April ii, 1901] 



NA TURE 



563 



that work of classification can ever become simple, for 

 the greatest difficulty will be experienced for years to 

 come in joining up the various fragments which go to 

 form a complete tablet. At the sacking of Nineveh by 

 the Medes, many of the tablets which were made and 

 collected with such care by Ashurbanipal appear to have 

 been wilfully broken, and fragments of them were scattered 

 in all directions ; some were destroyed by fire and others 

 crushed into dust. 



A visit to the Nineveh Gallery in the British Museum 

 will explain the difficulty to the reader in a few minutes, 

 for in the cases there will be seen exhibited several 

 tab'ets, or large portions of tablets, which are composed 

 entirely of little pieces which have been joined together 

 by the skill of generations of students of Assyriology. 

 There are examples in which three or four of the frag-^ 

 ments which help to form a tablet have been brought 

 home from Nineveh by three or four different "dis- 

 coverers," and many tablets must remain imperfect until 

 the pieces necessary to complete them have been brought 

 home from the ruins of the great palace at Nineveh, 

 where they still lie awaiting the spade of the excavator. 



The work of publishing the texts from the Nineveh 

 Library which was begun by Sir Henry Rawlinson 

 was carried on by Norris and Smith, and at a latep 

 period a number of foreign scholars began to publish works 

 which professed to give amended and correct versions 

 of some of their copies ; but all were unsatisfactory in 

 a greater or lesser degree, because the groups of texts 

 which were reproduced were incomplete. Every student 

 felt that he had not got all the existing materials for his 

 work before him, and that any result which he arrived 

 at one day might be upset the next by the identification 

 of a fragment hitherto unnoticed in the British Museum 

 collections. 



Matters went on in this fashion for some years, but 

 at length the late Sir Henry Rawlinson took the matter 

 up and brought before his fellow Trustees of the British 

 Museum the bold suggestion that a complete catalogue 

 of the Nineveh, or Konyunjik, Collection should be pre- 

 pared under their direction and issued by them as a 

 British Museum publication. There is no need to point 

 out here the leading part which the Trustees of the 

 British Museum have always taken in promoting the 

 interests of Assyriology ; but it may be said in passing 

 that, but for their powerful aid in advocating the import- 

 ance of the subject, and the publications of texts which 

 they have issued, practically regardless of cost, that 

 science could never have attained to the position it now 

 occupies, and its progress would have been retarded for 

 a generation. In accordance with their enlightened 

 policy, the Trustees decided to print the proposed cata- 

 logue of tablets, and the bulky work which we now have 

 before us is the result. 



The " Catalogue of the Cuneiform Tablets in the 

 Konyunjik Collection of the British Museum" was pre- 

 pared by Dr. C. Bezold, who is now professor of 

 Assyriology in the University of Heidelberg, and is the 

 author of some other works on his special subject. The 

 Catalogue fills five volumes, which were published in 

 1889, 1 89 1, 1893, 1896 and 1899 respectively, and con- 

 tains 1949 pages, large royal 8vo, of descriptions of 

 tablets ; 265 pages of "General Index" ; 154 pages of 

 "Index of Reference Numbers"; a Bibliography of 13 

 pages ; a brief Introduction of some 18 pages, besides 

 the lists of texts published in Rawlinson's great work, 

 "The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia," and 

 several pages of preliminary matter issued with each of 

 the first four volumes. The plan adopted by Dr. Bezold 

 is, first, to give the size of each tablet or fragment, and 

 to state, if a fragment, its position in the tablet of which 

 it once formed part, i.e. he tells the reader if the frag- 

 ment belongs to the top, middle, or bottom part of the 

 tablet. These remarks are followed by details concerning 



NO. 1 64 1, VOL. 63] 



the style of writing, its state of preservation, and notes 

 which will serve to identify it. Next we are usually told 

 what the contents of the tablet are, but if this is not 

 possible the general character of the inscription is clearly 

 indicated ; extracts from colophons, " catch-lines," &c., 

 are often given in the original cuneiform, as well as many 

 passages of importance from a linguistic or historical- 

 point of view. Last, but not by any means least in im- 

 portance. Dr. Bezold tells us under the description of 

 each document where the text has been published, or 

 quoted, or referred to, or translated, so that up to the 

 time of the publication of each volume the Catalogue was 

 not only a guide to the tablets, but also to the published 

 literature which related to it. At the end of each de- 

 scription we find given the number by which it is known 

 in the registers of the British Museum. 



An objection which will be made to the usefulness of 

 the work is that the tablets described are not arranged 

 in classes, but this may fairly be met by referring the 

 objector to the very full General Index, which we have 

 already mentioned, and its headings and subheadings. 

 Thus, under the heading "Letters" we have twenty- 

 seven closely printed columns of numbers, in which the 

 reader is told the number of nearly every letter and 

 report catalogued in the work and the page where the 

 description of each will be found ; the subheadings state 

 which letter refers to public and which to private affairs, 

 and the groups are usually very well and clearly defined. 

 With many subjects, however, the classification might 

 have been carried much further, and the subheadings 

 might have been multiplied with great benefit to every 

 student of the Catalogue ; on the other hand, the page 

 nuiTibers have nearly doubled the size of the Index, and 

 might with advantage to him have been omitted so far 

 as K numbers are concerned. 



We think the decision to print the descriptions under 

 the register numbers was a wise one, for beyond all doubt 

 it has tended to advance the progress of Assyriology, 

 and has materially aided students of Assyrian in both 

 hemispheres ; had it been decided to classify the tablets 

 and fragments before printing, it is doubtful if Dr. Bezold's 

 work would ever have seen the light. 



The boundaries between astrology and astronomy, and 

 magic and religion, and legend and history were so loosely 

 defined by the Assyrian savants that the student of today 

 is often sorely puzzled as to the class in which he should 

 group certain documents, and experience shows that his 

 doubts on the subject may be as far off from satisfaction 

 five years hence as they are to-day. 



In addition to the general contents of the volume 

 described above, mention must be made of the twelve 

 excellent plates, in which a number of cuneiform tablets 

 and fragments, selected chiefly for their forms and philo- 

 logical importance, have been reproduced by a photo- 

 graphic process. With the help of these and the remarks 

 which Dr. Bezold makes in his Introduction, the intelli- 

 gent reader will have no difficulty in gaining a good 

 general idea of the principal classes of tablets which are 

 to be found in the Nineveh Collection, and of their ap- 

 pearance, and with care he may even make some progress 

 in the difficult subject of palaeography. It will surprise 

 no one to learn that the student who has specialised in 

 any one small branch of Assyriology will be able to pick 

 holes in some parts of Dr. Bezold's work ; but in a pro- 

 gressive science like Assyriology this can never be avoided, 

 especially as the publication of the Catalogue extended 

 over a period of ten or eleven years. In fact. Dr. Bezold 

 has himself supplied, in the later volumes of his Cata- 

 logue, the information which has enabled others to modify 

 some of his statements and descriptions in the early parts 

 of his monumental publication. 



The space at our disposal will not admit of any even 

 approximately detailed account of the contents of Ashur- 

 banipal's great Library, but a general indication of the 



