SECTION OF ORIENTAL ANTIQUITIES. 97 



chosen people, on the sacred soil of man's earliest traditions, the tire- 

 less explorers unearthed extensive records of JSTebuchadnezzar and Bel- 

 shazzar, the account of the Tower of Babel, which the great Babylonian 

 king restored, the annals of Sennacherib, with his campaign against 

 Hezekiah of Judah. 



And of Sennacherib's father, Sargon, who led Israel into captivity, 

 monuments still more wonderful were in store for the explorer. Paul 

 fimile Botta, French consul at Mosul, between the years 1842 and 1845, 

 disinterred the entire residence of this great Assyrian king, including 

 temple, observatory, palace with the harem, store-houses, even the 

 bakery and the wine-cellar. From his trenches and tunnels the French 

 archaeologist saw himself transported, as by magic, to the magnificent 

 halls whence three thousand years ago half the world was ruled. He 

 beheld the awful figure of the conqueror of Samaria, seated on his 

 throne or standing in his chariot ; saw his vassals worshiping before 

 him, saw his exploits in war, his adventures in the chase, his banquets ; 

 he walked with the Assyrian gods and in the assembly of their priests, 

 and all that presented itself to his marveling eye was as vivid, as real, 

 as if Sargon's court had beeil qnickened from the dead. 



The fruits of these extensive excavations were transported in 1846 

 to France, where they now ornament the Paris Louvre. 



At about the same time Austen Henry Layard uncovered in the 

 mounds of Kouyundjik and Kebi Yunus, opposite Mosul, the site of 

 ancient Mneveh, palaces of Shalmaneser, Tiglathpileser, Sennacherib, 

 Esarhaddon, and Sardanapalus. Countless sculptures and inscriptions, 

 weapons, helmets, trappings, tools, weights, furniture, vases, jewels, 

 objects of bronze and ivory, were brought to light and transferred to 

 the last asylum of so many a lost race, the British Museum, filling there 

 five large galleries ; while before Layard's labors a case scarcely 3 feet 

 square inclosed all that remained, not only of the great city, Nineveh, 

 but of Babylon itself. 



In 1854 Hormuzd Eassam, working under Layard's directions, dis- 

 covered in a palace of Sardanapalus, at Nineveh, the greatest treas- 

 ure of Assyriology, the library of the last Assyrian king; thousands of 

 terra-cotta tablets, inscribed with minute cuneiform characters, con- 

 taining historical records and chronological statements ; letters, dis- 

 patches, reports, addresses, and petitions 5 deeds, bonds, and contracts; 

 hymns, psalms, prayers, songs, and proverbs; lists of gods and their 

 temples ; incantations, charms, and omen tablets ; lists of countries, 

 cities, rivers, canals, mountains, stars, animals, plants, minerals ; gram- 

 matical texts, including paradigms, vocabularies, list of characters, exer- 

 cises in both Assyrian and the language of the primitive inhabitants of 

 the country, the so-called Sumero- Akkadian; mathematical works, cal- 

 culations, tables of measures of length, of cube and square roots; as- 

 tronomical observations, calendars— every conceivable branch of litera- 

 %nve being represented. 



H. Mis. 142, pt. 2 7 



