The history of the art of writing
Williams, Henry Smith, 1863-1943
**-Yf >Tf&pir>£F SfT^^ 0 ** ^'TT^fT *TX ..tart (srV^ni^T* V- sit oswfrmnw <WT»iJI M'dTT '■' Sf )JTf f«< "-v'dC‘:-:’i OBELISK OF SHALMANESER II. KING OF ASSYRIA. British Museum. Excavated at Nimrud by Sir H. Layard. PLATE 13. STATUE OF THE GOD NEBO, WITH CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION ON THE BODY. 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 Nebo, 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 afford¬ ing 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 Assy¬ rian 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 Ashur- bani-pal, as represented here in the British Museum, that are real works of art. The wounded lioness drag¬ ging her haunches, the hunted goats, the pacing wild asses are veritable masterpieces. No such claim can be made for the God Nebo 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 their 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 noth¬ ing 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 pri¬ mordial 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 re¬ ligious writings of the Assyrians a little more in detail. Plate Description. One ol the two nearly similar statues of the god Nebo, patron deity of science and literature, the mythological inventor of cuneiform inscrip¬ tions, and chief god of the early Babylonians, excavated in 1853 by Mr. Hormuszd Rassam, among the ruins of the temple of Adar at Nimrud (anciently Calah). They are described by Dr. E. A. T. Wallis Budge as follows : " Two statues of the god Nebo excavated by Mr. H. Rassam in the ruins of the temple of Adar at Nimrud. From the inscriptions on the bodies we learn that these statues were made by Bel-tarsi-Iluma, governor of the city of Calah (Nimrud), and were dedicated to the god with the view of insuring a long life to King Rammanu-nirari III., B.c. 812-783, and to the Queen Sammuramat, and to himself. A number of interesting attri¬ butes of the god Nebo are enumerated in the text, which ends with the words: — 'O thou who shalt come after, put thy trust in Nebo, and put not thy trust in any other God.’ Sammuramat is probably the original of the famous Queen Semiramis mentioned by Greek and Roman writers.” The account of the discovery of these statues is given by H. Rassam in his " Asshur and the Land of Nimrod," New York, 1897, 8°, page 10. See also E. Schrader's " Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament," London, 1873, 8°, Vol. 11., page 105, etc. The texts, each of twelve lines inscribed on the skirts of the statues, are printed in Sir H. C. Rawlinson's " Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia," 1861, Vol. I., plate 35 (2). Further information can be had from the article “ Nebo ” by Prof. A. H. Sayce in Hastings' " Dictionary of the Bible." Two places in Syria are named after the god (see Numbers XXXII., 3 ; Deuteronomy XXXII., 49, Isaiah XV., 2, and XLVI., 1). STATUE OF THE GOD NEBO WITH CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION ON THE BODY. British Museum, London. Excavated at Nimrud by Mr. H. Re PLATE 14. COLOSSAL SCULPTURE, WITH ASSYRIAN INSCRIPTION IN CUNEIFORM OR ARROWHEAD CHARACTER. ANOTHER illustration of a curiously Assyrian combination of art and letters is shown in the * sculptured lion that guards the entrance to the next hall. This lion is a memento of the same reign as that human-headed one at the other doorway, but it is very different in workmanship, and clearly the product of another artist. For one thing it is a veritable lion, not a mythical compound beast, except, indeed, that it shares with the other the peculiarity of a fifth leg. Assyrian tastes seem to have required that four legs should be visible from whatever point of view the statue of an animal was regarded ; hence the anomaly. For the rest this gigantic beast shows many points of realistic delineation, and it is artistically full of interest. The head in particular expresses feeling in a most unequivocal way. But the most curious characteristic of this sculpture is the way in which the writing is carried from the slab right across the body of the animal itself, and also across its front legs. Perhaps this was done at the command of the king, merely as a convenient expedient that all the desired records of the conquest might be given a place, but the effect at a little distance is curi¬ ously as if the artist had striven to get the feeling of hair in a stiff and formal manner, in keeping with the conventional rendering of the mane. Again it has been suggested that the writing has been carried across the body of the lion to safeguard it. There was a not un¬ usual custom among ancient monarchs of scraping out the inscription of a predecessor and supplanting it with one’s own. So great a monarch as Rameses II., in Egypt, did not scruple to do this, and a remarkable case is shown on an Arabian temple where the con¬ scienceless monarch actually substitutes his own name for the correct one of the builder in a tablet claiming authorship of the temple of which the tablet is a part. That the kings of Assyria had occasion to fear such jugglery is shown by the inscriptions on the book tab¬ lets in the royal library at Nineveh, where Ashur-nasir- pal, after telling that the books are of his library, calls a curse upon any one who shall ever put another name beside his own. Perhaps, then, King Ashur-bani-pal thought to transmit a record of his deeds more securely to posterity by inscribing them across the back of this lion, for doubtless the sculpture was considered a mas¬ terpiece, and the king felt, perhaps, that artistic taste might prevent a sacrilege that mere conscience would not interdict. Plate Description. A colossal lion from the right side of the entrance of a doorway of the palace of Ashur-nasir-pal, King of Assyria, 885-S60 B.C., excavated in 1847 by Sir A. H.Layard on the site of the small temple of Adar at Nimrud, and inscribed on the side with a brief recital of the monarch's principal conquests. ASSYRIAN POTTERY. Plate 14. COLOSSAL SCULPTURE WITH ASSYRIAN INSCRIPTION IN THE CUNEIFORM ADDENDA AND ERRATA. CHAPTER m. Plate 12. Text, I.20, for Nineveh read Nimrud (anciently Calah). (The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser II is No. 98 in the Central Nimrud Saloon, British Museum. It was found in the central mound at Nimrud and is dated B.C. 860-825.) Plate 13. Text, col. 2, l.iS, for Hormuszd Rassam read Hor- muzd Rassam. Plate 14. Text, col. 2, 11. 11— 14, transpose the names Ashur- nasir-pal and Ashur-bani-pal. CHAPTER IV. THE LIBRARY OF A KING OF NINEVEH. Plate 15. Assyrian Baked Clay Tablets of the Creation and Deluge Series. Plate 16. Baked Clay Babylonian Tablets of the 1 5th, 7th, and 5th Centuries B.C. Plate 17. Babylonian Inscriptions. Plate 18. Baked Clay Cylinders with Inscriptions of Kings Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashur-bani-pal. Plate 19. Babylonian Inscriptions. CHAPTER IV. THE LIBRARY OF A KING OF NINEVEH. IN addition to making monumental records and in¬ scriptions, the Assyrians and Babylonians made tablets in clay, which, after being inscribed, were baked into bricks that were almost indestructable. These inscribed bricks had virtually the scope of no modern books, and illustrations are given in this chapter of various types of them. The usual form of these tablets is that shown in plates 15 and 16, though the monarchs appear to have been partial to such cylinders as those shown in plates 18 and 19, for pre¬ serving the record of their personal deeds. The cones shown in plate 19 were used almost, if not quite, exclusively for religious and commemorative purposes. They were driven into the walls of temples as offerings to the gods and goddesses. Taken alto¬ gether, these are among the most remarkable inscribed documents that we shall have occasion to examine in the entire range of the history of writing. PLATE 15. ASSYRIAN TABLETS OF THE CREATION, AND DELUGE SERIES.* WE come now to the place in the British Museum in which some of these treasures of the old Assyrian king are guarded. They occupy part of the series of cases placed down the centre of the room known as the Nineveh Gallery. Perhaps it is not too much to speak of these collections as the most extraordinary set of documents of all the rare treasures of the British Museum, for it includes not books alone, but public and private letters, business announcements, marriage contracts — in a word, all the species of written records that enter into the every-day life of an intelligent and cultured community. But by what miracle have such documents been preserved through all these centuries ? A glance makes the secret evident. It is simply a case of time- defying materials. Each one of these Assyrian docu¬ ments appears to be, and in reality is, nothing more or less than an inscribed fragment of brick, having much the color and texture of a weathered terra-cotta tile of modern manufacture. These slabs are usually oval or oblong in length, and an inch or so in thickness. Each of them was originally a portion of brick clay, on which the scribe indented the flights of arrow-heads with some sharp-cornered instrument, after which the * Description of the Plate. Assyrian " Creation " Tablets. (7th Century B.C.) British Museum: Assyrian Antiquities, Nos. K 5419 c. 93,016, 93,017. (Nineveh Gallery, Table Case A, 1, 8, 13.) Three Upper Tablets of Plate. Three inscribed tablets of baked clay from the royal library of Ashur-bani-pal, king of Assyria, belonging to the series which gives the Assyrian account o( the Creation, and other early events like those recorded in the Hebrew Book of Genesis. According to statements made on the tablets, the original text be¬ longed to the city of Erech, and it appears to have been either written in or translated into Semitic Babylonian at a very early period. The Assyr¬ ian copyist has retained sundry archaic forms that he could not translate into modern representations. He also shows the original line divisions, and incorporates sundry glosses which had been formerly incorporated into the text, and the original one lost sight of. One fragment is the upper portion of a tablet measuring 3 yi by i}i inches, and was part of the first of the series of six. The whole of the first tablet describes the time when the heavens were not and the earth was not ; when there were no plants, and before the gods had come into being, and when the water-deep was the source and origin of all things. The male and female deities of the primeval watery mass were called Apsu and Tiamat ; their children were called Lakhmu and Lak- hamu, and their grandchildren Anshar and Kishar, and their great¬ grandchildren were Anu, Bel, Ea, and the other great gods. The text of another copy is in Delitzsch's " Assyrische Geschichte," Leipzig, 1885, p. 93, and the fragment is engraved in " Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum," Part XIII, plate I, and is described in the "Catalogue of Cuneiform Tablets in the Kuyunjik Col¬ lection," Vol. II, p. 716. The British Museum tablet designated "82-7- 14,402" is a duplicate. See also "Transactions Society Biblical Arche- ology,” Vol. IV, p. 363; Vol. V, p. 428; Menant’s " Manuel," p. 378 ; "Records of the Past," Vol. II, p. 1 17 ; and new series, Vol. I, p. 133. A translation is also given by G. Smith in " Chaldean Genesis," p. 62. Lower Right Tablet. The fragment 93,016, received at the Museum in September, 1882, is the first half of a copy of the fourth tablet of the series, and re¬ cords the election of Marduk (the Merodach of the Bible, Jeremiah 1, 2) as the champion of the gods, and supplies the details of the successful war which he waged on their behalf against Tiamat : " Marduk armed himself with the invincible power which the gods had bestowed upon him, and, mounting his four-horsed chariot, he advanced against the monster. He spread out his net to catch her ; he drove the winds, which he had gath¬ ered together, down her throat, and he seized the spear and pierced through her carcass. He drove the weapon into her heart, he cut her bowels to pieces, he vanquished her, he cut off her life. He split her like a flat fish, in two halves." From one of these halves he made the cover¬ ing for the heavens, i.e., the firmament, and from the other he seems to have formed the earth. It is further recorded that this copy was made by the scribe Nabu- bel-ishu, for Nard-Marduk, who gave it to E-zida, one of the two great temples of Babylon. The text is published in "Cuneiform Inscriptions," Vol. XIII, plates 14-15. The fragment 93,017, received in April, 1888, contains a part of the text of the third tablet of the series. It describes the means which the gods took to defeat the wile of Tiamat, and mentions their meeting in council at a place called Upshukkinaku, where " they made ready for the feast, and sat at the banquet ; they ate bread, and they drank sesame-wine." The text also appears in "Cuneiform Texts," XIII, plates 10-11. Transliterations of many of the "Creation" Tablets are given in Eberhard Schrader’s "Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament," London, 1888, as translated from the second German edition. The "Creation " tablets were found in 1853 by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, in Ashur-bani-pal'5 palace, at Nineveh, and the account of their discovery is given by H. Rassam in " Asshur and the Land of Nimrod," New York. 1897, p. 31, etc. The announcement as to the discovery of the subject-matter of the "Creation ” was made by George Smith to the Society of Biblical Arche¬ ology, and appears in the "Transactions," Vol. II, 1873, pt. 1. Theauthor subsequently dealt with the subject in his book "The Chaldean Account of Genesis," of which A. H. Sayce issued a revised edition in 1880. A general account of the use and manufacture of clay tablets is given by Theodore G. Pinches in the "Journal of the British Archeological Association," 1880, pp. 398-404, and the same writer gives an account of the various languages in which cuneiform inscriptions are written, in the "Transactions of the Philological Society," London, 1882-4, PP- 77->°°. Babylon : Gigamesh Series : The Deluge (B.C. 4000-2300). British Museum : Babylonian Antiquities, K 3375. (Babylonian and Assyrian Room, Table Case A.) Lower Left Tablet. The right half of a clay brick, containing a portion of the mytho¬ logical legend which forms the eleventh tablet of the poem of Gilgamesh, a mythical hero who set out to seek his ancestor, Tsit-napishtim, to learn from him the secret of immortality. After some parley, Tsit-napishtim related the story of the Deluge, as contained in the tablet Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge, in the British Museum "Guide to the Babylonian Antiqui¬ ties," 1500, thus refers to the story (p. 40) : " The gods determined to send a deluge upon the earth, and Tsit- napishtim, a dweller in the ancient city of Shurippak, on the Euphrates, was warned by the god Ea of their design. In obedience to this god's instructions, he collected wood and materials for the building of a ship which was to save him and his family, and his beasts of the field, from the waters of the flood. He made a barge one hundred and twenty cubits wide, and on its decks he built a deck-house one hundred and twenty cubits high ; this house was divided into six stories, and each story contained nine rooms. The outside of the ship was smeared with bitumen, and the inside with pitch. Having slaughtered oxen and made a feast, Tsit- napishtim with all his family and belongings, entered into the ship, the direction of which he intrusted to the pilot Puzur-Bel. The same night a heavy rain began to fall, and a mighty tempest, with terrible thunder and lightning and torrents of rain continued for six days and six nights, until even the tops of the mountains were overwhelmed. On the seventh day the storm abated, and the sea went down : but by this time all man¬ kind, with the exception of those in the ship, had been destroyed. Mean¬ while the ship had drifted to the land of Nitsir, where it grounded on the top of a high mountain. After twelve days the land reappeared. Seven days later, Tsit-napishtim sent forth a dove, but she found no resting- place, and returned to the ship. After a further interval, he sent forth a swallow, who also returned to the ship ; but when, some time after, he sent forth a raven, the bird flew away, and although it approached and croaked it did not reenter the ship. Tsit-napishtim then knew the waters had abated, and, having come forth with his family and the beasts of the field, he offered up a sacrifice to the gods upon the mountain. The God Bel, however, was wroth, that the race of mankind had not been utterly destroyed, but was appeased by the god Ea, and Tsit-napishtim and his family were allowed to live. document was made permanent by baking. They are somewhat fragile, of course, as all bricks are, and many of them have been more or less crumbled in the destruction of the palace at Nineveh ; but to the rav¬ ages of mere time they are as nearly invulnerable as almost anything in Nature. Hence it is that these rec¬ ords of a remote civilization have been preserved to us, while the similar records of such later civilizations as the Grecian have utterly perished ; much as the flint implements of the cave dweller come to us unchanged, while the iron implements of a far more recent age have crumbled away. Consider even in the most casual way the mere samples that are exhibited here in the museum. This first case, the label tells us, contains tablets — sample leaves if you will — from the famous “ Creation ” and "Deluge” series.. That is to say, from the book which has been called the Chaldean Genesis, and which excited such a furore of attention when George Smith of the British Museum first deciphered part of its con¬ tents, because it seemed to give so striking a clew to the origin of the sacred book of the Hebrews. The Hebrew legends are very differently received to-day from what they were even fifty years ago, thanks to the advance of science ; but these Chaldean stories of the creation and destruction of mankind still have absorb¬ ing interest as historical documents in the story of the mental evolution of our race, both for what they teach of the ideas of remote generations of men, and for what they taught the generation of our immediate predeces¬ sors about the true status of comparative mythology. It will be recalled that the Assyrians were Semites closely related to the Hebrews. Indeed, tradition held that Father Abraham, in common with the ancestors of the Assyrians, came from the land of the Chaldeans. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that these sacred books of the Assyrians are replete with the same tradi¬ tions and give expression to much the same cast of thought as the sacred books of the Hebrews. Thus, here we have a closely comparable account of the creation of the world out of primeval chaos and of the destruction of all but a favored few in a universal deluge. Even the story of the sending out from the ark of first one bird and then another, until finally the raven found a place to alight, when the ark itself had stranded on a mountain top, is reproduced with such closeness of detail as practically to demonstrate a com¬ mon origin of the two traditions. Here, again, is a story of how Sargon, an early king of Babylonia, was cast away, Moses-like, in a basket, to be rescued from the waters of the Euphrates by a compassionate dis¬ coverer of his plight. There is even a tablet here which gives intimations of the story of the building of the Tower of Babel. And with it all there is imbued the same black, dreadful view of life that actuated the authors of the Old Testament. Always we are made to feel the threat of the angry deity ; always this religion is a religion of fear. Generosity, broth¬ erly love, compassion, morality — in a broad sense these words play but little part in the terminology of the Semite. The Semitic conqueror was notorious for his cruelty. He loved to persecute his victim, to crucify him, to flay him alive. The writers of the Hebrew and of the Assyrian books alike record these deeds without a shudder. They show to the psychologist a race lacking in imagination, which is the mother of sym¬ pathy, but imbued through and through with egotism. The legends of the sacred books give further evidence of these same traits. Here before us, among the other tablets just noted, are the famous stories of the descent of Ishtar, the Goddess of Love, into the nether regions, and of the trials and perils which she encountered there, and those that fell upon the outside world be¬ cause of her absence. It is recorded that when finally a messenger was sent from a superior power demand¬ ing her release, the powers of the nether world gave her up unwillingly, but retained the innocent messen¬ ger to torture in her stead ; and it probably never oc¬ curred to the mind of the Assyrian soothsayer that it might have been within the power of the superior gods to release the innocent messenger as well. Another famous set of tablets records the adven¬ tures of Gilgamesh, whose heroic trials and mighty deeds suggest the Hercules of the Greeks. All in all these religious and mythological texts give us the closest insight into the moral nature of the Assyrian, not merely during the period of Asshur-bani-pal, but for many generations before, since these sacred books are in the main but copies of old Babylonian ones, dating from the most remote periods of antiquity. ASSHUR-B Plate 15. ASSYRIAN BAKED CLAY TABLETS Of the Creation and Deluge Series. Three Upper Figures — Fragments of tablets inscribed with the Babylonian account of the Creation. Lower Left hand Tablet — Fragment of tablet inscribed with the Babylonian account of the Deluge. Lower Right hand Tablet — Portion of a tablet inscribed with the legend of the fight between Marduk and Tiamat. British Museum, Guide to Bab. and Assyr. Antiq., Plates 6, 7, and 8. EMBLEM OF THE DEITY PLATE 16. BAKED CLAY BABYLONIAN TABLETS OF THE FIFTEENTH, SEVENTH AND FIFTH CENTURIES, B.C.* The tablets of the next case illustrate a different phase of Assyrian mental activity. They are virtually books of reference, and school books — that is, " Gram¬ matical Tablets, Lists of Cuneiform Signs, Explanatory Lists of Words, etc. _ drawn up for use in the Royal Library at Nineveh.” They include a tablet of “ words and phrases used in Legal Documents, to serve as grammatical examples ; one column being in the Sumero-Akkadian language, the other an Assyrian trans¬ lation ; also lists of a verbal formation, and an explanatory list of words a dic¬ tionary, if you please ! Even more remarkable is a tablet giving a list of picture characters with the archaic forms of cuneiform signs to which they were thought “ Description of the Plate. Middle Tablet. Babylonian Chronicle. (Sennacherib.) [b.c. 668.] British Museum. Babylonian Antiquities. No. 92,302. (Babylonian and Assyrian Room. Table Case E. 120.) in R^Clny tablM lnSCribet! Wilh BabLyl°nian characler5 eivinS a list of the principal events which took place m Baby'oma and Assyria between the th.rd year of the reign of Nabunasir (Nabonassar). king of Babylon, B.C. 668. In column III., lines 34 and 35, mention is made that Sennacherib, king of Assyria, was killed bv his son on the 20th day of the month Tebet, in the 23d year of his reign. X The chronological tablet is described by Mr. Pinches in the ■■ Journal of the Royal Archeological Society " London, Vol. XIX, pt. 4. The text is also given imperfectly in "Zeitschrift filr Assyriologie." June, 1887. There is also a paper in English by Theodore G. Pinches on ■■ Archaic Forms of Babylonian Characters " in Zeitschrift fUr Keilschrift," Leipzig, 1885, Vol. II. Right Tablet. Babylonian Syllabary, b.c. 442. British Museum. Babylonian Antiquities. No. 92,693. (Babylonian and Assyrian Room. Table Case E, 129.) Portions of a Babylonian syllabary, consisting originally of at least 39 tablets, inscribed with the names ^r°n^latlons and meamngs of a number of cuneiform characters, and dated in the tenth year of Artaxerxes! efaceUbl'Shed *” X“ °f “Cuneiform Texts from Babylon " (British Museum), London, plates 31 on Jan. 18, 1883. Left Tablet. Tell el-Amarna Tablet, [b.c. 1500-1450.] British Museum. Babylonian Antiquities. No. 29,791. (Babylonian and Assyrian Room. Table Case F, 5.) AmatnI1l8t"Anearn,rabl-et’°I:.0Kne,0fthe ‘“T number of documents discovered at the village of Tell el¬ and 1, ‘°wn temple and palace, on the east bank of the Nile, about one hundred and eighty miles south of Memphis, as built by Amenophis IV, about b.c 1450 The plate represents a tablet made of Syrian clay, and inscribed in a coarse and somewhat careless hand in the Babylonian language. The tablet is described in the British Museum "Guide," as follows : . "L=tter fr°m Tushratta, king of Mitani, to Amenophis III, king of Egypt, acknowledging the receipt of despatches, and referring to the friendship which existed from ancient times between the royal houses of M.tan, and Egypt. Tushratta announces the despatch of a number of valuable gifts to Amenophis by the hand of his envoy Giliya, and begs Amenophis to send him a large quantity of gold, which is to be regarded as payment for expenses incurred by his grandfather in sending gifts to the king of Egypt, and also as a gilt in return for his daughter, a princess of Mitani, whom Amenophis had married." to correspond ; this list being supplemented by another in which the archaic forms themselves are interpreted with the “modern” equivalent. This tablet shows that, in the belief of the ancient Assyrian, the cuneiform character had been developed, at a remote epoch, from a purely historical writing (as was doubtless the case), but that the exact line of this development had faded from the memories of men in the latter-day epoch of the seventh century b.c. In the case beyond are tablets with lists of “Names of Birds, Plants, Bronze Objects, Articles of Clothing, etc., for reference as an aid to writing literary compo¬ sitions.” Then lists of officials, and other documents relating to the history of Babylonia-Assyria, including historical inscriptions of Sennacherib. Beyond, a set of letters, public and private, mostly inscribed on oval bits of clay, three or four inches long, and sometimes provided with envelopes of the same material. Of this numerous collection of letters, the one that attracts most popular attention is that in which King Sennacherib refers to certain objects given by him to his son Esarhaddon. This is commonly known as the “will of Sennacherib." Near this is another letter that is interesting because it is provided with a baked-clay envelope, into which the letter slipped as a kernel of a nut into its shell. The envelope bears the inscription, “To the King, my Lord, from Asshur Ritsua,” and it is authenticated by two impressions of the writer’s seal. This use of seals, by the bye, is quite general, particularly in the case of offi¬ cial documents. Sometimes, as in the case of a contract tablet shown here, the witness, in lieu of seal, gives the stamp of his finger nail, this being equivalent, I suppose, to “John Doe, his mark.” It is hardly to be supposed that the average Assyrian could write any more than the average Greek or Roman could, or, for that matter, the average European of a century ago. The professional scribe did the writing, of course; whence the necessity for seals to assure authenticity of even ordinary letters. Doubtless the art of gem engraving, which the old Chaldeans carried to amazing perfection, followed by the Greeks and Romans, has been allowed to decline in recent generations largely because the increasing spread of education not to mention gummed envelopes — made seals less and less a neces¬ sity. Perhaps the art may be revived in the age of the typewriter. But if one stops to speak of seals he could hardly be restrained from rushing off to the won¬ derful collection in the gem department of the British Museum, where the Graeco- Roman intaglios would drive all thought of other collections from his head— though even there the Cyprian finds would lead him back irrevocably to the Baby¬ lonian model — whereas, for the moment, our true concern is not with seals of any sort, but with the documents they are purposed to authenticate. These documents are of the strangest assortment ; and yet not strange, so pre¬ cisely similar are they to the official records of modern communal existence. Thus here is one tablet, of about the year 650 b.c., recording the sale of a house. There another tells of the leasing of certain property, for a term of six years, for twelve shekels of silver. And, capping the climax, here are tablets recording the loan of money ; veritable notes, with even the rate of interest — 20 per cent. — care¬ fully prescribed. One learns that the money broker did a thriving business in old Nineveh. How near to us those days are, after all 1 '91 3l«ld PLATE 17. BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTIONS. AND nearer yet they seem when we pass to the cases of the tablets of omens and forecasts based upon the position of the stars and planets, the actions of animals and reptiles, the flight of birds, and the appear¬ ance of newly born offspring. For when superstition is in question all races are kin, and all times are con¬ temporary. The European of to-day who shudders when he sees the moon over his left shoulder, is brother in spirit to the Assyrian astrologer who used this “ astrolabe ” to forecast the events of his own immediate future. And these incantations, religious and magical rites, prayers, hymns, litanies — do they not make it clear that the Assyrian was indeed our elder brother ? Does this lifted veil then show us a vista of three mil¬ lennia, or only of as many generations ? At least it serves to bring home to us — and I doubt if any other exhibit could do it as forcibly — how slow, how snail-like is the rate of human progress. Yet, after all, how vain this moralizing; for who does not know, that the day when Nineveh saw its prime was only the yesterday of human civilization ? If one doubted it before, he can doubt no longer, since he has wandered down the * Description of the Plate. Babylonian Inscriptions about B.c. 870. British Museum, Babylonian Antiquities, No. 91,000-4. Babylonian and Assyrian Room, Table Case C, 94. The objects represented on the plate are described as follows in the British Museum " Guide " : " In the upper part of the tablet the Sun-god is seen seated within a shrine upon a throne, the sides of which are sculptured with figures of mythical beings in relief; in his right hand he holds a disk and bar, which may be symbolic of the sun's orbit, or eternity. Above his head are the three symbols of the Moon and the Sun and the planet Venus. The roof of the shrine is supported by a column in the form of a palm trunk. Before the shrine, upon an altar or table, stands the disk of the sun. which is held in position by means of ropes tightly drawn in the hands of two divine be¬ ings who form part of the celestial canopy. Approaching the disk are three human figures; the first of these is the high priest of the Sun-god, who is leading by the hand the king to do worship to the symbol of the solar deity, and the last figure is either an attendant priest or a royal min¬ ister. The shrine of the god stands upon the Celestial Ocean, and the four small disks upon which it rests seem to indicate the four cardinal " The text describes the restoration of the temple of the Sun-god by two kings called Simmash-Shikhu (about B.C. 1050) and E-Ulbarshakin- Shun (about B.c. 1020). It then goes on to say that Nabu-pal-iddina, king of Babylonia, found and restored the ancient image of the Sun-god rooms in which the relics from the library of Ashur- bani-pal are exhibited, glancing thus casually at the accommodating English labels. Naturally, the stock of material bearing upon this topic has been constantly increased by new explora¬ tions, notably by those of Oppert at Nineveh, and of De Sarzec at Tello, by which the French Government has supplemented the early collections of the pioneer of the work, Botta ; by various German exploring com¬ panies; and, more recently, by the American exploring expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, under Dr. John P. Peters, which secured such important re¬ sults at Nippur. But the greatest repository of all still remains that which Layard and his assistant and suc¬ cessor in the work, Rassam, followed by George Smith, secured for the British Museum. The other collec¬ tions afford important side-lights ; but the main story of Assyrian life and history, as at present known to us, is told only by the books from the wonderful library of the palace of Ashur-bani-pal, at Nineveh ; and these can be studied only in the British Mu¬ seum, or in the publications which the workers of and the sculptures of the temple, which had been overthrown by the en¬ emies of the country. The shrine of the god had been stripped of its beautiful ornaments and its ancient endowments had been appropriated for profane uses. But when Nabu-pal-iddina became king he determined to take vengeance upon the enemy who had carried out such sacrilegious work, to refound and re-endow the shrine of the gods and to establish regular festivals and offerings. He also beautified the ancient figure of the Sun-god with gold and lapis-lazuli. "The text concludes with a list of the offerings which the king dedi¬ cated to the temple, and enumerated at length the various garments and apparel which the priests were to wear on holy days and festivals. This tablet was made by Nabu-pal-iddina in the ninth century before Christ, but he probably copied the sculptured scene at the top from a relief of a very much older period. Two protecting coverings of clay, which have received impressions of this scene, were found with the tablet ; the broken covering was probably made by Nabu-pal-iddina, and the unbroken one by Nabopolassar. About two hundred and fifty years after the restoration of the temple by Nabu-pal-iddina, Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, from B.c. 625 to 604, the father of Nebuchadnezzar II, again restored the temple, and in the course of his work must have found this tablet. He provided the sculptured scene with a new clay covering (No. 91,002), and according to his inscription on the back of it (see the plaster cast, No. 91,003), he dedicated a number of offerings and garments to the shrine of the Sun-god at Sippar. It is probable that the baked clay box in which it was found (No. 91,004) dates from the reign of this king." kfftiu. that institution have from time to time given to the world. After glancing at these documents for the first time, none but a heedless person can fail to have brought home to him a more vivid picture of the life of antiquity, and a truer historical perspective than he can previously have possessed. For more than two thousand years Greek culture has dominated the world, and it has been the custom to speak of the Greek as if he were the veritable inventor of art and of culture ; but these documents have led to a truer view. Here one looks back, as it were, over the heads of the Greeks, and catches glimpses of a people that pos¬ sessed a high civilization when the Greeks were still an upstart nation only working their way out of barbarism. Now it appears to be nothing less than a law of nature that every nation should look with contempt upon every other nation which it regards as contempo¬ rary. With a highly artistic people, whose chief pride is their artistic taste, this feeling reaches its climax. The Greek attitude in this regard is proverbial. But it is just as fixed a law of nature that every nation should look with reverence upon some elder civilization. The Romans adopted the Greek word “barbarian,” and applied it to all other nations — except the Greeks. The Greeks did not return the compliment. For them the Romans were parvenus — parvenus to be looked on with hatred and contempt. I doubt not the Athenian child gave the deadliest possible insult to his play¬ fellow when he called him a Roman ; just as the Pari¬ sian child of to-day reserves the appellation “Anglais” as the bitterest anathema of his vocabulary. But when the Greek turned his eyes in the other direction, and looked out upon Egyptian and Babylonian civilization, he was gazing into the past, and his contempt changed to reverence, precisely as with the Frenchman of to-day, who looks back with reverence upon the civilization of ancient Greece and Rome, while utterly contemning all phases of the nineteenth century civilization save his own. It was gladly admitted by the Greeks that these Oriental civilizations had flowered while Greek culture was yet in the bud. Solon, the law-giver, was reported to have travelled in Egypt, and to have been mildly patronized by the Egyptian priests as the representative of an infant race. Herodotus, though ostensibly writing of the Persian war, devotes whole sections of his history to Egypt, and accepts, as did his countrymen, the Egyptian claims to immense antiquity without a scruple. Plato even resided for some years in Egypt, as Dio¬ dorus tells us, in the hope of gaining an insight into the mysteries of Oriental philosophy. Regarding the Assyrio-Babylonians, apparently, hardly any story was too fanciful to gain a measure of credence with the classical world. Herodotus, to be sure, only credits the Assyrians with ruling for 520 years before the overthrow of Nineveh ; and Diodorus, following Ctesias, raises the figure only to about 1,400 years. But these figures were probably based on a vague comprehension that Assyria proper had a rela¬ tively late period of flowering, as was, indeed, the fact ; and the rumors regarding the age of Babylonian civili¬ zation as a whole may be best illustrated by recalling that Cicero thought it necessary to express his scepti¬ cism regarding a claim, seemingly prevalent in his time, that Babylonian monuments preserve astronomical ob¬ servations dating back over a period of 2 70,000 years. Pliny, on the other hand, quoting “ Epigenes, a writer of first rate authority,” claims for the astronomical records only a period of 720 years, noting also that Berosus and Critodemus still further limit the period to 480 years. But the very range of numbers shows how utterly vague were the notions involved ; and Pliny himself draws the inference of “the eternal use of letters” among the Babylonians, indicating that even the minimum period took the matter beyond the range of Western history. 