EGYPTOLOGICAL AND ASSYEIOLOGICAL RESEARCH. 



263 



notation can be accurately fixed in many cases 

 to within a few years. In this respect they 

 are of much .greater value than the texts of the 

 Egyptians, who, so far as appears from any of 

 their documents yet discovered, seem to have 

 had no historical sense. The contract tablets, 

 commonly known as the Egibi tablets, extend- 

 ing from the first year of the reign of Nebu- 

 chadnezzar II to the reign of Darius Hystas- 

 pis, give an almost unbroken series of dates, 

 which are in nearly precise agreement with 

 the corresponding dates furnished by the canon 

 of Ptolemy. Among the more recent discov- 

 eries is a document containing a list of about 

 two hundred of the earliest kings of Babylonia, 

 beginning with the first kings after the flood, 

 and apparently corresponding, to a certain ex- 

 tent, with the first six or seven dynasties of 

 Berosus. Investigations at Tel-loh, the Zirgul 

 of antiquity, by M. de Sarzec and Mr. Hormuzd 

 Rassam, working independently of each other, 

 have brought to light relics of kings of the 

 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries before 

 Christ, and statues and inscriptions indicating 

 that the earlier period of Chaldean art was 

 better than the later, or Assyrian period. A 

 tablet found here, a copy of the original work, 

 gives a synchronous history of Assyria and 

 Babylonia, relating the occasions when, either 

 for peace or war, the rival monarchies came 

 into contact, and enables us to determine the 

 dates of their kings and to reconcile some dis- 

 crepancies that seemed to exist in other lists. 

 The events treated of in this document occurred 

 between 1400 and 891 B. c. At Aboo-haba, 

 about sixteen miles southwest of Bagdad, Mr. 

 Rassam has discovered the ruins of Sippara, 

 the seat of the sun-god worship, one of the 

 most ancient cities of Babylonia, and the place 

 where, according to the story of the deluge as 

 related by Berosus, Xisuthrus buried the tab- 

 lets giving the account of the flood, and "the 

 history of the beginning, progress, and end of 

 all things." Here Mr. Rassam was so fortu- 

 nate as to find, almost at the beginning of his 

 investigations, the temple of the sun-god itself, 

 and within it a memorial stone bearing figures 

 emblematic of the sun-worship, and inscrip- 

 tions, among which were the words, "To the 

 Sun-god, the great lord, dwelling in Bit-Parra, 

 which is within the city of Sippara." The 

 stone is dated in the reign of Nabupaliddina, of 

 the ninth century B. c., and speaks of the de- 

 struction of the original temple by invaders 

 called the Sutu ; then relates that Simas Sigu, 

 the fortieth in the list of two hundred early 

 kings already referred to, commenced its res- 

 toration, and that the work was carried on by 

 another monarch, E-Ulbar-Sakin-Sumi, or E- 

 Ulbargarmu, but that it remained for Nabu- 

 paliddina finally to destroy the Sutu and com- 

 plete the building. The stone seems afterward 

 to have been broken, and repaired and inclosed 

 in an earthen box, in which Mr. Rassam found 

 it, probably in the time of Nabpolasar, and the 

 temple to have been subsequently repaired and 



adorned by Nabonidus, who placed in it clay 

 cylinders recording the event. The monuments 

 found here indicate the existence of another 

 city of Sippara, called Sippara Anat, which Mr. 

 Rassam also probably identified, and the twin 

 cities are believed to correspond with the Se- 

 pharvaim of the Bible. In the mounds of Hubi 

 Ibrahim, or Tel Ibrahim, some ten miles east 

 of Babylon, Mr. Rassam found the ruins of the 

 city of Cutha, the chief literary and scholastic 

 center of the Babylonians, whence came the 

 " men of Cutha," who were placed in Samaria 

 by the Assyrian conquerors (2 Kings, xvii, 24, 

 31), and identified there the great temple of 

 the war-god Nergal, "the god of Cutha" of 

 the book of Kings, and his consort Laz. One 

 of the cylinders deposited by Nabonidus in the 

 temple at Sippara, when he made repairs in it, 

 as related above, bears inscriptions in which 

 occurs a statement that when burrowing be- 

 neath the temple, forty-five years after Nebu- 

 chadnezzar had sought for the ancient cylin- 

 ders in vain, he had had revealed to him "the 

 cylinder of Naramsin, son of Sargon, which for 

 3,200 years no king going before me had seen." 

 These 3,200 years added to the date of Nabo- 

 nidus, say B. o. 550, would give for the date of 

 Naramsin, B. o. 3750, two thousand years ear- 

 lier than the date assigned to him by Mr. George 

 Smith, and about 1,600 years earlier than the 

 earliest date previously definitely specified in 

 the cuneiform inscriptions. The inscriptions 

 of the time of Gudea, one of the earliest 

 monarchs whose statues were found at Telloh, 

 or Zirgul, show that a lively intercourse al- 

 ready existed in his remote time between 

 Chaldea and Egypt. 



THE HITTITES. Much advance has been 

 made within three years in the knowledge of 

 the Hittites, of whom little had been known 

 except what was suggested in a few brief ref- 

 erences in the Bible and in the Egyptian ac- 

 counts of their Asiatic wars, where they are 

 called the Kheta. The Hittites have been 

 proved, however, to have been a very consid- 

 erable nation in the ages previous to the Tro- 

 jan war, who probably played as important a 

 part in the history of the world as the Assyri- 

 ans or Egyptians, and of whom Brugsch, call- 

 ing them a " powerful and cultivated people," 

 says that " their rule in the highest antiquity 

 was of an importance which we can now only 

 guess at." They were at times among the most 

 formidable enemies with whom the Egyptians 

 had to contend ; at other times their valuable 

 allies. The first regular treaty of which there 

 is a record, and of which a copy is preserved, 

 was between their king and Rameses II, and 

 contained provisions worthy of the highest 

 civilization of modern times. The study of 

 their monuments, of which the formerly puz- 

 zling and wholly unintelligible inscriptions, 

 called the Hamath inscriptions, were a part, 

 and of other contemporary records, has shown 

 that their empire, or their influence, formerly 

 extended from their southern capital at Ka- 



