96 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



and Persian, so the inscriptions of the Aohsemeniaa kings were accom- 

 panied by parallel translations of the old Persian original, one for the 

 inhabitants of Susiaua, the Elam of Scriptnre, the other in a language 

 alcin to modern Arabic and the sacred tongue of the Old Testiment, rep- 

 resenting the speech of the Persian province of Assyria, formerly tlie 

 center of the great Mesopotamian empire, which had succumbed to the 

 Persian conquerors after the fall of Babylon. 



The trilingual inscriptions on the rock of Behistun are the foundation 

 of the grand edifice erected by Assyriology out of the rubbish of the 

 Assyrian palaces and the temples of Babylon. 



The decipherment of the old Persian wedge-writing in 1802, one of 

 the most remarkable achievements of modern science, due to the genius 

 of a young instructor at the college of Gottingen, George Frederick 

 Grotefend, made it possible to solve the mystery of the parallel versions, 

 ill the languages of Elam and Mesopotamia. 



At first the study of these texts in the intricate Assyro Babylonian 

 script promised but little reward. But suddenly the excavations in the 

 valley of the Euphrates and Tigris revealed numerous inscriptions ex- 

 hibiting the same system of writing, thus rewarding the decipherment of 

 the old Persian cuneiform texts in ^ way not dreamed of. Stamped on 

 bricks in the walls of the building, buried on clay prisms and barrel 

 cylinders, in the foundations of temples and palaces, spread over marble 

 and alabaster slabs, on the floors and walls of the royal apartments, 

 carved on statues, obelisks, and colossal chei-ubim, inscriOed on terra- 

 cotta tablets, gathered into extensive libraries — a new literature, almost 

 boundless in its extent and scope, was recovered from the ruins of ages. 



Nineveh, the great stronghold on the Tigris, founded by Mmrod, the 

 mighty hunter before the Lord 5 Nineveh, of which the Prophet Nahum 

 said that she was full of men like a pool full of water, her merchants 

 multiplied above the stars of heaven; Nineveh, the abode of Shalmane- 

 ser, Sennacherib, Sardanapalus, whence poured forth over all western 

 Asia the irresistible Assyrian hosts like swarms of locusts ; Nineveh, 

 which seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth, a desolation 

 for beasts to lie down in, was awakened to new life by the spade of the 

 explorer and the penetration of the decipherers. The authentic witnesses 

 of old Assyrian history and culture were freed from their subterraneous 

 dungeon, their tongues loosened to living words. 



As at the beginning of this century the sepulchres of the Pharaohs liad 

 disclosed their secrets, so the palaces of Nineveh, the walls and towers 

 of Babel, arose from the ruins beneath which they had lain buried for 

 more than two thousand years. In the valley of the Euphrates and 

 Tigris, which had watered Paradise, the abode of the first parents of 

 mankind, where the great flood burst forth, where Nimrod founded his 

 first kingdom, where the great Tower of Babel stood, whence the Lord 

 confounded the language of mankind, scattering them abroad over the 

 face of the whole earth, in the home of Abraham, the birth-place of the 



