16 The American Naturalist. [January, 
pile of brick and earth would require the united exertions of 2 
10,000 men for twelve years.” Then only could the construc- 
tion of the palaces begin! The mound of Nebbi-Yuma, 
which has not yet been excavated covers an area of forty acres 
and is loftier and steeper than its neighbor. The platform of © 
the principal mound of Mugheir (the “ Ur of the Chaldees y 
from which Abraham went forth) is faced with a wall ten feet 
thick, of red, kiln-dried bricks cemented with bitumen. 
The sub-structure of these mounds wes made up of rough 
bricks and rubbish, hence the inherent weakness of the whole 
structure. The heavy semi-tropical rains falling for weeks at 
a time soaked through the casing of fine bricks, and the foun- 
dation became a mass of yielding mud. The mighty palaces 
and temples upon which the Assyrian and Chaldean kings 
lavished all the resources of wealth, all the treasures of art, 
sank into sand-choked, shapeless heaps. But the treacherous 
clay could preserve, hidden from the prowling Arabs who ~ 
roam over this land of once mighty empires, priceless treas- 
ures of art and literature. Exquisite alabaster slabs, richly 
engraved, beautiful enamelled tiles forming colored friezes; 
the great human-headed bulls whose very discovery made the 
name of Layard famous; the life-like groups of lions and 
lionesses ; and incomparably more precious than all, the royal 
libraries formed by the great kings, have been preserved for. — 
centuries beneath these unsightly mounds. For the one avail- : 
able substance, clay, formed the almost imperishable material 
of which the Chaldean and Assyrian “ books” were made. 
In the great mound of Koyun-jik (Nineveh) Layard found 
the remains of two sumptuous palaces, the residences of Sen- 
nacherib and of his grandson Asshurbanipal, who lived some: — 
650 years B. C., two of the mightiest sovereigns and conquer- 
ors of the Eastern World. In Asshurbanipal’s palace the — 
explorer found two small chambers, containing a layer, more 
than a foot in height, of baked clay tablets, covered on both 
sides with cuneiform writings. Some were still entire, others 
ae ee a Se eS 
yokes 
teks 
whe Be 
in fragments. Layard filled many cases with the tablets, 2 
broken and unbroken; they were sent to England, and lay _ 
Five Monarchies. Rawlinson, Vol. 1, pp. 317-18. 
t 
