RECENT GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATION. 175 



ters, which were then called the Hamite inscriptions, with the sugges- 

 tion that this might probably be the language of the Hittites, which is 

 now proved to be the fact. The inscriptions found by Mr. Henderson 

 in the exploration of Carchemish are not only in the same character, 

 but the same language, which Mr. Layard found impressed upon seals 

 discovered by him in the ruins of the record-chamber of Sennacherib's 

 palace, which greatly excited his curiosity, as the writing was unlike 

 any ever noticed before. Another inscription was afterward discovered 

 at Aleppo by Mr. Davis, a missionary ; and it also turns out that the 

 famous figures sculptured above the roads from Ephesus to Phocea, 

 and from Smyrna to Sardis, which are mentioned by Herodotus, and 

 were supposed by him to represent the Egyptian King Rameses II, 

 the Sesostris of the Greeks, have inscriptions upon them in the same 

 character as that recently found in Carchemish, showing that these 

 figures also are Hittite monuments. It is supposed that this language 

 was the source of what is known as the Cypriote syllabary, found in 

 Cyprus, a system of characters of which each does not, like the letters 

 of the alphabet, represent a single sound, but a syllable, and which was 

 probably the language in use among commercial people throughout 

 Asia Minor, until it was superseded by the simpler and more practical 

 Phoenician alphabet. This discovery is exceedingly interesting, as the 

 Hittites belong to the same race of people who perfected, by the alpha- 

 bet, that greatest of human inventions, a written language. We have 

 now in this discovery of Mr. Smith the memorials of a lost people, in 

 neighboring proximity to the Phoenicians ; a people who had an im- 

 portant part in the early progress of ancient civilization, with respect 

 to which an eminent Egyptian scholar expresses his conviction that 

 future discoveries in the course of this exploration will afford con- 

 vincing proofs that this civilization, which was of the highest anti- 

 quity, was of an importance which we can only guess at. 



What may be anticipated when scholars are able to read these in- 

 scriptions, as in all probability they will be, for the cuneiform or arrow- 

 headed characters of Assyria have been read, is foreshadowed by what 

 has been brought to light by the discoveries of Layard and Smith in 

 the mound which now represents what was once Nineveh. Beneath a 

 mass of rubbish were found the remains of what had been a great As- 

 syrian library, the materials of which being of baked clay had proved 

 indestructible, and, though lying in broken fragments, Mr. G. Smith 

 was able to piece the fragments together, and recover over three thou- 

 sand inscriptions, forming pages of the volumes of which the library 

 was composed, and in some cases recovering entire books. The tablets 

 or leaves of these volumes or bricks, as they are called, are formed of 

 thin plates of clay, upon either side of which the text was inscribed 

 when the clay was soft, the tablet being afterward baked or dried, 

 when the tablets or bricks, like our modern books, were arranged in 

 chapters and volumes. Nearly two thirds of this library are now in the 



