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the night, and kept up a continual bleating and coughing until they were milked and turned out to pasture at daybreak.

about his neck is a string of sacred emblems; the tassels, fringes, and ornnments of his dress, and the ornaments of his person, his thrones, and his chariots, are elaborately displayed. Where the

The roofs not having been constructed to exclude the winter rains now setting in, it required some exercise of ingenuity to escape the torrent which descended into my apart-king is not personally present, it is eviment. I usually passed the night on these occasions crouched up in a corner, or under a table which I had constructed. The latter, having been surrounded by trenches to carry off the accumulating waters, generally afforded the best shelter.

We

dent that most of the tableaux relate to
his majesty's service, and principally to
his wars and conquests. We have his
warriors in chariots, on horseback, and
on foot; spearmen, archers, men armed
with the sword and with the mace.
have his troops embarked in galleys, or
on rafts supported by inflated skins. The
characters of the different countries which
are the theatres of war, are indicated by
trees, mountains, streams, marshes, by
the physiognomy and costumes of the
enemy, by the kind of booty, and by the
images of their gods, which are being car-
ried away in triumph. There is no Ho-
meric ascription of great qualities to the

Though the interruptions of his work were continual, and some of them of long duration, Mr. Layard did not desist from it until he had ascertained what were the treasures of the principal mounds, secured and transmitted to England a great many of the most valuable of those treasures, traced out the forms of the buildings in which they were found, and deduced from his discoveries much information, to modern nations quite new, concerning foe, although, as we shall see, we have the history and customs of the Assyrians of old. The sculptures, found in great quantity from time to time, were most of them of the same character as those already described, but they presented varieties of the same subjects, and the execution of some far surpassed in merit that of others. The differences soon suggested that the ruins were of different periods; and a clue was found to the dates, the names of the builders, and the style of the architecture. But perhaps it may be well, before saying how they serve to reconstruct history, or to make intelligible some hitherto obscure allusions in ancient writings, to state what the subjects of the bas-reliefs and other figures were.

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much reason to believe that Ionia and Greece generally derived much of their art and elegance from Assyria. On the contrary, the Assyrians seem to have had a charter for "whipping creation;" they pursue, they kill, they over-ride, they crack a castle or a fenced city like a nut, they carry away captive whole nations, they load themselves with spoil. And this is not the worst; we see them putting to death and torturing their prisoners, and in one slab flaying them alive. Scribes take account of the enemies' heads that are brought in; some of the enemy are seen writhing impaled upon the field; birds of prey fly through the air carrying in their beaks the entrails of the slain; but no Assyrian is ever seen dead, or wounded, or prisoner. In other compartments, troops of women and children, and bands of musicians, are going out to meet the returning conquerors. Apes, camels, rhinoceroses, elephants, antelopes, buffaloes, come on the scene either as spoil or tribute.

A very large portion of the sculptures is intended to magnify and record the exploits of the king, who is in most cases the principal figure. He is on his throne, receiving ambassadors who prostrate themselves before him, and offer presents; or he is performing religious services in company with some of his gods; he is hunting, destroying lions generally; or The king is in some places represented he is in his war-chariot, on the march or with the symbol of the supreme being in action, or directing the works of a above his head. This figure is like that siege, or the passage of a marsh, or giving of a man wearing a horned cap, such as orders concerning the disposal of the cap- is seen on the human-headed figures of tives. In other places he is superintend- animals, and shooting an arrow; it is suring civil works. There is an elaborate rounded by a circle with wings. Occarepresentation of the transport to its sionally the figure has three heads. There place in a building of a gigantic image of is a god with the head of a bird, and ana human-headed bull. Here and there other compounded of the figures of a man was found what was thought to be the and a fish. No doubt, among these are portrait of a monarch, on a very large Baal and Rimmon, and Nisroch and Nescale, wearing his robes and head-dress, bo. Again, the hunting pieces prove that and carrying royal symbols in his hand; the pursuit in which Nimrod excelled

maintained its reputation as long as Assyria was an empire. The noblest chase of all was that of the lion, and it is the subject of very many bas-reliefs. The king, generally attended, is shown to us despatching the other king (of the beasts, to wit) by quite a Homeric variety of deaths. There is the hand-to-hand encounter, where the monarch seizes the wild beast by his beard and stabs him through the heart, making us think of another king,

Against whose fury and unmatched force
The aweless lion could not wage the fight,
Nor keep his princely heart from Richard's

hand.

The lion is transfixed with javelins or arrows, and some of the most spirited sculptures are those which exhibit the animal as wounded and making desperate efforts of pain and rage; one fine specimen is the figure of a maddened lion seizing a chariot-wheel with his claws and teeth. The king on one slab is pouring libations over dead lions. But there is other hunting too; we find leashes of fine dogs held in readiness for the sport, and afterwards are made to understand, by lifelike tableaux, how they pulled down the wild ass. Gazelles in many welldrawn attitudes flee before the hunters, or are transfixed by spears or arrows; and, by a scene which represents the capture of a wild ass, we learn that the lasso was in use. Deer were destroyed in quantities. Preparations for the chase furnish the subjects of a series of bas-reliefs. Huntmen and other servants are seen bringing out the hounds, and bearing themselves, or driving mules which bear, ropes, gins, and nets, for the sport. Only one lady of rank has yet been seen on the sculptures, and she is probably a queen, from the attendance and state which appertain to her. She is feasting with a king, who reclines in Eastern fashion under a shade of vine branches. The piece is highly finished and admirably preserved.

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. One remarkable series of bas-reliefs represents the process of moving to its place in a building one of the colossal human-headed bulls, weighing forty or fifty tons each, of which Mr. Layard found a great number. The laborious work is done by innumerable captives, directed in all its parts by taskmasters and over

We have no reason to think that Assyrian achieve ment went beyond gallantly destroying the lion. The Egyptians tamed and utilized the beast, making him run down game for them.

seers, and superintended by the king in person, attended by his guards, and sitting in a chariot with an umbrella over his head. The implements for this service were brought up in carts, or on men's shoulders. Crow-bars and other levers, wedges, and rollers, seem to have been the only mechanical powers used. There were plenty of strong cables to pull with. The huge figure was supported in a frame, and placed on a sledge, which was hauled by main force up the mound on which stood the building to which it was to be appropriated. Men steadied it while on its rough passage by ropes and poles, and a great lever, worked by many men behind the sledge, served to guide the mass or to help it over obstacles. Some of the overseers use speaking-trumpets to give their orders. It is a very animat ed scene. Mr. Layard tells us that, before he found these bas-reliefs, he had arranged and superintended the moving of one of these colossal bulls from the place where he found it to the Tigris for conveyance to England, and that the means which he had used were the very same which the Assyrians are shown in the sculptures to be using, except that he carried his figure on a cart instead of a sledge. Some of these bulls are twenty feet high; the human-headed lions also are very large; on some of these figures there are long inscriptions.

Some beautiful border-work of honeysuckles, and of other flowers interspersed among figures of animals, was discovered; also an emblematic tree of peculiar trace, thought to be the tree of life. A number of bells and of bronze weights in the forms of lions were found; and there were altars and inscribed cylinders, parts of daggers, swords and shields, vases, cups, and dishes. Two entire glass bowls and fragments of others were also turned up, and some ivory objects, one of which was thought to be a royal sceptre; but a more interesting discovery was that of the king's throne itself. There it stood, still recognizable as the chair of state delineated in the sculptures, although twenty or more centuries must have elapsed since it had been seen by human eyes. "With the exception of the legs, which appear to have been partly of ivory, it was of wood, cased or overlaid with bronze. The metal was elaborately engraved and embossed with symbolical figures and ornaments, like those embroidered on the robes of the early Nimroud king, such as winged deities strug gling with griffins, mythic animals, the

sacred tree, and the winged lion and bull. the name of a king is frequently inIn front of the throne was the foot-stool, scribed; and this offered a guide to disalso of wood overlaid with embossed covering the builder in each case, prometal, and adorned with the heads of vided the inscription could be underbulis. The feet ended in lions' paws and stood. And supposing the difficulties of pine-cones, like those of the throne." the writing and language to be to any exOf iron implements, were found pick- tent mastered, there were means of getheads, a double-handled saw, supposed ting at a good deal of the history of the heads of sledge-hammers, and an instru- empire, because there were inscriptions ment used for undermining walls in on the faces of some of the slabs. As sieges. has been said, some of the large figures also were inscribed: between the pairs of colossal figures guarding the entrances, there were generally large slabs with records on them; and obelisks and cylin

were also found. Now it is true that to this day learned men are not quite agreed as to the reading of the cuneiform writing, nor as to the meaning of the words. There is, however, sufficient accord among them to warrant a belief that we have got at the meaning of much of this Assyrian writing, and that we can tell who built some of the palaces.

Having thus given a short account of what was found in the mounds of the Tigris, let us go on to say what are the deductions which science has made from these relics. In the first place, the base-ders covered with historical inscriptions ments of the buildings in which the sculptures stood have been, with great labour and patience, satisfactorily traced, so that we know the ground-plans of some of of them. Their walls were chiefly of brick, either sun-dried or burnt, and the bricks were generally inscribed or stamped, and we read of some of them being painted and even gilded. The sculptured slabs of gypsum made facings to the brickwork, and skirted the chambers to a greater or less height. The winged lions and bulls were found to stand generally flanking doorways or main entrances. It has been pretty clearly made out that the whole of these discovered buildings were either royal palaces or temples, or public buildings of some kind; perhaps each of them served more than one purpose. In the mound of Nimroud there were no less than four of these palaces, distinguished as the South-East, the South-West, the Centre, and the North-West. At Khorsabad but one palace was discovered, and two at Kouyunjik, although the records tell that there were more there. The mound at Kalah Shergat appears never to have been thoroughly explored: the perils of that neighbourhood were great; the Arabs were hostile and powerful, and the tribes that were friendly to the explorers, and gave them protection, did not fancy a long sojourn near such formidable bands. One or two figures, and the remains of many walls, were found in this large mound, as also a great number of tombs, showing Kalah Shergat to have been extensively used as a burying-place, but at a period subsequent to the destruction of the Assyrian empire. Mr. Layard does not, however, think that it ever contained a palace such as those in the other mounds.

Now it fortunately happens that on the backs of the sculptured slabs of gypsum

The north-west palace at Nimroud is the largest there, and the oldest palace that has been found. Its builder had a jaw-breaking name, which is now very well known, and quite recognizable in the Assyrian characters, but for the letters of it our greatest authorities do not all find exactly the same English equivalents. It is thought to be just such a name as the Greeks would have smoothed down into Zapdavañoλos; and accordingly, he has been distinguished as Sardanapalus. He was a great warrior and builder, and flourished 900 years B.C. Since we have become acquainted with Assyrian remains and records, it is known that there were several kings whose names would be probably written “Sardanapalus" by the Greeks. Possibly these have been confounded, and the acts of two or more of them ascribed to one. Clearly, he of whom we are now speaking cannot be the Sardanapalus with whom we are best acquainted — namely, the one who lost the empire.

Shalmaneser, son of the above, built the centre palace at Nimroud. He also was a great conqueror, and greatly strengthened his empire. He had tributaries in Chaldæa, Babylonia, and prob ably in Persia, Syria, Phoenicia, aud Northern Mesopotamia. Armenia and Media also paid him tribute; and in one tablet the Jewish king Jehu is said to have acknowledged his power in this

Now in the British Muscum.

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history of his own reign. He contributes something, no doubt, to the Greek Sardanapalus - indeed he is believed to be the builder of Tarsus and Anchiale, and the author of the celebrated sensual motto about eating and drinking and being jolly — but his son was the sovereign who lost the empire, and perished in the burning palace to which he had himself set fire. The Assyrian name of this son does not look like Sardanapalus at all, and at present we do not know why the Greeks attributed the act of self-immolation to a Sardanapalus.

way. This fixes Shalmaneser's period to | he left ample materials for collecting the somewhere about 840 years B.C. Shalmaneser's grandson - whose name is given as Iva-lush, with variations according to the different methods of reading, and does not appear to be the same with any historical name-built some upper chambers on the mound of Nimroud, between the north-west and the south-west palaces. He also was a conqueror, and he had a wife with a name so suspiciously like Semiramis that some students believe her, though a personage of no pretension, to be the figure about which fables and glories have been wrapped and hung until she expanded We have picked out these notices of into the classical Semiramis. The world the builders of the palaces to give some has need to look to its heroes and hero-idea of the value of Mr. Layard's work. ines-William Tell is demolished, and It must be stated, however, that the outhere is Semiramis in a precarious con- line of a continuous history of the great dition. Assyrian monarchy has already been The south-eastern palace at Nimroud traced from the disinterred records, and was built by Tiglath-Pileser, the third that the accounts of some of the reigns monarch of that name. He it was who are likely to be filled in with considercarried away captive some of the Jewish able minuteness whenever the deciphertribes. This was only one of many ex-ing of the inscriptions shall have been ploits. It is hoped that there are mate- accomplished; and very satisfactory acrials for ascertaining the chronicles of counts they are likely to be, for the sculp his reign with some distinctness, as it tures illustrate the history all along, and occurred at a period which is within the we learn the manner of doing things as reach of history—viz., 744 to 726 B.C. well as the things that were done.

The palace at Khorsabad, the remains of which were discovered by M. Botta, was the work of Sargon (named in Isaiah, xx. 1), who seems to have been an Eastern Napoleon. He not only subdued the countries near about him, but also Syria, Egypt, and Ethiopia, and carried his arms into Asia Minor, and even to the island of Cyprus.

The name of the next builder is more familiar to us. Sennacherib, the son of Sargon, erected the grand palace at Kouyunjik, and he and his descendants filled it with inscribed records of his reign, so that a full Assyrian history of that period (704 to 680 B.C.) may be forthcoming. We know already from Scripture that Sennacherib was succeeded by his son Esar-haddon; and Assyrian chronicles agree with this account, giving the successor's name as Asshur-akh-idin. This Esar-haddon built the south-west palace at Nimroud with materials taken from the older palaces. He it was who carried Manasseh, King of Judah, away captive to Babylon about 677 B.C.

His son, a second Sardanapalus, built the second or northern palace at Kouyunjik. He greatly embellished the palace of Sennacherib, filling it with sculptures exhibiting that monarch's exploits, and

As the mystery of the cuneiform writing is what stands between us and an extensive and accurate knowledge of many periods of the history of Persia, Babylonia, and Assyria, some account of this writing and its difficulties, as well as of the means by which the difficulties were to some extent overcome, may be interesting. The element or unit in this kind of writing is a figure in the shape of a wedge or arrow-head. Every separate symbol, such as a letter or numeral, is either a single wedge placed in a certain attitude, or a cluster of wedges grouped in a particular manner. A single wedge may of course be written vertically with the thin or the broad end uppermost, it may be written horizontally with the broad end to the right or to the left, and it may be written inclined to the vertical or to the horizontal, and its point turned either way. - representing in every one of these attitudes a different sound. If this variety can be achieved with a single wedge, the great number of sounds that may be represented by different combinations of two or of more wedges may be imagined. To find the different shapes that can be made out of a limited number is an exercise in permutation; but if the number of wedges be unlimited, the combinations

est stone meant Darius the son of Hystaspes, and that when one of these names vanished while the other remained, although in a different position, and a new name was introduced, the changed characters meant Xerxes the son of Darius.* Fortunately he had hit the mark, and, having assured himself that he knew the names intended, he was able to ascertain the sounds of some of the letters; these letters, with a little clever guessing, led to the discovery of others, and so a breach was made in the wall of thick darkness which had shrouded the cuneiform writing. It need hardly be stated that when one of the tongues on the trilingual tablets came to be known, a key more or less effectual would be found for the others. In this way much progress has been made with the interpretation, which has in many cases been proved to be sound by its disclosure of facts unknown before, but which subsequent discoveries have verified. Several times in the course of his narratives Mr. Layard points to this versification, saying of some historical fact which his researches had brought to light, or which had been worked out of inscriptions in some other tongue, that it had been previously announced by Sir H. Rawlinson, or Mr. Hincks, or M. Oppert, who had learned it from the cuneiform tablets or cylinders. Thus it was proved that they had read the cuneiform writing aright in many instances. There remain, notwithstanding, numerous difficulties. Translators do not agree as to all the details, and in some of the tongues symbols have been used for whole words, like hieroglyphics; so that one may know the alphabet, and yet be ignorant of what these symbols mean. One of the cylinders found in Nineveh was a sort of hornbook showing what many of these signs meant, and thus little by little the darkness is being dispelled.

are infinite. When in modern times the | He made a guess at the names on some remains of this kind of writing began to tablets known to relate to Persia-asattract attention, there was not the suming that the characters on the oldslightest clue to its interpretation. The meaning had utterly perished. If only a word, or even a letter, had been certainly understood, the ingenious brains of scholars would speedily by its means have learned something more, and then from that something advanced a further stage, from the small seed obtaining at last a tree with many branches. But the ignorance was absolute; and yet, as we shall see, it was not hopeless, neither did it deter students from essaying the solution of this hard enigma. After a time, the faintest possible ray of light began to appear. There was reason to believe, from the length and the number of the words in three different sentences on the same stone, that one and the same meaning had been expressed in three different languages, or that each of these periods was a translation of the other two. This discovery did not seem to promise much, for all three tongues were written in cuneiform characters, and all three were entirely unknown. If, as in the case of the Rosetta stone, one or more of the inscriptions had been legible and intelligible, the unknown part or parts would at once have been to a certain extent clear. But where all three languages and modes of writing were equally obscure, how should any one of them serve to interpret the others? And yet these trilingual inscriptions were the means of bringing light upon all three languages and modes of writing. A learned and most ingenious German scholar (Grotefend) observed that a great many of these inscriptions were nearly the same as to length and characters, the difference being in two or three words introduced at a particular part of the inscription. He thought it likely that the inscriptions might repeat some set form, glorifying the king, or announcing some act of his, as the erection of a building, and that the words which were not always the same were the names of As examples of the kind of information the different kings and of their fathers, which has been furnished, let the followlike Jeroboam the son of Nebat, accord- ing be taken. There is a detailed Assyring to Eastern custom. This idea was ian account of the wars between Senstrengthened by the discovery that nacherib and Hezekiah, King of Judah, the word which seemed to represent the agreement of which with the Scripthe king on one stone would repre- tural account is most remarkable. The sent the king's father on a later taking of the city of Lachish is not only stone, and from a still later stone entirely disappear, while a new name was introduced. The learned decipherer at last became satisfied that these variable words denoted a succession of kings.

Of course he was aware of the extreme improba bility of the names being spelt in Persian the same as in Greek; but he assumed that there would be an approach to identity of spelling.

† Vide 18th chapter of Second Book of Kings.

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