100 EEPOKT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



research, Hormuzd Rassam, who had assisted Sir Austen Henry Layard 

 at the discover}^ of Mneveh in 1845, was designated by the British 

 Museum to conduct the excavations. 



Since then he has three times revisited the Mesopotamian sites, mak- 

 ing new discoveries of great importance. In Nimrud, the site of the 

 ancient Chalah, he excavated a great temple of King Assurnagirpal, 

 the father of Shalmaneser II, and 9 miles northeast of Mneveh he suc- 

 ceeded in disinterring the famous bronze ornaments from the palace 

 gates of Balawat. In the east part of the mound of Balawat he un- 

 earthed another temple of King Assurna§irpal. Near the altar was 

 found an alabaster coffer containing two alabaster tablets, a third stone 

 tablet with the same inscription being deposited on the altar. The 

 discovery called forth a tremendous excitement in Mosul and the sur- 

 rounding villages. Like wild fire the rumor spread that the Mosaic 

 stone tables of the Covenant had been brought to light; just as the 

 Arabs, when the first colossal head of one of the winged bulls was un- 

 earthed in 1845, came running to Sir Henry Layard, urging their mares 

 to the top of their speed, and exclaiming : " Hasten, Bey; hasten to the 

 diggers, for they have found Nimrod himself. Wallah, it is wonderful, 

 but it is true ; we have seen him with our own eyes. La ildha ilia Imwa; 

 there is no God but He, the living, the eternal." During his last expe- 

 dition, undertaken in the years 1880-'8L and extending over eighteen 

 months, Eassam discovered the archives of the ancient temple of the 

 Sun-God of Sippar, the Biblical Sepharvaim, one of the oldest Baby- 

 lonian cities, where the god Ea, or Kronos, bade the Chaldean Koah 

 bury the records of the time before the Flood. 



Excavating in the ruins of Sippar, now represented by the site of 

 Abu-Habbah, midway between Babylon and Bagdad, he came across a 

 great square edifice, and beneath the floor of one of the rooms he dis- 

 covered an alabaster coffer with numerous tablets, one of them contain- 

 ing a curious sculpture representing the Holy of Holies, the Sun-God 

 seated on a magnificent throne ornamented with cherubim, and grasp- 

 ing in his hand a short wand and ring, the symbol of eternity. 



Rassam also examined again the palaces of Sennacherib at Nineveh, 

 recovering from the ruined library more than fourteen hundred new terra- 

 cotta fragments- And in one of the walls of the palace he found a new 

 decagon or clay prism, more than a cubit high, and containing in twelve 

 hundred lines of cuneiform writing the annals of the last great king of 

 Assyria, Sardanapalus. In the northeast corner of ^he terrace of the 

 tower of Babel he discovered the palace occupied by Nabonidus during 

 the siege of Babylon by Cyrus, and the British Museum subsequently 

 acquired the cuneiform annals of the last Babylonian king, relating to 

 the capture of Babylon by Cyrus and the events which preceded and led 

 to it. Amongst many other things brought by Rassam from the excava- 

 tions at Babylon, for instance a bronze door-sill whose metal even now 

 represents a value of more than $400, there was also a clay cylinder of 



