ISoual Institution of (Kreat ISritain. 



1855. 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, June 15. 



H.R.H, The Prince Albert, KG, F.R.S. Vice-Patron R.L, 

 in the Chair. 



Colonel H. C. Rawlinson, 

 On the Restdts of the Excavations in Assyria and Babylonia. 



These excavations, independently of the treasures of art disclosed 

 by them, have opened up to us a period of about 2000 years in 

 the world's history, which, as far as the East is concerned, was 

 before almost entirely unknown. The cuneiform inscriptions of 

 Babylonia and Assyria furnish a series of historical documents 

 from the 22nd century B.C. to the age of Antiochus the Great. 

 The speaker divided these documents into three distinct periods of 

 history, the Chaldaean, the Assyrian, and the Babylonian, and he 

 then proceeded briefly to describe each period in succession. During 

 the Chaldaean period the seat of empire was to the south, towards 

 the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, and the sites of the 

 ancient capitals were marked by the ruins of Mugheir, of Warka, 

 of Senkereh, and of Nifler. At Mughier, called in the inscriptions 

 Jlur, and representing the biblical Ur of the Chaldees, inscriptions 

 have been found of a king, ^^Kudur, the conqueror of Syria," who 

 was probably the Chedorlaomer of the Bible. At any rate, a king 

 named Jsmi-Da^an, who lived some generations later, is proved, 

 by a series of chronological dates found in the Assyrian tablets, 

 to belong to the 19th century B.C., so that the era of the earlier 

 king agrees pretty well with the ordinary computation of the age 

 of Abraham. The names of about twenty-five kings have been 

 recovered of the ancient period, and there are good grounds for 

 believing that the Assyrians did not succeed in establishing an 

 independent empire at Nineveh till the early part of the fifteenth 

 century B.C. 



From B.C. 1273 to 625, the Assyrians seem to have been the 

 lords paramount of Westeni Asia, and their history is preserved 



Vol, II.— (No. 22.) l 



