Chapter LVII: Appendix: B. Excavations in Mesopotamia, and Their Results (1)

The consecrated metals found
And ivory tablets, underground,
Winged seraphim, and creatures crown’d
When air and daylight filled the mound,
Fell into dust immediately.
And even as these, the images
Of awe and worship--even as these--
So, smitten with the sun’s increase,
Her glory mouldered and did cease
From immemorial Nineveh.--ROSSETTI.

A wish expressed by Herder early in the nineteenth century, that explorations might be made in the region of the buried cities of Babylonia and Assyria, was destined to meet with early realisation. The exact sites of various of these cities, long utterly forgotten, were discovered; excavations were made, and a harvest of buried records brought to light, surpassing in interest and importance the wildest dreams of anticipation. Not merely the ruins of city walls and of fallen palaces were exhumed, but with them wonderfully preserved sculptures and ornaments of surprising artistic excellence; and, more important still, voluminous written records, historical and literary, imprinted on slabs and cylinders of brick--the books of the period--in strange wedge-shaped characters of unknown import, which modern scholarship soon sufficed to decipher. How these marvellous feats were accomplished had best be explained before we turn to the historical records which they brought to light. It is a thrilling record, which has no exact counterpart elsewhere in history.[a] The story of how the work was begun is told by that pioneer in the field of Assyriology, Sir A. H. Layard:

THE RUINS OF NINEVEH AND M. BOTTA’S FIRST DISCOVERY

Were the traveller to cross the Euphrates to seek for such ruins in Mesopotamia and Chaldea as he had left behind him in Asia Minor or Syria, his search would be vain. The graceful column rising above the thick foliage of the myrtle, ilex, and oleander; the gradines of the amphitheatre covering a gentle slope, and overlooking the dark blue waters of a lake-like bay; the richly carved cornice or capital half hidden by the luxuriant herbage, are replaced by the stern, shapeless mound rising like a hill from the scorched plain, the fragments of pottery, and the stupendous mass of brickwork occasionally laid bare by the winter rains. He has left the land where nature is still lovely, where, in his mind’s eye, he can rebuild the temple or the theatre, half doubting whether they would have made a more grateful impression upon the senses than the ruin before him. He is now at a loss to give any form to the rude heaps upon which he is gazing. Those of whose works they are the remains, unlike the Roman and the Greek, have left no visible traces of their civilisation, or of their arts: their influence has long since passed away. The more he conjectures, the more vague the results appear. The scene around is worthy of the ruin he is contemplating; desolation meets desolation: a feeling of awe succeeds to wonder; for there is nothing to relieve the mind, to lead to hope, or to tell of what has gone by. These huge mounds of Assyria made a deeper impression upon me, gave rise to more serious thoughts and more earnest reflection, than the temples of Baalbec and the theatres of Ionia.

In the middle of April I left Mosul for Baghdad. As I descended the Tigris on a raft, I again saw the ruins of Nimrud, and had a better opportunity of examining them. It was evening as we approached the spot. The spring rains had clothed the mound with the richest verdure, and the fertile meadows, which stretched around it, were covered with flowers of every hue. Amidst this luxuriant vegetation were partly concealed a few fragments of bricks, pottery, and alabaster, upon which might be traced the well-defined wedges of the cuneiform character. Did not these remains mark the nature of the ruin, it might have been confounded with a natural eminence. A long line of consecutive narrow mounds, still retaining the appearance of walls or ramparts, stretched from its base, and formed a vast quadrangle. The river flowed at some distance from them: its waters, swollen by the melting of the snows on the Armenian hills, were broken into a thousand foaming whirlpools by an artificial barrier, built across the stream. On the eastern bank the soil had been washed away by the current; but a solid mass of masonry still withstood its impetuosity. The Arab, who guided my small raft, gave himself up to religious ejaculations as we approached this formidable cataract, over which we were carried with some violence. Once safely through the danger, he explained to me that this unusual change in the quiet face of the river was caused by a great dam which had been built by Nimrod, and that in the autumn, before the winter rains, the huge stones of which it was constructed, squared, and united by cramps of iron, were frequently visible above the surface of the stream.[39] It was, in fact, one of those monuments of a great people, to be found in all the rivers of Mesopotamia, which were undertaken to ensure a constant supply of water to the innumerable canals, spreading like network over the surrounding country, and which, even in the days of Alexander, were looked upon as the works of an ancient nation. No wonder that the traditions of the present inhabitants of the land should assign them to one of the founders of the human race! The Arab explained the connection between the dam and the city built by Athur, the lieutenant of Nimrod, the vast ruins of which were then before us, and of its purpose as a causeway for the mighty hunter to cross to the opposite palace, now represented by the mound of Hammum Ali. He was telling me of the histories and fate of the kings of a primitive race, still the favourite theme of the inhabitants of the plains of Shinar, when the last glow of twilight faded away, and I fell asleep as we glided onward to Baghdad.

My curiosity had been greatly excited, and from that time I formed the design of thoroughly examining, whenever it might be in my power, these singular ruins.

It was not until the summer of 1842 that I again passed through Mosul on my way to Constantinople. I was then anxious to reach the Turkish capital, and, travelling Tatar, had no time to explore ruins. I had not, however, forgotten Nimrud. I had frequently spoken to others on the subject of excavations in this and another mound, to which a peculiar interest also attached; and at one time had reason to hope that some persons in England might have been induced to aid in the undertaking. I had even proposed an examination of the ruins to M. Coste, an architect who had been sent by the French government, with its embassy to Persia, to draw and describe the monuments of that country.

On my arrival at Mosul, I found that M. Botta had, since my first visit, been named French consul there; and had already commenced excavations on the opposite side of the river, in the large mound called Kuyunjik. These excavations were on a very small scale, and, at the time of my passage, only fragments of brick and alabaster, upon which were engraved a few letters in the cuneiform character, had been discovered.

(Layard)]

Whilst detained by unexpected circumstances at Constantinople, I entered into correspondence with a gentleman in England on the subject of excavations; but, with this exception, no one seemed inclined to assist or take any interest in such an undertaking. I also wrote to M. Botta, encouraging him to proceed, notwithstanding the apparent paucity of results, and particularly calling his attention to the mound of Nimrud, which, however, he declined to explore on account of its distance from Mosul and its inconvenient position. I was soon called away from the Turkish capital to the provinces; and for some months numerous occupations prevented me turning my attention to the ruins and antiquities of Assyria.

In the meanwhile M. Botta, not discouraged by the want of success which had attended his first essay, continued his excavations in the mound of Kuyunjik: and to him is due the honour of having found the first Assyrian monument. This remarkable discovery owed its origin to the following circumstances. The small party employed by M. Botta were at work on Kuyunjik, when a peasant from a distant village chanced to visit the spot. Seeing that every fragment of brick and alabaster uncovered by the workmen was carefully preserved, he asked the reason of this, to him, strange proceeding. On being informed that they were in search of sculptured stones, he advised them to try the mound on which his village was built, and in which, he declared, many such things as they wanted had been exposed on digging for the foundations of new houses. M. Botta, having been frequently deceived by similar stories, was not at first inclined to follow the peasant’s advice, but subsequently sent an agent and one or two workmen to the place.

After a little opposition from the inhabitants, they were permitted to sink a well in the mound; and at a small distance from the surface they came to the top of a wall which, on digging deeper, they found to be built of sculptured slabs of gypsum. M. Botta, on receiving information of this discovery, went at once to the village, which was called Khorsabad. He directed a wider trench to be formed, and to be carried in the direction of the wall. He soon found that he had opened a chamber, which was connected with others, and constructed of slabs of gypsum covered with sculptured representations of battles, sieges, and similar events. His wonder may be easily imagined.

A new history had been suddenly opened to him--the records of an unknown people were before him. He was equally at a loss to account for the age and the nature of the monument. The art shown in the sculptures, the dresses of the figures, the mythic forms on the walls, were all new to him, and afforded no clew to the epoch of the erection of the edifice, and to the people who were its founders. Numerous inscriptions, accompanying the bas-reliefs, evidently contained the explanation of the events thus recorded in sculpture. They were in the cuneiform, or arrow-headed, character. The nature of these inscriptions was at least evidence that the building belonged to a period preceding the conquest of Alexander; for it was generally admitted that after the subjugation of the west of Asia by the Macedonians, the cuneiform writing ceased to be employed. But too little was then known of this character to enable M. Botta to draw any inference from the peculiar arrangement of the wedges, which distinguishes the varieties used in different countries. However, it was evident that the monument appertained to a very ancient and very civilised people; and it was natural from its position to refer it to the inhabitants of Nineveh--a city, which, although it could not have occupied a site so distant from the Tigris, must have been in the vicinity of the place. M. Botta had discovered an Assyrian edifice, the first, probably, which had been exposed to the view of man since the fall of the Assyrian Empire.

M. Botta was not long in perceiving that the building which had been thus partly excavated, unfortunately owed its destruction to fire; and that the gypsum slabs, reduced to lime, were rapidly falling to pieces on exposure to the air. No precaution could arrest this rapid decay; and it was to be feared that this wonderful monument had only been uncovered to complete its ruin. The records of victories and triumphs, which had long attested the power and swelled the pride of the Assyrian kings, and had resisted the ravages of ages, were now passing away forever. They could scarcely be held together until an inexperienced pencil could secure an imperfect evidence of their former existence.

Almost all that was first discovered thus speedily disappeared; and the same fate has befallen nearly everything subsequently found at Khorsabad. A regret is almost felt that so precious a memorial of a great nation should have been thus exposed to destruction, when no precaution could keep entire or secure the greater part of it; but as far as the object of the monument is concerned, the intention of its founders will be amply fulfilled, and the records of their might will be more widely spread, and more effectually preserved, by modern art, than the most exalted ambition could have contemplated.

M. Botta lost no time in communicating his remarkable discovery to the principal scientific body in France. Knowing the interest I felt in his labours, he allowed me to see his letters and drawings as they passed through Constantinople; and I was amongst the first who were made acquainted with his success. And here I gladly avail myself of the opportunity of mentioning, with the acknowledgment and praise which they deserve, his disinterestedness and liberality, so honourable to one engaged in the pursuit of knowledge. During the entire period of his excavations, M. Botta regularly sent me not only his descriptions, but copies of the inscriptions, without exacting any promise as to the use I might make of them. That there are few who would have acted thus liberally, those who have been engaged in a search after antiquities in the East will not be inclined to deny.

M. Botta’s communications were laid before the “Académie,” by M. Mohl; and that body, perceiving at once the importance of the discovery, lost no time in applying to the Minister of Public Instruction for means to carry on the researches. The recommendation was attended to with that readiness and munificence which almost invariably distinguished the French government in undertakings of this nature. Ample funds to meet the cost of extensive excavations were at once assigned to M. Botta, and an artist of acknowledged skill was placed under his orders to draw such parts of the monument discovered as could not be preserved or removed.

With the exception of a few interruptions on the part of the local authorities, who were suspicious of the objects of the excavations, the work was carried on with activity and success, and by the beginning of 1845 the monument had been completely uncovered. The researches of M. Botta were not extended beyond Khorsabad; and having secured many fine specimens of Assyrian sculpture for his country, he returned to Europe with a rich collection of inscriptions, the most important result of his discovery.[b]

LAYARD’S DISCOVERIES AT NINEVEH

It is indeed a matter for regret there is not the space to continue Layard’s own account of his discoveries. Professor Hommel has summarised this, however, in an exceedingly satisfactory manner, and his account is here given.

Brilliant as Botta’s achievements had been, they were quite cast into the shade by what the English statesman, Sir (then Mr.) A. H. Layard, the sole discoverer of Nineveh, had accomplished for all branches of investigation and knowledge of Assyrian antiquity, by means of the excavations, principally in Kuyunjik and Nimrud, but also in Neby Yunus, Kalah Shergat, and other mounds of ruins in the neighbourhood of Nineveh; these excavations were made with the assistance of Hormuzd Rassam, who subsequently continued them. We remember how, from as far back as the year 1840, it was Layard’s ardent desire to be able to undertake some excavations. He had hailed Botta’s lucky find without envy, and was indeed the first who, in some letters in the _Malta Times_ which afterwards went the rounds of many European newspapers, directed public attention to the newly discovered Assyrian royal palace, which Botta at first assigned to the Sassanian period. Then, in the autumn of 1845, the eagerly-looked-for funds were at last obtained by the munificence of the English ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Stratford Canning (afterwards Lord Stratford de Redcliffe), to whom the British Museum already owed the acquisition of the costly marbles of Halicarnassus. Thus, towards the end of the year 1845, Layard was able to begin the excavations. He set to work on the Nimrud pile of ruins, which lies a distance of five hours to the south of Mosul, and had previously attracted his attention when Botta was still in Mosul. He laboured under the greatest difficulties, far greater than those which Botta had to overcome--to see how far this statement is from exaggeration, Layard’s own account should be perused--the work having at first to be carried on in profound secrecy so as to excite as little suspicion as possible in the Turkish authorities and in the population.

It was not to be long before Layard’s efforts were crowned with success. By the end of November several bas-reliefs were laid bare, whose execution appeared to surpass even those of the sculptures of Khorsabad, and which were accompanied by cuneiform inscriptions. In spite of many interruptions the work proceeded rigorously, and manifold were the discoveries thus brought to light. One deserving of special interest was that of the gigantic head of one of the colossal winged lions, with men’s heads, which the Assyrians placed at the entrance of their palaces for the sake of spreading terror amongst the inhabitants of surrounding districts. For it was everywhere whispered and believed that none other than Nimrod in person had risen from the earth. All this had occurred in the spring of the year 1846. The funds for the excavations lasted till the middle of June 1847; and when Layard returned to Europe he had laid bare in Nimrud no less than three great Assyrian royal palaces, namely: the grand northwestern palace, which Asshurnazirpal had built (884-861 B.C.) on the ruins of an ancient structure (dating from Shalmaneser I, the founder of Calah, _circa_ 1300 B.C.?); the central palace, probably built by Asshurnazirpal’s successor, Shalmaneser II (a predecessor of the biblical Shalmaneser), where was found the famous black obelisk; and lastly, Esarhaddon’s once magnificent southwestern palace (681-669 B.C.). The northwestern palace yielded the richest spoil: it was also far better preserved than the contents of Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad, where Botta had made his excavations. As Sir Stratford Canning had presented the British Museum with everything moveable which Layard had discovered and brought to light, even at the end of this first expedition of Layard’s, a collection of Assyrian antiquities (principally bas-reliefs and inscriptions), such as existed nowhere else, was despatched to London. The unwearied energy of the discoverer of Nineveh succeeded in taking it unhurt, first to Bassorah, from whence the valuable freight was forwarded to the ship--truly not the smallest part of the task he had begun so gloriously, and now still more gloriously accomplished.

The period which followed was employed by Layard in summarising the results obtained in a vigorous narrative, furnished with many illustrations, the work called _Nineveh and its Remains_, which was published just as Layard was on the point of going to Assyria for the second time--on this occasion at the expense of the British Museum. The sensation which the book created in England was enormous, and its most important result was that henceforth the government turned its attention to the excavations. So in 1849 Layard was given leave of absence from his diplomatic post at Constantinople for the purpose of making new discoveries on Assyrian soil, and Hormuzd Rassam, who had already been his assistant and happened just then to be in London, was sent after him (also officially).

(Found at Kuyunjik.--Layard)]

If on the first expedition Layard had done little more than explore Nimrud (the ancient Calah), the labours of the second (1849-1851), were on the contrary practically limited to the mounds of ruins of Kuyunjik with Neby Yunus, the site of Nineveh itself. Here Botta had first begun his excavations, but entirely without success, for he had merely caused diggings to be made to the depth of a few feet, and without any method, instead of making his chief object the remains of the platform, on which the buildings he was seeking had been erected. And it was here that Layard, at the end of his first expedition, and after having been obliged to dig twenty feet down, had discovered Sennacherib’s southwestern palace (705-682 B.C.). But the real fruits of this discovery were now the object of the second undertaking. For if in this Layard was still occupied with Nimrud, the work there was only a species of gleaning, the excavations and discoveries in Arban, on the Khabur and in Bavian were, in comparison with the rest, only a short trial-trip, and the main thing still remained the minute investigation and laying bare of the great southwestern palace in Kuyunjik. It was not till this was finished that he employed the rest of his time and money in a visit to Babylonia (at the end of 1850), of which, however, Layard himself says “that they (_i.e._ the discoveries amongst the ruins of ancient Babylon) were far fewer and of far less importance than he had expected”; he also gave the first exact description of the mounds of Niffer, the ancient Nippur, southeast of Babylon. All his experiences and all the results of this second expedition were set down by Layard in the _Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon_, a work, seven hundred pages in length and with many illustrations, besides plans and maps, which appeared in London as early as the beginning of the year 1853.

This popular book had, like the former one, a prodigious success, and was shortly after translated into German; as a supplement to it Layard’s great publications were announced, namely, that magnificent work, the _Monuments of Nineveh_, and a volume of inscriptions which was the forerunner to the great work on inscriptions published by the British Museum in five volumes (1861-1884).

But to return to Layard’s excavations which he resumed in the middle of October, 1849, at the place where he had interrupted them two years before. It is simply impossible within a short space to give a clear idea of what Layard and his workmen, assisted by Hormuzd Rassam, brought to light before the middle of the year 1850 in that southwestern palace of Sennacherib which Asshurbanapal restored. Any one who would form a clear idea of it must peruse Layard’s magnificent descriptions of it for himself. Assyrian antiquity rose from the earth and grew more and more distinct, and so intelligible was the language of the hundreds of bas-reliefs, that, even without understanding the inscriptions, every one was in a position to construct for himself a tolerably clear picture of the manners and customs, the life and occupations, in short, the whole civilisation of the ancient Assyrians, and this merely from the illustrations in Layard’s two popular books. But the most important discovery made in this palace, indeed the most important in its results of all the Assyrian excavations, was the remains of a regular library of thousands of clay tablets, which were heaped up in two chambers, covering the floor a foot thick. These the restorer of the palace, the accomplished king Asshurbanapal (668 B.C., the Sardanapalus of the Greeks, and Asnapper of the Bible) had had collected, and had deposited them, partly here, partly (probably in duplicate) in other palaces, as in particular in the northern palace, which was also in Kuyunjik, and was discovered by Rassam. The tablets of gray and yellow clay found in the so-called Lion Room of Asshurbanapal’s northern palace, were in most cases broken into smaller or larger fragments, probably because in the general ruin they had fallen down from the upper story into the space in which they covered the ground; many, however, were still whole. Of course only later investigation could succeed in bringing the broken fragments together again, and then only partially; one of these tablets, restored by piecing together sixteen fragments, gives the Babylonian story of the Flood, which George Smith successfully recognised from amongst the thousands of scattered fragments; the reader will appreciate the condition in which most of these clay book-pages (to use a paradoxical expression) have come down to us. The size of the tablets seldom exceeds nine by six and a half inches; but many, especially tablets containing contracts, were considerably smaller. The greater number bore the inscription, “Series of tablets …, tablet number …; Palace of Asshurbanapal, king of the universe, king of Assyria …,” after which came a series of phrases, mostly stereotyped, which indicates the tablet in question as belonging to the library of Asshurbanapal, the great collector of ancient Babylonian literature in Assyrian character. In the restored tablet of the Flood, the place of the signature is clearly recognisable on the first of the columns; it is the last of the columns, for they are always to be counted from right to left (instead of from left to right). But especially clear to the eye of a layman is the addition to the signature, which represents a kind of library mark, unlike that of the specially prized Ishtar hymn in two languages (S. M. 954, British Museum); the latter differs somewhat from the ordinary tenor of these signatures, inasmuch as a whole genealogy is put, instead of the sentence usual elsewhere; translated literally it runs:

“(series:) ir shimma dimmir Ninna.”--Complaint to the goddess
Ishtar.

(The usual number of the tablet is not placed here.)

He has written and engraved it like its original.

“Palace of Asshurbanapal, king of Assyria,
Son of Esarhaddon, king of the universe, king of Assyria, ruler
of Babylon,
King of Sumer and Accad, king of the kings of Ethiopia and Egypt,
King of the four regions, son of Sennacherib,
King of the universe, king of Assyria, who puts his trust in the
god Asshur and the goddess Ninlil, in Nabu and Tashmit.
May the god Nabu be thy guide!”

In general, however, these signatures ran as follows:

(The first word of the tablet following.)

“Xth tablet (of the series beginning thus:).…

“Palace of Asshurbanapal, the king of the universe, the king of
Assyria, to whom Nabu and Tashmit had given ear, who took clear
eyes for the preparation (?) of the writing of tablets, whilst
under the kings my predecessors nothing of the kind (nin shipru
shu’ atu) was attempted--the wisdom of Nabu, (tikip santakki), a
fullness of beauty, did I write, arrange, and engrave on tablets;
to see and read it I placed it in my palace.”

After which, in some examples, there follows:

“May the light of Asshur, the king of the gods, be thy guide!
Whosoever shall write his name by my name,
May Asshur and Ninlil (Beltis) destroy him and root his name and
his seed out of the land!”

The contents of the tablets in which Asshurbanapal caused the wisdom of the god Nabu (identified by the ancients with Mercury) to be written of in this fashion, were varied to an extent scarcely conceivable. They contained the primitive spells and formulas for oaths of the people of Sumer, as well as the somewhat later hymns to the gods, and penitential psalms of the Accadian population of northern Babylonia, almost all of them with interlinear translations into the Semitic language of ancient Babylon; also legends of Semitic character and epic poems almost as old as the Accadian hymns; astronomical and astrological texts; historical inscriptions (as, for instance, those of Agum-kakrime and the ancient Sargon); chronological lists, calendars, and a great deal besides; all of which was collected by Asshurbanapal and by him handed down to posterity. It is hard to say in what direction the literary pieces thus preserved fail to cast a light on the ancient Babylonians into whose cultivation the Assyrians were, indeed, once initiated, and to whom they were in all essentials indebted for their own; it is certain that we should now be acquainted with no single one of those primitive magic verses, had not Asshurbanapal had them written out afresh. And what should we know of the Sumerians and Accadians without these songs? But this is not enough. A great part of the Asshurbanapal library consists of philosophical aids to the knowledge and acquisition of the Sumerio-Accadian language, as well as of the Semitic Assyrio-Babylonian, and to the writing (the so-called syllabary) as well as to the spoken language; these aids include vocabularies, grammatical paradigms, and even collections of phrases in two languages.

Whilst Layard was exploring the southwestern palace at Kuyunjik, adding undreamt-of treasures to those acquired in his first expedition to the country, and finding quantities of new cuneiform texts of the so-called third species of the Assyrian genus, so that he seemed to have been the first to gather the materials for the deciphering of this kind of cuneiform writing, it had been already completed, at least in the main, by the labours of Saulcy (1849) and, above all, by those of Henry Rawlinson (1847-1851). Layard’s book, _Nineveh and its Remains_, which appeared in 1849, had already introduced us into the midst of Assyrian antiquity, although the inscriptions which accompanied the sculptures could not yet give us any further information elucidating them. But in the _Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon_, which appeared in the beginning of 1853, we already find the correct interpretation of several Assyrian names of kings, countries, towns, and gods, and even the correct rendering of the substance of connected historical inscriptions, which Layard owed to the information communicated in the interval by Henry Rawlinson and the Irishman, E. Hincks, who had also brought great acuteness to bear on this department of study. The numerous fresh historical documents which Layard brought with him could not have appeared at a more favourable time; above all, the first of the chests containing Asshurbanapal’s library could not have entered London at a better moment. For, once a basis was established for the reading of the cuneiform writing of the Babylonian and Assyrian languages, all that was needed to advance along the path so successfully entered upon was new texts, and these now began to flow in, in abundance.[c]

(Found at Nimrud.--Layard)]

LATER DISCOVERIES IN BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA

The work of exploration rested entirely between the years 1855 and 1872. Great progress was made, however, in the decipherment of inscriptions and the popularisation of the results, and the mind of the public was prepared to appreciate the greatness of the work that was to follow.

The importance of George Smith’s decipherment in 1872 of the Babylonian story of the Deluge was at once recognised, and led to his being sent to Nineveh in January, 1873, under the auspices of the _Daily Telegraph_. As soon as he had discovered some further fragments of the deluge story, however, the newspaper was satisfied, and he was recalled. On a second expedition, sent out in the same year by the British Museum, Smith made no startling discoveries. Smith’s work, while small in amount when compared with that of the early explorers, brought to light much valuable material, and aroused great enthusiasm in England. The British Museum sent him on a third expedition in 1876; but he was prevented from making any excavations, and died of fever on his way back.

The next expedition, that of Hormuzd Rassam in 1877, resulted, among other things, in the identification of the site of Sippar, and the discovery of numerous interesting inscriptions and of some beautifully ornamented inscribed bronze plates that had adorned the gates of the palace of Shalmaneser II.

In this same year, 1877, M. Ernest de Sarzec, then just appointed French consul at Bassorah on the Persian Gulf, began that series of brilliant explorations which he has carried on more or less continuously ever since. His enthusiasm for archæological research was backed by an extensive knowledge of the conditions of the country, and his efforts were rewarded with an unusual degree of success from the very start.

The first four years were devoted to an extensive and systematic excavation of Telloh, a great mound about five miles from the Shatt-el-khai, in southern Babylonia, and now identified with the ancient Shirpurla. The first season was marked by the discovery of two large terra-cotta cylinders, twenty-four inches long and twelve in diameter. The inscriptions on these cylinders, which contained fully two thousand lines each, were the longest then known from an early period. By the end of the four seasons of work a great temple had been uncovered, one hundred and seventy-five by one hundred feet in dimensions, and built on a mound from sixteen to twenty feet high. The bricks of the outer wall, which was five feet thick, were one foot square and bore the name Gudea. The objects found in the interior of the temple have proved very important to early Babylonian history. One room contained eight statues of an early period, all headless, however, having been mutilated by barbarians of a later time.

Scarcely less important was De Sarzec’s discovery in 1894 of a chamber in which were found thirty thousand tablets. While a considerable proportion of them were religious documents, most of these tablets were commercial, agricultural, and industrial archives.

The Louvre has profited greatly by the work of De Sarzec, for a large part of his discoveries has found its way thither.

The American expeditions have been among the most successful ones in this field. The Wolfe expedition of 1884-1885--so called from Miss Catherine Lorillard Wolfe, who defrayed its expenses--confined its work to a thorough exploration of the whole field, not only visiting the sites of previous excavations, but examining many new mounds as well. The succeeding expeditions have been sent out under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. The first one, in 1888-1889, under the direction of Dr. John P. Peters, with Professors H. V. Hilprecht and R. F. Harper as Assyriologists, began excavations at Niffer, the site of ancient Nippur. They had many difficulties with native tribes and Turkish officials, but succeeded in making a trigonometrical survey of all the mounds and obtaining a great number of antiquities of all sorts. Dr. Peters, however, modestly characterises the expedition as “more or less of a failure.”

In 1890 work was begun again. Thousands of tablets and various kinds of objects were obtained, and were all sent to the Imperial Museum at Constantinople. Professor Hilprecht was sent to Constantinople to catalogue the finds. He did the work with great skill and tact, and the Sultan repaid the University of Pennsylvania for his services by the gift of a large part of the collection.

The third expedition was sent out in 1893 under the direction of Mr. J. H. Haynes, who had been the business manager of the first two. With a single brief interruption of two months in 1894 he carried on the work steadily until 1896, accomplishing what no European had ever ventured to attempt before. This expedition and the fourth one, which set out under Haynes in 1899 and was joined by Hilprecht in 1900, procured many thousands of tablets and antiquities of other kinds. These finds have enriched the store of Babylonian literature with vast quantities of texts, religious, commercial, and historical.

The first German expedition, in 1897, like the first American, simply explored Babylonia and Assyria. Then in 1899 Dr. Robert Koldewey, who had been a member of the first expedition, accompanied by Dr. Bruno Meissner, went out under the auspices of the German Orient Society. They went to work at the mound of El-Kasr, Babylon, which covers the remains of the palace of Nebuchadrezzar. Their first success was in the finding of a new Hittite inscription and many tablets of the Neo-Babylonian period. Great results may be expected from their future work.

The Turks, themselves, have naturally the best opportunity for carrying on the work of exploration, for they can count upon the support instead of the opposition of the officials, and can keep the natives under control. Thus far one expedition has been sent out. It was under the direction of Father Scheil, a distinguished Assyriologist, a French Dominican. Its complete success shows that if the Turkish government can once be aroused to the importance of the work, greater discoveries may be expected.

One of the most important discoveries of cuneiform inscriptions was made at Tel-el-Amarna in Egypt in 1888. From these tablets, which are letters and despatches of Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV and of many monarchs of western Asia, much valuable chronological material has been obtained, as well as much light upon social relations.

The great discoveries of the past thirty years are but an inspiration to further exploration. The work is bound to be carried on until the buried cities have been completely brought to light again.[ad]

THE RESULTS OF THE EXCAVATIONS

We have followed the story of the excavations in Babylonia and Assyria with some detail because of the unique character of the record. It remains now to examine the results of these excavations in their bearings upon the story of history. For, of course, it is the material supplied by the workers in this field rather than the work itself which has pertinence in the present connection.

Great numbers of historical documents have been restored to us, sufficing, as has already been suggested, to rebuild the history of the all but forgotten nations. Such historical documents as are not to be found in connection with Greece or Rome, or even of the civilisation of the Middle Ages down to about the tenth century A.D., are supplied us from the ruins of the Babylonian and Assyrian cities. These documents, as already pointed out, are in the form of inscriptions on fragments of brick. These inscriptions, in an altogether unknown character, were at first enigmatic, but oriental scholarship soon availed to decipher them. The story of this decipherment must be outlined here for comparison with the account of the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, which has already been presented. In no other cases except these two has the historian been called upon to deal with a great mass of documents written in an absolutely dead language. It must be remembered that the so-called dead languages of the classical world were never really forgotten. All through the Middle Ages there were numberless scholars who had an expert knowledge of Greek and Latin. Indeed, these languages were the current medium of scholarly intercourse throughout the dark ages. But the Babylonian and Assyrian languages, like the Egyptian, were dead in the fullest significance of the term; that is to say, they were utterly unknown to any human being for a period of more than two thousand years. Their restoration was one of the marvels of nineteenth-century scholarship; and while the details of this feat of scholarship do not properly come within the province of the historian in the narrower sense, they have such universal interest that we shall do well to present at least their outline here.

Before turning to the story of decipherment, however, it will be well to gain an idea as to the number and the variety and character of the historical documents in question. And perhaps the best way to do this will be to take a glance at the contents of the Assyrian collections in the British Museum, giving particular attention to the marvellous library of King Asshurbanapal, one of the last of the great rulers of Assyria--a remarkable collection of books, the discovery of which has been already referred to in the previous section. Nothing could give one a more vivid realisation of the character of this ancient oriental civilisation than the most casual glance at the sample books from this old library. Having inspected, however casually, this marvellous set of documents, one is prepared to take up the chronological history of the Babylonians and the Assyrians with a fresh interest based upon the comprehension that this people, so long regarded as scarcely more than mythical, possessed a civilisation strangely comparable in many essential features to the civilisation of our own time.[a]

TREASURES FROM NINEVEH

The most casual wanderer in the British Museum can hardly fail to notice two pairs of massive sculptures, in the one case winged bulls, in the other, winged lions, both human-headed, which guard the entrance to the Egyptian hall, close to the Rosetta stone. Each pair of these weird creatures once guarded an entrance to the palace of a king in the famous city of Nineveh. As one stands before them his mind is carried back over some twenty-seven intervening centuries, to the days when the “Cedar of Lebanon” was “fair in his greatness” and the scourge of Israel. A wave of emotion sweeps over one when he first sees them, and Byron’s stirring lines, reminiscent of school-day oratory, ring in the memory:

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold,
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

The Assyrian! The ruler of Nineveh! For two thousand five hundred years he was only a name and a memory; yet here stand great monuments to testify to the reality of his sometime greatness.

These huge lions are pertinent in the present connection because of the inscriptions that are graven across their pedestals. A glance reveals the strange characters in which these records are written, graven neatly in straight lines across the stone, and looking, to casual inspection, like nothing else so much as random flights of arrow-heads. The resemblance is so striking that this is sometimes called the arrow-headed character, though it is more generally known as the wedge or cuneiform character. A strange writing this. It seems almost incredible that it can really be susceptible of interpretation and translation into a modern language. And, indeed, the feat of interpreting it was one of the greatest achievements of nineteenth-century scholarship; but of this we shall have more to say in a moment.

But importance aside, what an interest must now attach to objects with such a history as belongs to these! The very sculptures before us, for example, were perhaps seen by Jonah when he made that famous voyage to Nineveh some seven or eight hundred years B.C. A little later the Babylonian and the Mede revolted from Assyrian tyranny, and descended upon the fair city of Nineveh, and almost literally levelled it to the ground. But these great sculptures, among other things, escaped destruction, and at once hidden and preserved by the accumulating débris of the centuries, they stood there age after age, their very existence quite forgotten. When Xenophon marched past their site with the ill-starred Expedition of the Ten Thousand, in the year 400 B.C., he saw only a mound which seemed to mark the site of some ancient ruin; but so ephemeral is fame that the Greek did not suspect that he looked upon the site of that city which only two centuries before had been the mistress of the world.

So ephemeral is fame! And yet the moral scarcely holds in the sequel; for we of to-day, in this new, undreamed-of Western world, behold these mementoes of Assyrian greatness, fresh from their twenty-five hundred years of entombment, and with them records which restore to us the history of that long-forgotten people in such detail as it was not known to any previous generation since the fall of Nineveh. For two thousand five hundred years no one saw these treasures or knew that they existed. One hundred generations of men came and went without once pronouncing the names of Kings Asshurnazirpal or Asshurbanapal. And to-day, after centuries of oblivion, these names are restored to history, and, thanks to the character of their monuments, are assured a permanency of fame that can almost defy time itself. It would be nothing strange, but rather in keeping with their previous mutations of fortune, if the names of Asshurnazirpal and Asshurbanapal should be familiar household words to future generations that have forgotten the existence of an Alexander, a Cæsar, and a Napoleon. For when Macaulay’s prospective New Zealander explores the ruins of the British Museum, the records of the ancient Assyrians will presumably be there unscathed, to tell their story as they have told it to our generation, although every manuscript and printed book may have gone the way of fragile textures.

But the past of the Assyrian sculptures is quite necromantic enough without conjuring for them a necromantic future. The story of their restoration is like a brilliant romance of history. Prior to the middle of the nineteenth century the inquiring student could learn in an hour or so all that was known in fact and in fable of the renowned city of Nineveh. He had but to read a few chapters of the Bible and a few pages of Diodorus to exhaust the important literature of the subject. If he turned also to the pages of Herodotus and Xenophon, of Justin and Ælianus, these served chiefly to confirm the suspicion that the Greeks themselves knew almost nothing more of the history of their famed oriental forerunners.

The current fables told of a first king Ninus and his wonderful queen, Semiramis; of Sennacherib, the conqueror; of the effeminate Sardanapalus, who neglected the warlike ways of his ancestors, but perished gloriously at the last, with Nineveh itself, in a self-imposed holocaust. And that was all. How much of this was history, how much myth, no man could say; and for all any one suspected to the contrary, no man could ever know. And to-day the contemporary records of the city are before us in such profusion as no other nation of antiquity, save Egypt alone, can at all rival. Whole libraries of Babylonian documents are at hand that were written twenty or even thirty centuries before our era. These, be it understood, are the original books themselves, not copies. The author of that remote time speaks to us directly, hand to eye, without intermediary transcriber. And there is not a line of any Hebrew or Greek inscriptions of a like age that has been preserved to us; there is little enough that can match these ancient books by a thousand years. When one reads of Moses or Isaiah, Homer, Hesiod, or Herodotus, he is but following the transcription--often unquestionably faulty, and probably never in all parts perfect--of successive copyists of later generations. The oldest known copy of the Bible, for example, dates from the fourth century A.D.--1000 years after the last Assyrian records were made, and read, and buried, and forgotten.

As to the earlier Mesopotamian records, they date back some 5000--perhaps 7000--years B.C.: at least 1000 years before the period assigned by Archbishop Usher’s long-accepted _Chronology_ for the creation of the world itself. Solomon, who lived about 1000 B.C., is accredited with the declaration that “of the making of many books there is no end.” Modern exegesists tell us that it was not Solomon, but a later Alexandrian interloper, who actually coined the phrase; but nevertheless it appears that the saying would have been perfectly intelligible, in Mesopotamia, not merely to Solomon’s contemporaries, but to generations that lived long before the Jewish nation, as such, came into existence. At all events, there was at least one king of Assyria--namely, Asshurbanapal--who lived only a few generations after Solomon, and whose palace boasted a library of some 10,000 volumes--a library, if you please, in which the books were numbered and shelved systematically, and classified, and cared for by an official librarian. From this library, records have come to us during the past half-century that have reconstructed the history of Asiatic antiquity.

If you would care to see some of these strange documents, you have but a little way to go from the site of the winged lion here in the British Museum. Meantime, there are other sculptures here which you can hardly pass unnoticed. As we pass the human-headed lions and enter the hall of Asshurnazirpal, we shall see other evidences of Assyrian greatness that might easily lead our thoughts astray from the writing. Here, forming the wall, are bas-reliefs on which the famous scene of the lion hunt is shown; a little farther on are all manner of war scenes; and there some domestic incidents, the making of bread or a like comestible, and its baking in an oven; and there again is the interior of a stable with a man gravely grooming a horse much as it might be done in any stable to-day.

All these must not be allowed to distract our attention, for these graphic illustrations have nothing directly to do with writing. Here, however, at the end of the hall, are some other bas-reliefs more pertinent to our present inquiry. That winged god, for example, carrying a fawn, has a fine flight of arrows across the background and figures alike, differing in the latter regard from the lion we have just left. In the hall just beyond are some illustrations of a different combination of picture and text. Here is the famous obelisk of Shalmaneser, which, like all the things thus far noted in the Assyrian collection, was found by Sir Henry Layard at Nineveh. It is virtually an illustrated book, telling in word and text of the conquest of many countries by King Shalmaneser II.

The figures of the upper row report the payment of tribute by “Sua of Gilzani, who brought silver, gold, lead, vessels of copper, horses, and dromedaries.” It will be observed, of course, that only one side of the obelisk is here shown. The other three sides in each case depict other phases of the payment of the tribute by the same conquered enemy. The second tier of figures is of peculiar interest, because it shows the payment of tribute by “Yaua, the son of Khumri.” This is, as the Bible student interprets it, “Jehu, the son of Omri.” The conquered Israelite brings “silver and gold, lead and bowls, dishes, cups, and other vessels of gold,” and the forms of these vessels, as well as the costumes of the Hebrews themselves, are well shown in the illustrations. The third row of figures represents the “payment of the tribute of the land of Musri, consisting of dromedaries, buffaloes, elephants, apes, and other animals.” The grotesque figures of the alleged apes, with their altogether human heads, are suggestive as showing how these strange foreign animals appealed to the imagination of the Assyrian artist, causing him to depart from that fine realism which he brought to bear upon the delineation of more familiar animals. The fourth set of pictures shows the payment of tribute of the land of Sukhi, and the fifth a not dissimilar tribute from the country of Patin. The inscriptions at the top and base of the obelisk give details of the conquests, recording among other things how Shalmaneser captured 1121 chariots and 470 battle horses and the whole camp of Hazael, king of Damascus.

Perhaps the most curious example of economy of material in a makeshift book that the Assyrian collection at the British Museum has to show, is illustrated in the figure of the god Nabu, which forms part of the Nineveh collection, and which stands in the hall just beyond the obelisk of Shalmaneser. Here, as a glance at the illustration will show, the skirt of the robe of the human figure is used as a ground for an elaborate inscription. The effect is rather decorative and distinctly unique. This figure has the further interest of affording an illustration of what the Assyrian artist could do when he adopted the expedient, for him unusual, of working in the round. The great masterpieces of Assyrian art were modelled in bas-relief. Occasionally, however, the artist attempted the full figure, as in the present case; but it can hardly be claimed that the success of this is at all comparable with that attained by the other method. There are low reliefs in the hunting scenes contained in the dining-hall of Asshurbanapal, as represented here in the British Museum, that are real works of art. The wounded lioness dragging her haunches, the hunted goats, the pacing wild asses, are veritable masterpieces. No such claim can be made for the god Nabu or for any other full statue that the excavations of Nineveh have revealed. But on the other hand the texture of the skirt of this god gives it an abiding interest of a unique character.

A further interest attaches to this statue, as to many others of the Assyrian monuments, because of its bearing upon the religion of that famous people. Until the discovery of these long-buried monuments, practically all that was known of the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians was contained in the pages of Herodotus. Strange tales he tells of what he saw in the temples of Babylon, where, as he alleges, all the women of the city, of whatever class or rank, were obliged at least once in a lifetime to prostitute themselves for hire. The inscriptions on the monuments tell us nothing of such practical phases of worship as this, but they do show that the Assyrians were an intensely religious people, closely comparable in that regard to their cousins the Hebrews. Their religion, too, it would appear, was of that firmly grasped self-sufficient kind which puts aside all doubt; which assumes as a primordial fact that one’s own view is right; that one’s gods are the only true gods, and that all the outside world must be regarded as one’s proper prey. A further illustration of this phase of the subject will claim our attention when we come to examine the religious writings of the Assyrians a little more in detail.

(Now in the British Museum)]