492 Literary Intelligence. [No. 5. 



— On the clay tablets, indeed, which we have found at Nineveh, and 

 which are now to be counted by thousands, there are explanatory 

 treatises on almost every subject under the sun, the art of writing, 

 grammars, and dictionaries, notation, weights and measures, divisions 

 of time, chronology, astronomy, geography, history, mythology, 

 geology, botany, &c. In fact we have now at our disposal a perfect 

 cyclopaedia of Assyrian science, and shall probably be able to trace 

 all Greek knowledge to this source." 



Extract of a Letter from Col. Eawlison to Mr. Grote, dated, 



Baghdad, 5th July, 1853. 



" Tou will have seen probably in the Anniversary Beport of the 

 London Society, a brief account of my late proceedings, but I may 

 be able to add a few details of interest that have not yet been pub- 

 lished. The comparative modernicity of the Assyrian Empire is 

 now established beyond all cavil. I have obtained almost a complete 

 list of Kings numbering about thirty from the fall of Neneveh, late 

 in the 7th century b. c. to the institution of the Empire in the 

 middle of the 13th century. Previously to that date Assyria was 

 subject to Babylonia, and as materials accumulate, we should be 

 able, I think, to turn up Babylonian history, through the various 

 dynasties noted by Berosus to the real starting point of Western- 

 Asiatic Empire, in the 23rd century before the Christian^era. I do 

 not expect to ascend higher than that period, except through ethnic 

 affinities and mythological tradition, sources of evidence which 

 should be used very cautiously, but which, in this case, I can already 

 plainly see will bring the subject into immediate connection with 

 the 10th chapter of Genesis. The labour, however, required to bring 

 out these results is immense. It would take a person at least ten 

 years nearly, to copy all the curious MSS. documents now at our 

 disposal, forming the debris of the Eoyal Library at Mneveh ; and 

 in the mean time wherever we dig, fresh tablets are being brought 

 to light, so that our stores of information are likely to increase 

 indefinitely. "With regard to the mechanism of this enquiry, I must 

 also inform you that if you merely looked to my preliminary disserta- 

 tion in the B. A. S. Journal, you would have a very imperfect 

 idea of the extent or condition of the Alphabet. Later researches 

 have furnished me with above a thousand distinct characters, and 



