1851. ] OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 87 
often chronicled the public transactions of their respective reigns 
with characteristic brevity, but with what appeared to be a conscien- 
tious and painstaking accuracy. Estimating the duration of the 
Assyrian monarchy at 1900 years, or from about 2500 to 600 B. C., 
there must have been a line of at least seventy kings, independent of 
interregnums. Of this line, however, there have only been recovered _ 
as yet the names of about twenty-five kings, and the longest succes- 
sion that has been found consists of eight, or at most ten, consecutive 
generations. In Chaldza and Babylonia, the historical information 
obtained has been even more fragmentary; for although we have now 
the names of nearly twenty kings, there is no continuous genealogy 
beyond that of father and son. A list of six, or perhaps eight, kings 
is given in the inscriptions of Armenia; and Susa and Elymais con- 
tribute several independent royal titles. 
Besides the historical inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia, there 
are many other miscellaneous Cuneiform documents. One class of 
inscriptions refers particularly to the construction of the palaces and 
temples, the architectural description resembling in its detail the 
Scriptural account of the building of Solomon’s Temple. Others 
are especially devoted to the enumeration of the gods and the 
declaration of their titles and attributes, the figures of the deities 
invoked being sometimes engraved upon-the monuments by way of 
illustration ; evidence being thus afforded that the winged and 
monstrous forms depicted on the Assyrian marbles in the British 
Museum, are in no case intended to represent the Assyrian Gods, 
but have exclusively a symbolical signification. A pictorial repre- 
sentation was exhibited at this lecture of the Babylonian Pantheon 
copied from that interesting monument named Michaux’s Stone, and 
an attempt was made to identify the figures, which evidently belonged 
to a Planetary or Celestial system of worship, with the gods mentioned 
in scripture, and commonly noticed in the inscriptions. 
A further class of documents was noticed consisting of inscriptions 
on pieces of stone, of pottery andof “terra cotta.” ‘These inscrip- 
tions represented conveyances of property, deeds of sale, leases, 
contracts, mortgage bonds, and appeared sometimes to constitute 
documents resembling the exchequer bills and bank notes of modern 
times. It was conjectured indeed that prior to the introduction of 
coined money, the Assyrians and Babylonians must have made use 
of the clay cakes of which great numbers are now found in the 
country, as a circulating medium, thus, as it were, anticipating the 
modern invention of a paper currency. 
A resumé was then given of the information afforded by the 
inscriptions as to the Political Geography and the Ethnography of 
Western Asia, at a period long anterior to what we have been 
hitherto accustomed to regard as authentic history, and the 
Lecturer stated in conclusion, that although he was about to return 
almost immediately to the East, he should leave sufficient data in the 
hands of the learned of Europe to enable them, as materials were 
