed though it now seems, will yield, even to rude and imperfect culture, a harvest of an hundred-fold. Here our first parents spent their too brief hours of innocence. Here, too, driven for their disobedience from Eden, they wandered in sorrow, and tilled the earth in the sweat of their brow.

On this plain, when the waters of the Deluge had passed away, did the children of Noe, as yet of the same tongue, assemble together, and, forgetful of the power of God, say to each other: “Let us make a city and a tower, the top of which may reach to heaven; and let us make our name famous before we be scattered abroad into all lands” (Gen. xi. 4). From this centre, when the Lord had confounded their speech and humbled their pride, did they go forth to people the whole earth.

Here walked Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord, ruling his fellow-men. Here he built Babylon, afterwards so renowned in history. On this plain, too, across the Tigris, were founded Resen and Calah and Ninive, cities of power in the earlier days of history.

For more than fifteen centuries this plain was the most favored spot of the ancient world. As the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the Mede, the Persian, and the Greek succeeded each other on the throne, the tributes and the spoils of surrounding nations were brought hither, and were here lavishly squandered in every mode that could display the magnificence or perpetuate the memory of mighty sovereigns. Each monarch seemed, with the land, to inherit the ambitious desires of the builders of Babel. Each strove to found cities, to erect towers, to build walls, and to raise structures which neither man nor time nor the hand of Heaven should destroy. All through those centuries the work was carried on, each age striving to excel in grandeur and strength of work all that had gone before. Neither time nor wealth nor skill was spared; nothing that man could do was left undone.

How vain and futile is man’s mightiest effort! The decree went forth that Ninive should be laid waste, and that Babylon should be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha.

This fertile plain, once filled with gorgeous cities and countless villages, checkered with fruitful groves and cultivated fields, has become a wild, deserted, treeless waste, over which the wandering Arab drives his flock in search of a precarious pasturage, and from which even he is forced to flee as the grass withers under the burning heats of summer. The towers and temples and palaces, rich with statuary and painting, and whose sides, glistening with gold and shining brass, reflected the dazzling rays of the sun for leagues around, have all disappeared. In their stead a few mud-walled and thatch-roofed cottages, pervious to wind and rain, may be seen clustering around some ancient Christian shrine, or are falling to fragments since the last raid of the pasha or the rapacity of the Arabs drove the miserable tenants from even such humble abodes. It is only at Mosul and Bagdad, seats of Turkish civil rule――such as it is――and at a few other points, that anything to be called a town can be found. And even there little more is to be seen than an accumulation of many such huts around a few rude stone dwellings and churches. For ages the inhabitants have been ground to the dust by Turkish misrule. Long since stripped of everything, they are the poorest of the poor. He holds life and property by a frail tenure indeed whom the greedy pasha suspects of possessing aught that can be seized. So thoroughly have the glories of old and the outward traces of ancient grandeur passed away that for a long time antiquarians disputed where on this plain Ninive, and where Babylon, stood.

It is a vast, treeless, uncultivated, arid blank on the surface of the earth. Stern, shapeless mounds rise like low, flat-topped hills from the parched plains――rude, unsightly heaps, whose sides, here and there stripped of earth by the rains of winter, disclose within masses of brickwork and fragments of pottery. Desolation meets desolation on every side. The traveller sees no graceful column still standing erect in solitary beauty, no classic capital or richly-carved frieze fallen to the earth, and half-appearing, half-hidden amid the luxuriant growth of the soil; nothing that charms in its present picturesque beauty, nothing that he can rebuild in imagination. He travels on, day after day, over the parched plain, amid these sombre mounds, and feels that in truth this is a cemetery of nations accursed for their sins. The ever-recurring sameness of the dreary prospect around him, before him, behind him, impresses even more deeply on his mind the grand truth that, do what man may, God reigns and rules and conquers. Every step shows him how completely are fulfilled the threats made of old, in the days of their luxury and pride, against the sensual and sinful peoples who dwelt here. The words of the messengers of God have indeed come true.

For the last third of a century a fresh interest has drawn the minds of men to this plain. The silence of twenty-five centuries has been broken, and these old mounds are lifting up their voices, as it were, and telling us of the glories of ancient times, and how men then lived and battled, what arts they practised and what knowledge they possessed, in what gods they believed and how they worshipped. The tale is a wondrous one.

The French government, which still claims throughout the Levant the right of protecting the Catholic Christians of every rite, under the rule of the Moslems, who are united to the Holy See, had stationed in Mosul in 1841, as French consul, M. Botta, a ripe scholar, enthusiastically devoted to Oriental studies. Across the Tigris, and in sight of Mosul, stood a huge mound. The natives called it _Kouyunjik_, and had vague traditions of carved stones and figures having been found in or about it from time to time. M. Botta bethought him of excavating the mound to test the truth of such tales. For a time his labors were without any satisfactory result. He was induced to leave Kouyunjik for a time, and to work instead on the mound of Khorsabad, some fifteen miles distant. Here his very first attempt at excavation brought him down to a thick brick wall. Digging down by its side, he saw that it was lined with slabs bearing sculptures in bass-relief, and inscriptions in some unknown language. Continuing his trench, he groped his way along the wall, until it broke off, with a face at right angles to the face he had followed. A few feet further on the wall commenced again as before. He had evidently passed a doorway. Pursuing his course steadily and eagerly, and turning corner after corner, he at length came to the point whence he had started. He had completed the inner circuit of a room. Then, going through the door already discovered, he led his trenches along the walls of a second chamber lined, like the first, with slabs bearing illegible inscriptions and bass-relief figures. In six months six halls, some of them 115 feet long, were fully explored, and over 450 feet of sculptures and inscriptions were accurately copied. The copies, with an able report, were sent to the Academy of Inscriptions at Paris.

These startling discoveries were hailed with enthusiasm by the antiquarians of France and of Europe generally. The French government at once supplied M. Botta with ample funds, and sent to his assistance M. Flandin, an able draughtsman. The work was vigorously pushed on until the entire mound of Khorsabad had been thoroughly investigated. On an original elevation or mound of earth, either natural or artificial, a vast platform of brick-work had been laid. On this rose the building itself, evidently a magnificent royal palace, over 1,200 feet in front and 500 feet deep. Within, it was divided by thick walls of masonry into numerous halls or rooms, many of them more than 100 feet long, but few of them exceeding 35 feet in breadth. The external walls and these party-walls were from twelve to twenty feet in thickness, and were evidently intended to bear a heavy superstructure of upper stories. These, however, have all perished; nothing remains but the walls on the ground-floor. In fact, they rise only about ten or fifteen feet. Within and without they were lined with limestone slabs ten feet high, bearing inscriptions and bass-relief figures. The same subject often occupied many slabs in succession. Thus, the entire panelling of one long front, of 1,200 feet, seemed to be occupied by a single subject――the triumphant procession of a king returning victorious from some war――the whole presented in a long succession of figures above the natural size. Winged human figures with the heads of eagles――the deities of Assyria――led the way, each bearing the sacred pine-cone in one hand and a basket in the other. To them succeeded priests leading victims for the sacrifice. Then came the monarch in his richest robes, attended by his chief ministers, his eunuchs, and his courtiers. Other officials in a long line bore the various insignia of royalty. Soldiers came next, escorting the tribute-bearers, laden some with miniature representations of the cities and towns and castles that had been conquered, others with the tribute itself and with the spoils of the conquered nations. Lastly, groups of captives, with fettered limbs and drooping heads, closed the long array which proclaimed to men the prowess and grandeur of the monarch who reared this palace. Within the palace the walls were lined with still other inscriptions and sculptures of battles, of sacrifices, processions, of royal audiences, and of lion hunts in the forests and mountains.

MM. Botta and Flandin copied as accurately as possible all these inscriptions and figures as soon as found. It was well they did so. The palace had been destroyed by fire. The limestone slabs had been overheated and calcined. A brief exposure to the weather was now sufficient to cause them to crumble into dust.

In 1845 Mr. (now Sir) Austin Henry Layard commenced excavations first in a different mound――that of Nimroud, some twenty miles distant from Mosul in another direction――and then at Kouyunjik, which M. Botta had abandoned; and afterwards at Karamles, at Birs Nimroud, and elsewhere. He was rewarded by the discovery of four other royal palaces, and of an immense amount of inscriptions, bass-reliefs, and curious Assyrian statuary, large shipments of all of which he sent to the British Museum in London.

We need not say with what astonishment and what interest men looked at this vast amount of Assyrian antiquities, so unexpectedly discovered, and now to be seen in London and in Paris; nor need we follow the steps of the various exploring expeditions that went forth in succession from Europe to delve yet again in those rich mines of archæology. In 1876 they were still at it, and doubtless the work will long continue; for there remains much to reward a search.

The first emotions of astonishment over, the scholars of Europe left aside for a time the sculptured figures, and turned to those multitudinous and inscrutable inscriptions as in truth the richest and most valuable portion of the find. In what language or languages, and by what system, are they written? Does each sign, or group of these curious signs, spell a word letter after letter, as modern writing does? Or do they give syllable after syllable, after the manner of some ancient people? Or does each group simply mean a word, as the Chinese characters do? Can we answer? Is it possible to ascertain the purport and meaning of these records?

These were the questions puzzling the scholars of Europe as they looked on the inscriptions placed before them. More puzzling questions, one would think, could scarcely be devised. How much or how little was already known about this style of inscriptions, these strange arrow-headed, nail-formed, wedge-shaped, claviform, or cuneiform letters, as men styled them?

They were evidently the “Assyrian letters” mentioned by Herodotus. But neither he nor any other ancient writer gave any aid whatever towards their interpretation.

The moderns could tell little of them. In 1620 Figueroa, the Spanish traveller and diplomatist, published some account of the inscriptions he had seen in Persepolis, and gave a fac-simile of one line of this arrow-headed writing. A year or two later Pietro Della Valle, who spent years travelling in Asia, published another specimen, and, from a general consideration of its appearance, decided that the writing, be it in what language it may, was to be read from left to right, as European languages are read, and not from right to left, as the Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, and other Semitic languages are to be read, nor from top to bottom, as the Chinese read their inscriptions. But beyond this he could not go.

Fifty years later a French traveller, M. Chardin, published drawings of the inscriptions he had copied in Persepolis. Other travellers gave further accounts of such inscriptions at Persepolis, Hamadan, and elsewhere in Western Persia. They spoke especially of the magnificent inscription of Bisutun or Behistun. Following the grand caravan route from Bagdad to Ispahan, the traveller finds himself in the beautiful valley of the Kerkha River. On his left rise rugged limestone cliffs. At one spot the road runs at the base of a gigantic perpendicular cliff, fully 1,700 feet high. In some ancient time workmen made their way up, by scaffolding, three hundred feet and more above the road, where they smoothed a large space of the face of the rock, cutting out weak and soft portions, and carefully plugging the cavities with firmer and stronger pieces of the same stone. On this smoothed surface they cut their figures of majestic stature. A monarch, armed and triumphant, stands erect, one foot pressing on a prostrate foe. Above his head floats the winged form of a heathen deity. Before him stands a line of nine other captives, united together by a cord passing from neck to neck. For the king and for each captive there is a short inscription. Below, on the face of the rock there are hundreds of lines of inscriptions, every letter, over an inch in length, being cut neatly and carefully into the smoothed and perpendicular face of the cliff. The whole was then floated, as the plasterers would say, with a wash of fluid glass, which in drying left a transparent, silicious crust or film, saving the work from the ravages of wind and rain and time. Much of this coating is still in place, more of it has flaked off, and fragments of it may be gathered from the debris at the foot of the cliff.

In 1765 Carsten Niebuhr visited those regions, and, after long study, came to the opinion that there were here three different styles of inscription, probably in three different languages. In this case one of them was probably the Persian. From that date on Niebuhr, Münter, Grotefend, De Sacy, Saint-Martin, Rask, and others pored over these strange letters, studied out the Sanscrit and the Zend or ancient Persian, and, devoting themselves laboriously to the simpler and presumed Persian portions of the inscriptions, finally succeeded in making out one letter after another, and discovered that this part, at least, was of course to be read alphabetically. They began to guess at the sense of some oft-recurring word or phrase, or of what were apparently royal names or titles. Great was their exultation when they were sure at last that a certain oft-recurring group of characters (which we have no type to print) was to be read “Khsháyathíya Khsháyathíyánám,” and meant “King of kings.” By 1836 Lassen, Burnouf, and Sir Henry Rawlinson claimed to be able to make out, at least in a general way, the sense of those Persian portions. Other scholars followed them, making still further advances. Those Persian inscriptions were found to commemorate the deeds of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and other Persian monarchs of their epoch.

The inscriptions were, as Niebuhr had conjectured, in three languages. The second, called the Scythic or Turanian, was in characters more difficult and more complex than the Persian writing. The third, and still more difficult, portions were supposed to be in some ancient Assyrian language――perhaps even in several distinct forms or dialects of it. They had not yet been read when Botta and Layard made their discoveries in the mounds, and filled the museums of Europe with thousands of inscriptions, whole or fragmentary, all evidently of this third class. The task was taken up by the scholars of Europe with renewed ardor. If the difficulties were great, they had at least a fair starting point in the Persian portions already deciphered; but the difficulty was still great. Those groups of arrow-headed characters seemed to shift their meaning in a bewildering fashion. Sometimes they represented letters, sometimes syllables, sometimes words or monograms. Again, the same group sometimes seemed to represent one letter, and at another quite a different letter; while, as if to compensate this multiplicity of values of a single sign, it was evident that frequently several signs had the same identical value, and might be interchanged one for another. Add to all this the fact that they were not yet sure in what language or what dialect these inscriptions of Ninive were written, nor, even in a general way, what they treated of, and it will be clear that the task of deciphering them was in truth a puzzling one. The more clearly men saw what was to be done, the more difficult it appeared to do it. Progress could be made only by a series of tentative guesses. When one proclaimed that he had attained some result, however small, that result was attacked by others, and sometimes proved to be illusory. However, despite of thousands of failures, despite of ridicule and disbelief, progress was gradually made. In March, 1857, Mr. Fox Talbot selected the first cuneiform inscription which had been lithographed by the trustees of the British Museum, and proposed it as a test. Four of the chief students of this new literature were to make, each apart, and without consultation with the others, his own translation of it, to be sent under seal to the Royal Asiatic Society. When all had come in, the seals were to be broken and the several translations compared. In May, 1857, this was done. The following translations of one passage of the inscription will serve as a sample of how they agreed:

_Rawlinson_: “Then I went on to the country of Comukha,
which was disobedient, and withheld the tribute and
offerings due to Ashur, my lord. I conquered the whole
country of Comukha. I plundered their movables, their
wealth, and their valuables. Their cities I burned with
fire, I destroyed and ruined.”

_Talbot_: “I then advanced against Kumikhi, a land of the
unbelievers, who had refused to pay taxes and tribute unto
Ashur, my lord. The land of Kumikhi throughout all its
extent I ravaged. Their women, etc., I carried off. Their
cities I burned with fire, destroyed, and overthrew.”

_Oppert_: “In those days I went to the people of Dummukh,
the enemy who owed tribute and gifts to the god Ashur, my
lord. I subdued the people of Dummukh; for its
punishment(?). I took away their captives, their herds, and
their treasures; their cities I burnt in fire; I destroyed,
I undermined them.”

_Hincks_: “At that time I went to a disaffected part of
Qummukh, which had withheld the tribute by weight and tale
belonging to Assur, my lord. I subdued the land of Qummukh
as far as it extended. I brought out their women, their
_slaves_, and their cattle; their towns I burned with fire,
threw down, and dug up.”

Such a wonderful agreement of those four translators in deciphering the text of this inscription was proof that the key had been found, and that ere long this vast cuneiform literature would emerge from the tomb in which it had lain buried for over two thousand five hundred years. The experiment was felt to have been eminently successful.

We need not follow the further labors of those and other Orientalists in this new field of research, as volume after volume appeared in French, in German, and in English, giving translations of texts, and rewriting the ancient history of those Eastern lands. For years it seemed that this would be the chief literary result of those discoveries. The lines of monarchs were established, gaps were filled up, broken links were restored, contested dates were settled. Much light was thrown on manners and customs, and on the religious systems of the peoples, their wars and conquests, and on the duration, successions, and vicissitudes of the various dynasties which ruled over them. A by no means small library might be formed of the works on these subjects published within the last quarter of a century.

As it became known that Orientalists were gradually obtaining the power of deciphering these Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions, and as the extent of the field thus opened to fresh researches was gradually developed, hopes that seemed extravagant were indulged as to the results soon to be reached, and not wholly without reason. These ancient Assyrians seemed to have been possessed with an extraordinary passion for recording anything and everything in their mysterious characters. Monarch after monarch had taken pride in putting up pompous inscriptions to perpetuate the memory of his victories and of the glorious events of his reign. From such monuments might we not obtain some record of their successive dynasties, and learn something of the history of their empires and kingdoms? Those grand bass-reliefs of marble or alabaster, representing deities, monarchs, sacred bulls, or other mysterious figures; every representation of a battle-scene, of a triumphal procession, of the building of a city, of the sailing of boats, or of what else you please, had each its own cuneiform lettering, now about to tell us its long-hidden meaning. Everywhere seals, cylinders, signets, or other small objects of value, whether of agate, of chalcedony, or of other hard and precious stone, or of terra-cotta, had its group of emblematic figures, often with an inscription in minutest characters, nicely cut with a lapidary’s skill. The very bricks used in building those huge walls, hundreds of feet long and ten or fifteen feet thick, bore nearly every one of them, in cuneiform characters, some name; perhaps that of the monarch who built the palace, or of the architect who planned and directed the work, perhaps that of the workman who made the brick itself and laid it in the wall.

And more than all this, all through the _débris_ of earth now filling chamber after chamber, and more abundantly towards the bottom, the explorers found countless fragments of terra-cotta or baked clay tablets, bearing generally cuneiform inscriptions on both sides. Some of those fragments were not an inch in length or breadth; others were even a foot square or larger. It was possible sometimes to fit a number of fragments together. They had been found lying near together, and had originally formed one piece, that was broken when it fell. A thorough examination of the character of the material and of the work, and their present condition, made it clear that originally they were slabs or tablets of fine clay, well kneaded and pressed into form. While still comparatively soft, they had received the inscriptions at the hands of skilled scribes. This the marks of the metal tool or style used in inscribing the letters on the yielding clay made quite evident. The tablets so inscribed were then hardened by baking, and were placed in upper rooms of the palace devoted to the purposes of a library. When at last the palace itself was destroyed by fire, the heat may have cracked or otherwise injured some of them. Their fall, as the rooms were destroyed and the slabs precipitated into a heated mass of ruins in the lower masonry chambers, must have broken most of them into fragments. The spade and mattock, as men overturned again and again this mass of _débris_ to recover gold and silver and jewelry buried in it, may have continued the work of destruction; and perhaps time has since done more than all these agencies. For the yearly rains of twenty-five centuries, sinking into this soil and taking up chemical agents from the mass on every side, would in turn react on these plates of clay, producing crystals in every minutest fissure or cavity, and slowly but surely dividing them into minuter and minuter fragments. However, the fragments are there, covered with writing. In the mound of Kouyunjik alone there may be, it is judged, twenty-five or thirty thousand of them. How many more may be found in other mounds of Ninive? And as to the mounds of Babylon and its vicinity, so little as yet has been done to them in comparison with the work at Ninive that we may say they are still almost untouched.

If the Assyrians had libraries, and if those libraries have come down to us, be it even only as tattered leaves and torn volumes, may we not yet gather together these fragments, or at least some portion of them, decipher what is written, and so become acquainted with something of this ancient Assyrian literature? What did men then know? What did they believe? What did they write? It was hoped that we were on the very eve of discoveries equalling, if not far surpassing, in extent and in importance, those made in the earlier half of this century by the discovery of how to read the ancient hieroglyphs of Egypt. We cannot say that these hopes have so far been fully realized. Far from it. We are still at the beginning of the work; but the work goes bravely on.

Attention was at first, and naturally, directed to the grander and more prominent public monuments and inscriptions. From them much has been learned of the series of Assyrian monarchs and concerning their deeds, and light has been thrown on many obscure points of chronology. The statements of the Holy Scriptures in reference to the relations of the Jewish people with Babylon and Ninive during the thousand years preceding Christ, and Biblical references to the character and customs of the Assyrians and Babylonians, have been wonderfully illustrated.

Other classes of inscriptions, on fragments of the terra-cotta tiles or tablets, gave accounts of the divisions of the empire, the character, and almost the statistics, of the provinces. The laws and usages then in force, and the peculiarities of their domestic life, are sometimes presented with a vividness that startles us.

Strange to say, and equally to the surprise and the delight of those now laboring in the work of deciphering this enigmatical writing, quite a number of tablets were found written for the special purpose of explaining to the ancient students of Assyria, in simpler and more legible, or rather more _pronounceable_, characters, the meaning and the sound of the more abstruse and ideographic characters so frequently occurring in the texts of the inscriptions. These supply us to-day with what we may call, and what is in reality, a dictionary of their hard words, giving their correct pronunciation and their meaning.

Still other tablets were devoted to astronomy, to astrology, to medicine, to sorcery, to hymns of religion and prayers of sacrifice, to history, to geography, to poetry, and to whatever might be embraced by the term Assyrian belles-lettres.

Acceptable as all this is, something more was expected. Was there nothing to illustrate the earlier history of mankind, nothing in relation to those earlier events which are narrated by Moses as having occurred in this very land? They are dear to us because intertwined with our religious and moral training. Was it possible that there was no trace whatever of them, not even an allusion to them, to be found in all this mass of Assyrian writings?

Berosus, a Babylonian priest of the time of Alexander the Great, about three hundred years before Christ, wrote a history of Babylon. The work itself has perished; but we have some accounts of it in sundry Greek writers. According to them, Berosus distinctly stated that accounts were carefully preserved in Babylon in which were recorded the formation of the heavens, the earth, and the sea, the origin of man, and the chief memorable events of the early history of the world. Why had we come across nothing of all this? Was it because Berosus spoke of ancient tablets at Babylon, and the tablets whose fragments we were scrutinizing are, for the most part, from Ninive, and, in their present form at least, date back generally only seven, eight, or nine centuries before Christ?

No other reason seemed assignable; and it appeared that, to obtain such tablets, we must wait until the mounds of Babylon shall be as carefully and as thoroughly excavated as those of Ninive. When will that be done? In the meantime let us be patient and make the most we can of what we have.

Things were in this condition in 1872. In that year Mr. George Smith, of the British Museum, a young and ardent Assyriologist, who has indeed proved himself worthy to continue the labors of Rawlinson, Hincks, Oppert, Lenormant, Talbot, and the other distinguished Oriental scholars of Europe, was occupied in the task of examining one by one the thousands of cuneiform terra-cotta fragments collected in the Assyrian department of that institution. He intended to divide them into classes, according to the subjects on which they seemed to treat, in order that each class might afterwards be more thoroughly studied by itself.

Taking up one day a fragment, of medium size, the middle lines of which were entire and could be plainly made out, he read as follows:

“To the country of Nizir went the ship;
The mountains of Nizir stopped the ship, and to pass over it was
not able;
The first day and the second day, the mountains of Nizir, the same;
The third day and the fourth day, the mountains of Nizir, the same;
The fifth and the sixth, the mountains of Nizir, the same.
On the seventh day, in the course of it,
I sent forth a dove, and it left. The dove went and turned;
A resting-place it did not find, and it returned.
I sent forth a swallow, and it left. The swallow went and turned;
and
A resting-place it did not find, and it returned.
I sent forth a raven, and it left. The raven went, and the decrease
of waters it saw, and
It did eat, it swam, and wandered away, and did not return.”

There could be no mistake about it. This was evidently a portion of a cuneiform inscription which gave an Assyrian version of the history of the Deluge. Could he pick out, from among the thousands and thousands of fragments, great and small, around him in the collection, the other pieces of the same tablet, so as to have the whole? or were they still lying buried in the mound of Kouyunjik, whence Layard had brought the fragment he is reading? That was the question before Mr. Smith. He set himself to the task of practically answering it. Month after month was spent in the labor of scrutinizing, matching, and deciphering fragments. Success rewarded this perseverance, almost beyond his expectation. In December he was able to electrify the literary world of London. He lectured on the “Chaldean Account of the Deluge,” and was able to present to his audience the greater portion of the cuneiform text. It corresponded wonderfully not only in the main points, but sometimes even in details, with the account of Genesis. It differed from it chiefly by the introduction of poetic and mythological imagery, and in a few minor details――such details as men will naturally vary in, while they retain the substance and general truth of an account.

About this time the New York _Herald_ had attained a world-wide and well-deserved celebrity by having sent Stanley on a bold and successful mission to find Livingstone in the heart of Africa. Other papers naturally wished to imitate, if not to rival, the great deed. The London _Daily Telegraph_ saw its opportunity, seized it at once, and sent out Mr. Smith to Mesopotamia, to make further excavations in the mound of Kouyunjik and elsewhere, and to obtain more of those interesting fragments. This he strove to do, though under many embarrassments from the opposition or the petulance of ignorant and arbitrary Turkish officials. He was forced to bring his work to a close just when he felt that he had entered well into it. The results, however, of that trip have since turned out to be greater and more important than he then thought. He soon went out again to resume and continue the work under the auspices of the British Museum, and he succeeded in obtaining for its collection still another large instalment of the much-coveted fragments, together with many other valuable articles. Since his return to England in June, 1874, he has given himself up almost entirely to the study of those fragments, classifying, comparing, and uniting them where possible, and deciphering the inscriptions.[137] In the work before us[138] he gives to the public some special results attained by a little over one year’s labor. We catch the words――if only the muttered and broken words――of this early Assyrian literature, yet words of highest importance, because they bear directly on the topics narrated in the earliest chapters of the Holy Scriptures. As we read them, we feel like one standing by the bedside of a sick man, and listening to his fitful and feverish utterances. You catch a word here and a word there, perhaps scarcely enough to guide you. Now and then a sentence is spoken out with startling distinctness, to be followed only by low, almost unintelligible murmurings. Still, if you know what the patient is speaking of, you may follow his train of thought, at least after a fashion.

We take up the special subjects of some of these deciphered tablets. Following the Biblical and historical order of events, we commence with

THE CREATION.

It is fortunate that the very commencement of the Chaldean legend on this subject――possibly the written account which Berosus mentions――is found on a comparatively large and legible fragment. We give it line by line as Mr. Smith has translated it, marking the missing portions by points. It will serve as a favorable sample of the condition of such fragments:

“WHEN ABOVE were not raised the heavens:
And below, on the earth, a plant had not grown up;
The abysses also had not broken open their boundaries.
The chaos Tiamate [the abyss of waters] was the
producing-mother of them.
Those waters at the beginning were ordained: but
A tree had not grown, a flower had not unfolded.
When the gods had not sprung up, any one of them:
A plant had not grown, and order did not exist.
Were made the great gods,
The gods Lahmu and Lahamu they caused to come …
And they grew …
The gods Sar and Kisar were made …
The course of days and a long time passed …
The god Anu …
The gods Sar and …”

* * * * *

These fifteen lines, six of them imperfect, are all that we have of the inscription on the face or obverse of this tablet. Judging from the inscriptions on other fragments of similar tablets, there were probably fifty lines on the face of the tablet when entire, and perhaps thirty or forty of text on the back, or reverse of it, all missing as yet, except what we have given.

On the upper portion of the back, above the thirty or forty lines referred to as missing, and fortunately on the back of the fragment before us, was placed a curious and interesting inscription, serving both as title and preface, and throwing light on the history and character of the material fragments before us. The inscription reads as follows:

“First tablet of WHEN ABOVE
Palace of Assurbanipal, King of Nations, King of Assyria,
To whom Nebo and Tasmit [_Assyrian deities_] attentive ears have
given:
He sought with diligent eyes the wisdom of the inscribed tablets,
Which among the kings who went before me,
None those writings had sought.
The wisdom of Nebo, the impressions of the god my instructor all
delightful,
On the tablets I wrote, I studied, I observed, and
For the inspection of my people, within my palace, I placed.”

The Assyrians, we see, like the Israelites and other Eastern nations, frequently designated their books, not by the subjects treated of, but by the initial words. The book the commencement of which we see on this fragment of terra-cotta was known to them, and they subsequently refer to it, by the title, WHEN ABOVE.

We see also that the fragments which we possess are remnants of a series of tablets which were prepared and placed in his palace at Ninive by the Assyrian monarch Assurbanipal, son of Esarhaddon, the celebrated Sardanapalus of Grecian writers, renowned for his luxury and magnificence, and who, seeing his kingdom at length subverted and his capital taken, preferred to perish with his family in the conflagration of his own palace, rather than yield himself a prisoner into the hands of his enemies. He reigned from B.C. 673 to B.C. 625. From this inscription, and from many other notices, we learn that during his reign he followed up with ardor the literary work of his father and grandfather, and of several of their predecessors. He sought out the more ancient literary treasures of Babylon, Cutha, Erech, Akkad, Borsippa, Ur, Nipur, and other older cities then under his sway; caused them to be carefully copied out on fresh tablets of terra-cotta, and to be placed in his own Royal Library at Ninive. It is thus almost entirely to Assurbanipal and his patronage of learning that we owe what we now know, or hope soon to possess, of this oldest of all national literatures.

Reverting to our fragmentary tablet, and comparing the verbose text of this remarkable inscription with the brief account of Moses (Gen. i. 1, 2), we cannot but note the contrast between the clear and emphatic statement of the inspired writer, “In the beginning God _created_ the heavens and the earth,” on one side, and on the other the vague and undecided statement of the cuneiform writer, “Those waters [or chaos] at the beginning were _ordained_.”

It may be presuming too much on our present ability to translate with accuracy every individual word of these tablets for us to give much weight to a single word or isolated expression; but it would seem that the early Assyrians, even if they had lost, or at least were accustomed to leave in the background, the idea of the unity of God, and were commencing to indulge in mythological fancies, had not, however, gone as yet so far astray as to hold the primeval chaos to have existed of itself from eternity. On the contrary, they believed that at the beginning it was _ordained_. There is here a trace, at least, of the idea of creation by a superior Power.

The watery character of the abyss is an idea common to both narratives. Whence this agreement? Could the void and formless character of the original chaotic mass be conceived under no other condition than that of a watery mist?

Moses distinctly indicates the exercise of the power of the true and supreme God in the further progress of creation: “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The inscription, leaving that out of sight, in this instance at least, gives us the primordial conceptions of mythology. The gods, who at the beginning “had not sprung up, any one of them,” soon commence to appear――“are made.” They are evidently personifications or deifications of the divisions or the powers of nature, perhaps poetic fancies in the beginning, to become in course of time mythological personages, and then heathen divinities, to be worshipped with altars and sacrifices.