ANCIENT BABYLONIAN 

 ASTROGONY. 



IT is singular to consider how short a time elapsed, after 

 writings in the arrow-headed or cuneiform letters (the Keil- 

 schriften of the Germans) were discovered, before, first, the 

 power of interpreting them was obtained, and, secondly, the 

 range of the cuneiform literature (so to speak) was recognized. 

 Not more than ninety years have passed since the first speci- 

 mens of arrow-headed inscriptions reached Europe. They 

 had been known for a considerable time before this. 

 Indeed, it has been supposed that the Assyrian letters 

 referred to by Herodotus, Thucydides, and Pliny, were in this 

 character. Delia Valle and Figueroa, early in the seven- 

 teenth century, described inscriptions in arrow-headed letters, 

 and hazarded the idea that they are to be read from left to 

 right But no very satisfactory evidence was advanced to 

 show whether the inscriptions were to be so read, or from 

 right to left, or, as Chardin suggested, in vertical lines. The 

 celebrated Olaus Gerhard Tychsen, of Rostock, and other 

 German philologists, endeavoured to decipher the specimens 

 which reached Europe towards the end of the last century ; 

 but their efforts, though ingenious and zealous, were not 

 rewarded with success. In 1801 Dr. Hager advanced the 

 suggestion that the combinations formed by the arrow-heads 

 did not represent letters but words, if not entire sentences. 

 Lichtenstein, on the other hand, maintained that the letters 

 belonged to an old form of the Arabic or Coptic character \ 



