FOOTNOTES:

27.—WINGED BULL. (Perrot and Chipiez.)27.—WINGED BULL.(Perrot and Chipiez.)

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

20. It is a curious fact that in Assyria the ruins speak to us only of the living, and that of the dead there are no traces whatever. One might think people never died there at all. Yet it is well known that all nations have bestowed as much care on the interment of their dead and the adornment of their last resting-place as on the construction of their dwellings—nay, some even more, for instance, the Egyptians. To this loving veneration for the dead history owes half its discoveries; indeed we should have almost no reliable information at all on the very oldest races, who lived before the invention of writing, were it not for their tombs and the things we find in them. It is very strange, therefore, that nothing of the kind should be found in Assyria, a country which stood so high in culture. For the sepulchres which are found in such numbers in some mounds down to a certain depth, belong, as is shown by their very position, to later races, mostly even to the modern Turks and Arabs. This peculiarity is so puzzling that scholars almost incline to suppose that the Assyrians either made away with their dead in some manner unknown to us, or else took them somewhere to bury. The latter conjecture, though not entirely devoid of foundation, as we shall see, is unsupported by any positive facts, and therefore was never seriously discussed. Thequestion is simply left open, until something happens to shed light on it.

28.—MAN-LION. (Perrot and Chipiez.)28.—MAN-LION.(Perrot and Chipiez.)

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

21. It is just the contrary in Babylonia. It can boast few handsome ruins or sculptures. The platforms and main walls of many palaces and temples have been known from the names stamped on the bricks and the cylinders found in the foundations, but they present only shapeless masses, from which all traces of artistic work have disappeared. In compensation, there is no country in the world where so many and such vast cemeteries have been discovered. It appears that the land of Chaldea,—perhaps because it was the cradle of nations which afterwards grew to greatness, as the Assyrians and the Hebrews—was regarded as a place of peculiar holiness by its own inhabitants, and probably also by neighboring countries, which would explain the mania that seems to have prevailed through so many ages, for burying the dead there in unheard of numbers. Strangely enough, some portions of it even now are held sacred in the same sense. There are shrines in Kerbela and Nedjif (somewhat to the west of Babylon) where every caravan of pilgrims brings from Persia hundreds of dead bodies in their felt-covered coffins, for burial. They are brought on camels and horses. On each side of the animal swings a coffin, unceremoniously thumped by the rider's bare heels. These coffins are, like merchandise, unladen for the night—and sometimes for days too—in the khans or caravanseries (the enclosed halting-places), where men and beasts take their rest together. Under that tropical clime, it is easyto imagine the results. It is in part to this disgusting custom that the great mortality in the caravans is to be attributed, one fifth of which leave their bones in the desert inhealthyseasons. However that may be, the gigantic proportions of the Chaldean burying-grounds struck even the ancient Greek travellers with astonishment, and some of them positively asserted that the Assyrian kings used to be buried in Chaldea. If the kings, why not the nobler and wealthier of their subjects? The transport down the rivers presented no difficulties. Still, as already remarked, all this is mere conjecture.

29.—FRAGMENT OF ENAMELLED BRICK.(Perrot and Chipiez.)29.—FRAGMENT OF ENAMELLED BRICK.(Perrot and Chipiez.)

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

22. Among the Chaldeans citiesErech(nowWarka) was considered from very old times one of the holiest. It had many extremely ancient temples and a college of learned priests, and around it gradually formed an immense "city of the dead" or Necropolis. The English explorer, Loftus, in 1854-5, specially turned his attention to it and his account is astounding. First of all, he was struck by the majestic desolation of the place. Warka and a few other mounds are raised on a slightly elevated tract of the desert, above the level of the yearly inundations, and accessible only from November to March, as all the rest of the time the surrounding plain is either a lake or a swamp. "The desolation and solitude of Warka," says Loftus, "are even more striking than the scene which is presented at Babylon itself. There is no life for miles around. No river glides in grandeur at the base of its mounds; no green date groves flourish near its ruins. The jackal and the hyæna appear to shun the dull aspect of its tombs. The king of birds never hovers over the deserted waste. A blade of grass or an insect finds no existence there. The shrivelled lichen alone, clinging to the weathered surface of the broken brick, seems to glory in its universal dominion over those barren walls. Of all the desolate pictures I have ever seen that of Warka incomparably surpasses all." Surely in this case it cannot be said that appearances are deceitful; for all that space, and much more, is a cemetery, and what a cemetery! "It is difficult," again says Loftus, "to convey anything like a correct idea of the piles upon piles of human remains which there utterly astound thebeholder. Excepting only the triangular space between the three principal ruins, the whole remainder of the platform, the whole space between the walls and an unknown extent of desert beyond them, are everywhere filled with the bones and sepulchres of the dead. There is probably no other site in the world which can compare with Warka in this respect." It must be added that the coffins do not simply lie one next to the other, but in layers, down to a depth of 30-60 feet. Different epochs show different modes of burial, among which the following four are the most remarkable.

30.—RAM'S HEAD IN ALABASTER. (British Museum.)30.—RAM'S HEAD IN ALABASTER.(British Museum.)

(British Museum.)

31.—EBONY COMB. (Perrot and Chipiez.)31.—EBONY COMB.(Perrot and Chipiez.)

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

32.—BRONZE FORK AND SPOON. (Perrot and Chipiez.)32.—BRONZE FORK AND SPOON.(Perrot and Chipiez.)

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

23. Perhaps the queerest coffin shape of all is that composed of two earthen jars (aandb), which accurately fit together, or one slightly fits into the other, the juncture being made air-tight by a coating of bitumen (d,d). The body can be placed in such a coffin only with slightly bent knees. At one end (c) there is an air-hole, left for the escape of the gases which form during the decomposition of the body and which might otherwise burst the jars—a precaution probably suggested by experience (fig. 36). Sometimes there is only one jar of much larger size, but of the same shape, with a similar cover, also made fast with bitumen, or else the mouth is closed with bricks. This is an essentially national mode of burial, perhaps the most ancient of all, yet it remained in use to a very late period. It is to be noted that this is the exact shape of the water jars now carried about the streets of Baghdad and familiar to every traveller.

33.—ARMENIAN LOUVRE. (Botta.)33.—ARMENIAN LOUVRE.(Botta.)

(Botta.)

24. Not much less original is the so-called "dish-cover coffin," also very ancient and national. The illustrations sufficiently show its shape and arrangement.[Q]In these coffins two skeletons are sometimes found, showing that when a widow or widower died, it was opened, to lay the newly dead by the side of the one who had gone before. The cover is all of one piece—a very respectable achievement of the potter's art. In Mugheir (ancient Ur), a mound was found, entirely filled with this kind of coffins.

34.—VAULTED DRAINS. (KHORSABAD.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)34.—VAULTED DRAINS. (KHORSABAD.)(Perrot and Chipiez.)

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

35.—VAULTED DRAIN. (KHORSABAD.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)35.—VAULTED DRAIN. (KHORSABAD.)(Perrot and Chipiez.)

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

25. Much more elaborate, and consequently, probably reserved for the noble and wealthy, is the sepulchral vault in brick, of nearly a man's height.[R]In these sepulchres, as in the preceding ones, the skeleton is always found lying in the same position, evidently dictated by some religious ideas. The head is pillowed on a large brick, commonly covered with a piece of stuff or a rug. In the tattered rags which sometimes still exist, costly embroideries and fringed golden tissue have more than once been recognized, while some female skeletons still showed handsome heads of hair gathered into fine nets. The body lies on a reed mat, on its left side, the right hand stretched out so as to reach with the tips of the fingers a bowl, generally of copper or bronze, and sometimes of fine workmanship, usually placed on the palm of the left hand. Around are placed various articles—dishes, in some of which remnants of food are found, such as date stones,—jars for water, lamps, etc. Some skeletons wear gold and silver bangles on their wrists and ankles. These vaults were evidently family sepulchres, for several skeletons are generally found in them; in one there were no less than eleven. (Fig.39, p. 89.)

36.—CHALDEAN JAR-COFFIN. (Taylor.)36.—CHALDEAN JAR-COFFIN.(Taylor.)

(Taylor.)

26. All these modes of burial are very old and peculiarly Chaldean. But there is still another, which belongs to more recent times, even as late as the first centuries after Christ, and was used by a different and foreign race, the Parthians, one of those who came in turns and conquered the country, stayed there awhile, then disappeared. These coffins are, from their curious form, known under the name of "slipper-shaped." They are glazed, green on the outside and blue on the inside, but of very inferior make: poor clay, mixed with straw, and only half baked, therefore very brittle. It is thought that they were put in their place empty, then the body was laid in, the lid put down, and the care of covering them with sand left to the winds. The lid is fastened with the same mortar which is used in the brick masonry surrounding the coffin, where such a receptacle has been made for it; but they more usually lie pell-mell, separated only by thin layers of loose sand. There are mounds which are, as one may say, larded with them: wherever you begin to dig a trench, the narrow ends stick out from both sides. In these coffins also various articles were buried with the dead, sometimes valuable ones. The Arabs know this; they dig in the sand with their hands, break the coffins open with their spears, and grope in them for booty. The consequence is that it is extremely difficult to procure an entire coffin. Loftus succeeded, however, in sending some to the British Museum, having first pasted around them several layers of thick paper, without which precaution they could not have borne the transport.

37.—"DISH-COVER" TOMB AT MUGHEIR. (Taylor.)37.—"DISH-COVER" TOMB AT MUGHEIR.(Taylor.)

(Taylor.)

38.—"DISH-COVER" TOMB. (Taylor.)38.—"DISH-COVER" TOMB.(Taylor.)

(Taylor.)

27. On the whole, the ancient Chaldean sepulchres of the three first kinds are distinguished by greater care and tidiness. They are not only separated by brick partitions on the sides, and also above and below by a thin layer of brick masonry, but the greatest care was taken to protect them against dampness. The sepulchral mounds are pierced through and through, from top to bottom, by drainage pipes or shafts, consisting of a series of rings, solidly joined together with bitumen, about one foot in diameter. These rings are made of baked clay. The top one is shaped somewhat like a funnel, of which the end is inserted in perforated bricks, and which is provided with small holes, to receive any infiltration of moisture. Besides all this the shafts, which are sunk in pairs, are surrounded with broken pottery. How ingenious and practical this system was, we see from the fact that both the coffins and their contents are found in a state of perfect dryness and preservation. (Fig.41, p. 90.)

39.—SEPULCHRAL VAULT AT MUGHEIR. (Taylor.)39.—SEPULCHRAL VAULT AT MUGHEIR.(Taylor.)

(Taylor.)

40.—STONE JARS FROM GRAVES. (LARSAM.) (Hommel.)40.—STONE JARS FROM GRAVES. (LARSAM.)(Hommel.)

(Hommel.)

28. In fact the Chaldeans, if they could not reach such perfection as the Assyrians in slab-sculpture, on account of not having stone either at home or within easy reach, seem to have derived a greater variety of architectural ornaments from that inexhaustible material of theirs—baked clay or terra-cotta. We see an instance of it in remnants—unfortunately very small ones, of some walls belonging to that same city of Erech. On one of the mounds Loftus was puzzled by the large quantity of small terra-cotta cones, whole and in fragments, lying about on the ground. The thick flat end of them was painted red, black or white. What was his amazement when he stumbled on a piece of wall (some seven feet in height and not more than thirtyin length), which showed him what their use had been. They were grouped into a variety of patterns to decorate the entire wall, being stuck with their thin end into a layer of soft clay with which it was coated for the purpose. Still more original and even rather incomprehensible is a wall decoration consisting of several bands, composed each of three rows of small pots or cups—about four inches in diameter—stuck into the soft clay coating in the same manner, with the mouth turned outward of course! Loftus found such a wall, but unfortunately has given no design of it. (Figures43and44.)

41.—DRAIN IN MOUND. (Perrot and Chipiez.)41.—DRAIN IN MOUND.(Perrot and Chipiez.)

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

29. As to the ancient Babylonian, or rather Chaldean, art in sculpture, the last word has by no means been said on that subject. Discoveries crowd in every year, constantly leading to the most unexpected conclusions. Thus, it was long an accepted fact that Assyria had very few statues and Babylonia none at all, when a few years ago (1881),what should a French explorer, Mr. E. De Sarzec, French consul in Basra, bring home but nine magnificent statues made of a dark, nearly black stone as hard as granite, called diorite.[S]Unfortunately they are all headless; but, as though to make up for this mutilation, one head was found separate,—a shaved and turbaned head beautifully preserved and of remarkable workmanship, the very pattern of the turban being plain enough to be reproduced by any modern loom.[T]These large prizes were accompanied by a quantity of small works of art representing both men and animals, of a highly artistic design and some of them of exquisite finish of execution. This astounding find, the result of several years' indefatigable work, now gracing the Assyrian rooms of the Louvre in Paris, comes from one of the Babylonian mounds which had not been opened before, the ruins of a mighty temple at a place now calledTell-Loh, and supposed to be the site ofSir-burla, orSir-gulla, one of the most ancient cities of Chaldea. This "Sarzec-collection," as it has come to be generally called, not only entirely upsets the ideas which had been formed on Old-Chaldean art, but is of immense historical importance from the inscriptions which cover the back of every statue, (not to speak of the cylinders and other small objects,) and which, in connection with the monuments of other ruins, enable scholars to fix, at least approximately, the date at which flourished the city and rulers who have left such extraordinary memorials of their artistic gifts. Some place them at about 4500b.c., others about 4000.However overwhelming such a valuation may be at first sight, it is not an unsupported fancy, but proofs concur from many sides to show that the builders and sculptors of Sir-gulla could in no case have lived and worked much later than 4000b.c.It is impossible to indicate in a few lines all the points, the conjectures, the vexed questions, on which this discovery sheds light more or less directly, more or less decisively; they come up continually as the study of those remote ages proceeds, and it will be years before the materials supplied by the Sarzec-Collection are exhausted in all their bearings.

42.—WALL WITH DESIGNS IN TERRA-COTTA CONES, AT WARKA (ERECH). (Loftus.)42.—WALL WITH DESIGNS IN TERRA-COTTA CONES, AT WARKA (ERECH).(Loftus.)

(Loftus.)

43.—TERRA-COTTA CONE, NATURAL SIZE. (Loftus.)43.—TERRA-COTTA CONE, NATURAL SIZE.(Loftus.)

(Loftus.)

FOOTNOTES:[G]Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 46.[H]Ur of the Chaldees, from which Abraham went forth.[I]Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 349.[J]Figure10.[K]Figure71, p. 281.[L]Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., pp. 317 and 318.[M]See Fig.20, p. 63. There is but one exception, in the case of a recent exploration, during which one solitary broken column-shaft was discovered.[N]G. Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., pp. 467, 468.[O]See Fig.33, p. 83.[P]Figures34and35, p. 84.[Q]Figs.37and38, p. 87.[R]Fig.39, p. 89.[S]See Fig.59, p. 217.[T]See Figs.44and45, p. 101.

[G]Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 46.

[H]Ur of the Chaldees, from which Abraham went forth.

[I]Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 349.

[J]Figure10.

[K]Figure71, p. 281.

[L]Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., pp. 317 and 318.

[M]See Fig.20, p. 63. There is but one exception, in the case of a recent exploration, during which one solitary broken column-shaft was discovered.

[N]G. Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., pp. 467, 468.

[O]See Fig.33, p. 83.

[P]Figures34and35, p. 84.

[Q]Figs.37and38, p. 87.

[R]Fig.39, p. 89.

[S]See Fig.59, p. 217.

[T]See Figs.44and45, p. 101.

IV.

THE BOOK OF THE PAST.—THE LIBRARY OF NINEVEH.

1. When we wish to learn the great deeds of past ages, and of mighty men long dead, we open a book and read. When we wish to leave to the generations who will come long after us a record of the things that were done by ourselves or in our own times, we take pen, ink and paper, and write a book. What we have written is then printed, published in several hundreds—or thousands—of copies, as the case may be, and quickly finds its way to all the countries of the world inhabited by people who are trained from childhood to thought and study. So that we have the satisfaction of knowing that the information which we have labored to preserve will be obtainable any number of years or centuries after we shall have ceased to exist, at no greater trouble than procuring the book from the shelves of a bookstore, a public or a private library. It is all very simple. And there is not a small child who does not perfectly know a book by its looks, and even has not a pretty correct idea of how a book is made and what it is good for.

2. But books are not always of the shape and material so familiar to us. Metal, stone, brick, walls and pillars, nay, the very rocks of nature's own making, can be books, conveying information as plainly as our volumes of paper sheets covered with written or printed lines. It only needs to know how to read them, and the necessary knowledge and skill may be acquired by processes as simple as the art of ordinary reading and writing, though at the cost of a somewhat greater amount of time and pains.

3. There are two natural cravings, which assert themselves strongly in every mind not entirely absorbed by the daily work for bread and by the anxious care how to procure that work: these are the wish, on the one hand, to learn how the people who came before us lived and what they did, on the other—to transmit our own names and the memory of our deeds to those who will come after us. We are not content with our present life; we want to stretch it both backward and forward—to live both in the past and the future, as it were. This curiosity and this ambition are but parts of the longing for immortality which was never absent from any human soul. In our own age they are satisfied mainly by books; indeed they were originally the principal causes why books began to be made at all. And how easy to satisfy these cravings in our time, when writing materials have become as common as food and far cheaper, and reading may be had for nothing or next to nothing! For, a very few dollars will supply a writer with as much paper as he can possibly use up in a year, while the public libraries, the circulating and college libraries and the reading-rooms make study a matter more of love and perseverance than of money.

4. Yet if the papermill and the printing press were the only material aid to our researches into the past, these researches would stop short very soon, seeing that printing was invented in Europe scarce four hundred years ago, and paper has not been manufactured for more than six hundred years at the outside. True, other materials have been used to write on before paper: bark of trees, skins of animals—(parchment)—cunningly worked fibres of plants—(papyrus, byblos)—even wooden tablets covered with a thin layer of wax, on which characters were engraved with a pointed instrument or "style,"—and these contrivances have preserved for us records which reach back many hundreds of years beyond the introduction of paper. But our curiosity, when once aroused, is insatiable, and an area of some twenty, or thirty, or forty centuries seems to it but a narrow field. Looking back as far as that—and no kind of manuscript information takes us much further—we behold the world wondrously like what it is now. With some differences in garb, in manners, and a much greater one in the range of knowledge, we find men living very nearly as we do and enacting very nearly the same scenes: nations live in families clustered within cities, are governed by laws, or ruled by monarchs, carry on commerce and wars, extend their limits by conquest, excel in all sorts of useful and ornamental arts. Only we notice that larger regions are unknown, vaster portions ofthe earth, with their populations, are unexplored, than in our days. The conclusion is clearly forced on us, that so complicated and perfect an organization of public and private life, a condition of society implying so many discoveries and so long a practice in thought and handicraft, could not have been an early stage of existence. Long vistas are dimly visible into a past far vaster than the span as yet laid open to our view, and we long to pierce the tantalizing gloom. There, in that gloom, lurk the beginnings of the races whose high achievements we admire, emulate, and in many ways surpass; there, if we could but send a ray of light into the darkness of ages, we must find the solution of numberless questions which suggest themselves as we go: Whence come those races? What was the earlier history of other races with which we find them contending, treating, trading? When did they learn their arts, their songs, their forms of worship? But here our faithful guide, manuscript literature, forsakes us; we enter on a period when none of the ancient substitutes for paper were yet invented. But then, there were the stones.Theydid not need to be invented—only hewn and smoothed for the chisel.

5. Fortunately for us, men, twenty-five, and forty, and fifty centuries ago, were actuated by the same feelings, the same aspirations as they are now, and of these aspirations, the passionate wish of perpetuating their names and the memory of their deeds has always been one of the most powerful. This wish they connected with and made subservient tothe two things which were great and holy in their eyes: their religion and the power of their kings. So they built, in brick and stone, at an almost incalculable expense of time, human labor and human life, palaces and temples. On these huge piles they lavished treasures untold, as also all the resources of their invention and their skill in art and ornament; they looked on them with exulting pride, not only because they thought them, by their vastness and gorgeousness, fit places for public worship and dwellings worthy of their kings, but because these constructions, in their towering grandeur, their massive solidity, bid fair to defy time and outlast the nations which raised them, and which thus felt assured of leaving behind them traces of their existence, memorials of their greatness. That a few defaced, dismantled, moss-grown or sand-choked fragments of these mighty buildings would one day be theonlytrace, the sole memorial of a rule and of nations that would then have past away forever, even into nothingness and oblivion, scarcely was anticipated by the haughty conquerors who filled those halls with their despotic presence, and entered those consecrated gates in the pomp of triumph to render thanks for bloody victories and warlike exploits which elated their souls in pride till they felt themselves half divine. Nothing doubting but that those walls, those pillars, those gateways would stand down to the latest ages, they confided to them that which was most precious to their ambition, the record of their deeds, the praises of their names, thus using those stony surfaces asso many blank pages, which they covered with row after row of wondrous characters, carefully engraved or chiselled, and even with painted or sculptured representations of their own persons and of the scenes, in war or peace, in which they had been leaders and actors.

6. Thus it is that on all the points of the globe where sometime great and flourishing nations have held their place, then yielded to other nations or to absolute devastation—in Egypt, in India, in Persia, in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, in the sandy, now desert plains of Syria, in the once more populous haunts of ancient Rome and Greece—the traveller meets clusters of great ruins, lofty still in their utter abandonment, with a strange, stern beauty hovering around their weather-beaten, gigantic shafts and cornices, wrapt in the pathetic silence of desolation, and yet not dumb—for their pictured faces eloquently proclaim the tale of buoyant life and action entrusted to them many thousands of years ago. Sometimes, it is a natural rock, cut and smoothed down at a height sufficient to protect it from the wantonly destructive hand of scoffing invaders, on which a king of a deeper turn of thought, more mindful than others of the law which dooms all the works of men to decay, has caused a relation of the principal events of his reign to be engraved in those curious characters which have for centuries been a puzzle and an enigma. Many tombs also, besides the remains of the renowned or wealthy dead, for whom they have been erected at a cost as extravagant and with art aselaborate as the abodes of the living, contain the full description of their inmate's lineage, his life, his habits and pursuits, with prayers and invocations to the divinities of his race and descriptions or portrayed representations of religious ceremonies. Or, the walls of caves, either natural, or cut in the rock for purposes of shelter or concealment, yield to the explorer some more chapters out of the old, old story, in which our interest never slackens. This story man has himself been writing, patiently, laboriously, on every surface on which he could trace words and lines, ever since he has been familiar with the art of expressing his thoughts in visible signs,—and so each such surviving memorial may truly be called a stray leaf, half miraculously preserved to us, out of the great Book of the Past, which it has been the task of scholars through ages, and especially during the last eighty years, to decipher and teach others how to read.

44.—HEAD OF ANCIENT CHALDEAN. FROM TELL-LOH (SIR-GULLA). SARZEC COLLECTION. (Perrot and Chipiez.)44.—HEAD OF ANCIENT CHALDEAN. FROM TELL-LOH (SIR-GULLA). SARZEC COLLECTION.(Perrot and Chipiez.)

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

45.—SAME, PROFILE VIEW.45.—SAME, PROFILE VIEW.

7. Of this venerable book the walls of the Assyrian palaces, with their endless rows of inscriptions, telling year for year through centuries the history of the kings who built them, are so many invaluable pages, while the sculptures which accompany these annals are the illustrations, lending life and reality to what would otherwise be a string of dry and unattractive records. But a greater wonder has been brought to light from amidst the rubbish and dust of twenty-five centuries: a collection of literary and scientific works, of religious treatises, of private and public documents, deposited in rooms constructed on purpose to contain them, arrangedin admirable order, in short—aLibrary. Truly and literally a library, in the sense in which we use the word. Not the only one either, nor the first by many hundred years, although the volumes are of singular make and little like those we are used to.

8. When Layard was at work for the second time amidst the ruins along the Tigris, he devoted much of his labor to the great mound of Koyunjik, in which the remains of two sumptuous palaces were distinctly discerned, one of them the royal residence of Sennacherib, the other that of his grandson Asshurbanipal, who lived some 650 years before Christ—two of the mightiest conquerors and most magnificent sovereigns of the Eastern world. In the latter palace he came upon two comparatively small chambers, the floor of which was entirely littered with fragments—some of considerable size, some very small—of bricks, or rather baked-clay tablets, covered on both sides with cuneiform writing. It was a layer more than a foot in height which must have been formed by the falling in of the upper part of the edifice. The tablets, piled in good order along the walls, perhaps in an upper story—if, as many think, there was one—must have been precipitated promiscuously into the apartment and shattered by the fall. Yet, incredible as it may appear, several were found entire. Layard filled many cases with the fragments and sent them off to the British Museum, fully aware of their probable historical value.

9. There they lay for years, heaped up at random, a mine of treasures which made the mouths of scholars water, but appalled them by the amount of labor, nay, actual drudgery, needful only to sift and sort them, even before any study of their contents could be begun. At length a young and ambitious archæologist, attached to the British Museum, George Smith, undertook the long and wearisome task. He was not originally a scholar, but an engraver, and was employed to engrave on wood cuneiform texts for the magnificent atlas edited by the British Museum under the title of "Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia." Being endowed with a quick and enquiring mind, Smith did not content himself, like most of his colleagues, with a conscientious and artistic, but merely technical reproduction; he wished to knowwhathe was doing and he learned the language of the inscriptions. When he took on himself the sorting of the fragments, it was in the hope of distinguishing himself in this new field, and of rendering a substantial service to the science which had fascinated him. Nor was he deceived in this hope. He succeeded in finding and uniting a large quantity of fragments belonging together, and thus restoring pages of writing, with here and there a damaged line, a word effaced, a broken corner, often a larger portion missing, but still enough left to form continuous and readable texts. In some cases it was found that there was more than one copy of this or that work or document, and then sometimes the parts which were hopelessly injured in one copy, would be found whole or nearly so in another.

10. The results accomplished by this patient mechanical process were something astonishing. And when he at length restored in this manner a series of twelve tablets containing an entire poem of the greatest antiquity and highest interest, the occasion seemed important enough to warrant the enterprising owners of the LondonDaily Telegraphin sending the young student to resume excavations and try to complete some missing links. For of some of the tablets restored by him only portions could be found among the fragments of the British Museum. Of course he made his way straight to the Archive Chambers at Koyunjik, had them opened again and cleared them of another large instalment of their valuable contents, among which he had the inconceivable good fortune to find some of the very pieces which were missing in his collection. Joyfully he returned to England twice with his treasures, and hopefully set out on a third expedition of the same kind. He had reason to feel buoyant; he had already made his name famous by several works which greatly enriched the science he loved, and had he not half a lifetime before him to continue the work which few could do as well? Alas, he little knew that his career was to be cut short suddenly by a loathsome and brutal foe: he died of the plague in Syria, in 1876—just thirty-six years old. He was faithful to the end. His diary, in which he made some entries even within a very few days before his death, shows that at the last, when he knew his danger and was fast losing hope, his mind was equally divided between thoughts of his family and of his work. The following lines,almost the last intelligible ones he wrote, are deeply touching in their simple, single-minded earnestness:—"Not so well. If Doctor present, I should recover, but he has not come, very doubtful case; if fatal farewell to ...My work has been entirely for the science I study....There is a large field of study in my collection. I intended to work it out, but desire now that my antiquities and notes may be thrown open to all students. I have done my duty thoroughly. I do not fear the change but desire to live for my family. Perhaps all may be well yet."—George Smith's death was a great loss, which his brother-scholars of all countries have not ceased to deplore. But the work now proceeds vigorously and skilfully. The precious texts are sorted, pieced, and classified, and a collection of them, carefully selected, is reproduced by the aid of the photographer and the engraver, so that, should the originals ever be lost or destroyed, (not a very probable event), the Museum indeed would lose one of its most precious rarities, but science would lose nothing.

11. An eminent French scholar and assyriologist, Joachim Ménant, has the following picturesque lines in his charming little book "La Bibliothèque du Palais de Ninive": "When we reflect that these records have been traced on a substance which neither fire nor water could destroy, we can easily comprehend how those who wrote them thus thirty or forty centuries ago, believed the monuments of their history to be safe for all future times,—much safer than the frail sheets which printing scatterswith such prodigious fertility.... Of all the nations who have bequeathed to us written records of their past life, we may assert that none has left monuments more imperishable than Assyria and Chaldea. Their number is already considerable; it is daily increased by new discoveries. It is not possible to foresee what the future has in store for us in this respect; but we can even now make a valuation of the entire material which we possess.... The number of the tablets from the Nineveh Library alone passes ten thousand.... If we compare these texts with those left us by other nations, we can easily become convinced that the history of the Assyro-Chaldean civilization will soon be one of the best known of antiquity. It has a powerful attraction for us, for we know that the life of the Jewish people is mixed up with the history of Nineveh and Babylon...."

46.—CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION. (ARCHAIC CHARACTERS.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)46.—CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION. (ARCHAIC CHARACTERS.)(Perrot and Chipiez.)

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

12. It will be seen from this that throughout the following pages we shall continually have to refer to the contents of Asshurbanipal's royal library. We must therefore dispense in this place with any details concerning the books, more than a general survey of the subjects they treated. Of these, religion and science were the chief. Under "science" we must understand principally mathematics and astronomy, two branches in which the old Chaldeans reached great perfection and left us many of our own most fundamental notions and practices, as we shall see later on. Among the scientific works must also be counted those on astrology, i.e., on the influence which the heavenly bodies were supposed toexert on the fate of men, according to their positions and combinations, for astrology was considered a real science, not only by the Chaldeans, but by much later nations too; also hand-books of geography, really only lists of the seas, mountains and rivers, nations and cities then known, lastly lists of plants and animals with a very rude and defective attempt at some sort of classification. History is but scantily represented; it appears to have been mostly confined to the great wall inscriptions and some other objects, of which more hereafter. But—what we should least expect—grammars, dictionaries, school reading-books, occupy a prominent place. The reason is that, when this library was founded, the language in which the venerable books of ancient sages were written not only was not spoken any longer, but had for centuries been forgotten by all but the priests and those who made scholarship their chief pursuit, so that it had to be taught in the same way that the so-called "dead languages," Latin and Greek, are taught at our colleges. This was the more necessary as the prayers had to be recited in the old language called the Accadian, that being considered more holy—just as, in Catholic countries, the common people are even now made to learn and say their prayers in Latin, though they understand not a word of the language. The ancient Accadian texts were mostly copied with a modern Assyrian translation, either interlinear or facing it, which has been of immense service to those who now decipher the tablets.

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