540 DISCOVERIES IN MESOPOTAMIA. 



has not the study of those ancient books revealed I Let us but recall 

 that niemora))le autuuin of 1872, when George Smith, one of the offi- 

 cers of the Eg}'pto- Assyrian collection of the British Museum, while 

 looking over the cuneiform fragments of the mythological seriiss, read 

 in one of them with growing surprise: ''The ship stood still on the 

 Mount Nizir. 1 took out a dove and sent it out; the dove flew hither 

 and thither, l)ut as it found no resting place it turned and came back. 

 I took out a swallow and sent it out. The swallow flew liith(>r and 

 thither, ])ut as there Avas no resting place it cauK^ ])ack. I took out a 

 raven and s«>nt it out; the raven flew away and perceived the decrease 

 of tiie wat(>r * * * and did not return to the ship." Smith had 

 found the oi-igiiial of the Babylonian-Biblical ai-couiit of the deluge. 

 He rt'])()i"ted his find at the meeting of the I^ondon Society for Biblical 

 Arciueology on December 3, IST2. The discovery created tlie pro- 

 foundest sensation in England, and far hcyoiul her borders. In press 

 and ])ulpit it was ccleljrated and connneiited upon. Babel, it was said, 

 coiitirms the Bible. " \\'here men are silent, the stones cry out." The 

 proprietors of the Daily Telegraph, almost innuediately after that 

 lecture, hastened to give George Smith a thousand guineas for further 

 explorations in Nineveh. On January 20, 1ST3, George Smith set out 

 on his journey. In 1874 he was again sent — this time by the trustees 

 of the British Museum — to Nineveh, constantly making discoveries, 

 and in isTG undertook a third expedition to the East, which was to 

 be for him "a way without return." His last stay in Babylonia and 

 Assyria — full of exertions and trials, where, at the time, pest and 

 cholera were raging — exhausted the strength of the indefatigable 

 explorer. Accompanied by the English consul to Aleppo, he died 

 there on August 19, 1876, covered with glory, fallen like a hero on 

 the field of honor. 



The traveler setting out from Bagdad in the direction of the little 

 town of Hilla, traversing the plain which is spread out between the 

 twin rivers Euphrates and Tigris where they are nearest one another, 

 will, after passing many other moimds of ruins, arrive at a large one 

 covering 2 English miles, named Abu Habba. Wall and castle are 

 still clearly recognizable. ))ut the highest point of this site of ruins is 

 on the southwest side on the bank of a former arm of the Euphi-ates. 

 -When Kassam excavated here in 1881 he struck almost at once the 

 walls of a building. The inclosure of a large quadrangular structure, 

 1,500 feet long on the southwest side, was laid bare, and further 

 trenches and shafts showed that the edifices were grouped around a 

 central court, and consisted of a line of long narrow rooms with 

 exceptionally thick brick walls. In the interior of this structure a 

 pair of interesting rooms was discovered and freed from the debris. 

 At the excavating of a shaft that ran along a wall in the middle of 

 the mound a doorway was reached which led to a large gallery 100 



