98 EEPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



While thirty years ago there was hardly an ancient monarchy shrouded 

 in deeper obscurity than the Meso[)otamian Empire, we are now more 

 familiar with the Assyrians than with any other nation of the ancient 

 East. 



After Layard's return from Mesopotamia the excavations were con- 

 tinued by Sir Henry Rawlinson, the geologist William Kenuet Loftus, 

 and the British vice-consul at Basra, John E. Taylor. 



Loftus uncovered the ruins of Warka, the Erech of Nimrod, and Sen- 

 kereh, the ancient Larsa or Ellassar, whose king, Arioch, was smitten by 

 Abraham in the Vale of Siddim. And in the ancient Babylonian home 

 of Abraham, Ur of the Chaldees, the present Mugheir, John E. Taylor 

 disinterred the great temple of the Moon-God. In the four corners of 

 the sanctuary he discovered four copies of the famous cylinder inscrip- 

 tion in which the last king of Babylon, Nabonidus, prays to the Moon- 

 God to fix the awe of his great divinity firmly in the heart of the king's 

 first-born son, Belshazzar, that he may never fall into sin. 



But these sites of South Babylonia are still virgin soil ; Loftus and 

 Taylor had neither the time nor the necessary assistance to undertake 

 systematic researches. Since 1854, when Taylor spent two weeks at 

 Mugheir, Ur of the Chaldees has not been visited by a single explorer. 



While Loftus and Taylor were engaged at Erech and Ur, the French 

 Government sent an expedition to Babylonia under the direction of 

 Fresnel, the architect Thomas, and the young German orientalist, Julius 

 Oppert, at present the most distinguished Assyriologist of France, 

 whose works on the Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions were afterwards 

 rewarded by the great national prize of 20,000 francs, as " the discover}^ 

 which had brought France the highest honor and the greatest profit." 

 The French expedition remained in Babylonia for three years, making 

 especially a thorough topographical survey of the rnins; but the price- 

 less collection of antiquities, including cylinders, urns, and alabaster 

 vases, statues, gold and silver objects, was sunk in the waters of the 

 Tigris on the 23d of May, 1855, owing to a deplorable accident, or, as 

 others termed it, sheer carelessness and mismanagement, while Julius 

 Oppert pleasantly speaks of these antiquities as " the collection of 

 which the river Tigris has made itself the temporary curator." 



'New interest was excited in 1872, when the clever young English 

 Assyriologist, George Smith, discovered the cuneiform account of the 

 Deluge. Among the fragments from the library of Sardanapalus treas- 

 ured up in the British Museum he lighted ui)on half of a curious terra- 

 cotta tablet containing the words "the ship rested upon the mountain of 

 Nizir ; then I sent forth a dove,- the dove went and returned, and finding 

 no resting place, she came back to the ship." He recognized at once 

 that he had found a portion of the Chaldean account of the Flood, and 

 with unwearied patience he set himself to search for the remainder of 

 the story. He succeeded in obtaining quite a number of additional frag- 

 ments, and made out that the Flood tablet formed the episode of a great 



