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the site of ancient Nineveh, who during the years 1873 and 1874 
carried out what had been begun by Mons. Botta and Mr. Layard, 
and who has now given the valuable result of his labours in a 
volume published only last year (1875). It would be too long 
even briefly to enumerate all he has achieved. Having first 
diligently studied the remains and inscriptions brought to light 
by the two gentlemen I have mentioned, and mastered the 
contents of the tablets and fragments of cuneiform inscriptions 
deposited in the British Museum and in the Louvre; by his 
further researches he has been enabled not only to add to their 
number, but to recover many missing portions of tablets which 
were before imperfect. Happily these acquisitions have enabled 
Oriental scholars to re-construct Assyrian history. The Chronicles 
of the Assyrian Kings are now almost as satisfactorily settled as 
the Succession of the Roman Emperors or Kings of England. 
The events of each reign have been found recorded, and have been 
copied, and where the Greek historians fail, or the sacred records 
of Holy Writ do not touch upon Assyrian History, there these 
Tablets bring forward abundant information. The Records 
having been kept upon clay cylinders, or cut upon tablets of 
alabaster, or carved upon mythological or other figures, have 
withstood all change of atmosphere, and the palaces having been 
plundered and deserted, have been left with their records of the 
doings of past ages, to find employment for modern investigation, 
and to reward the labours of European scholars. Assyria has 
now yielded even a richer store than Egypt of those records, 
which tend to confirm and to illustrate the truths of the Hebrew 
Scriptures.* It is much to be hoped that the results of these 
* The latest paper read at the Society of Biblical Archeology, lst February, 
1876, was one on the “‘ Revolt of Heaven,” translated from a cuneiform tablet. 
The text of this tablet is one of those published by Professor Delitzsch, and 
presents a remarkable analogy to the ‘ War of the Dragon” described in the 
Book of Revelation, and to certain passages of the Book of Job, and the 
Apocryphal Book of Enoch. A paper has also been read by Mr. Fox Talbot, 
