197 
had a number of copies made of the same history, and buried 
the objects on which they were written in different parts of 
the building, in order that if the palace were burnt down the 
Royal records would be preserved. Had this cylinder and 
many others not been thus secured they would doubtless have 
met with the same fate as others whose pieces are found scattered 
all over the different palaces and also in the fields. These 
historical cylinders are of different sizes and shapes; some 
are divided into sis, eight, or ten sides or panels, and some 
are oblong, but the one I found in the palace of Sardanapalus 
was the largest that has yet been discovered. Other records, . 
such as astronomical observations, invocations or hymns, 
legends, contracts, and official deeds, were impressed on dif- 
ferent sized terra-cotta tablets the same as the Creation and 
Deluge ones. The arrowheads, or characters, must have been 
impressed by a small wedge tool before the terra-cotta objects 
were baked, and the characters are so beautifully and exactly 
formed that one would think that the whole was done by 
one stroke of a stamp. It must be very pleasing to the 
Christian as well as the student to find that both sacred and 
profane histories have been very much verified by the dis- 
covery of these records on terra-cotta and other Assyrian 
writings. We read in Ezekiel, who prophesied on the river 
Chebar (Khaboor), that he was commanded to take a tile 
and lay it before him and pourtray upon it the city, even 
Jerusalem ; and we are also told that Calisthenes was in- 
formed by the Chaldean priests that they kept their astro- 
nomical observations on bricks baked in the furnace. 
33. I had a great difficulty in digging out these historical 
relics, because, before I could penetrate to the bottom of 
the chambers where these objects were found, I had some- 
times to dig through 30 or 40 feet of debris , which had accu- 
mulated since the destruction of the buildings by modern 
occupiers of the mound and different explorers. Since I under- 
took the last two expeditions I worked on systematically, by 
either throwing away the rubbish far away from the site I 
intended to excavate, or having a few chambers cleared out 
altogether without even leaving a wall, and then worked 
round the heap in the centre. By this method there is no 
fear now of wasting our time or money, or losing any relic 
which might have been missed in the removal of the rubbish 
from place to place as was done formerly. 
34. The excavations at Nimroud, generally speaking, are 
not very deep, as they are at Koyunjik; because in some places 
at the former mound we had only to dig 1 ft. or 2 ft. and 
VOL, XIV. P 
