Koldewey and Andrae did not however confine their attention to the ruined mounds of Babylonia, but in 1903 commenced excavations at Ḳalat Sherḳat, the site of Ashur, Assyria’s ancient capital, and the name of the god from whom Assyria derives her name. As early as 1852 Sir Henry Layard had conducted excavations on this site, the chief tangible result of which was the discovery of Tiglath-Pileser I’s clay cylinders, though fragments of bas-reliefs and other inscriptions were also discovered here both by Layard and Rassam. Shalmaneser I (circ. 1300 B.C.) had transferred the seat of his government from Ashur to Calah, but his successor Tukulti-Ninib (circ. 1275 B.C.) restored the capital of the empire to Ashur. The mounds which mark the site of this ancient city are to a great extent of natural formation (cf. Pl. VIII), thereby differing from most of the ruined mounds in Mesopotamia, which owe their existence to artificial formation. From September 1903 to April 1904 operations were of a tentative character and consisted of trial trenches, but in April 1904 the Germans commenced excavating the large mound of mud-brick, the ziggurat, the eastern plateau, and the large court of Ashur’s temple, part of the fortification-wall also receiving attention, while the main work centred round the palace-buildings of Shalmaneser I (circ. 1300 B.C.). The great temple of Ashur, built or restored by Ushpia, an early ruler of the city who antedates Irishum, is situated in the north-east corner, and it adjoins the palace of Shalmaneser I. The ziggurat or stage-tower lies to the west-south-west, and the palace of Ashur-naṣir-pal adjoins the temple of Anu and Adad, which would appear to be the best preserved building in Ashur. Various other buildings have been discovered, of which the temple of Nebo and the palace of Tukulti-Ninib I (circ. 1275 B.C.) may be specially mentioned. Numerous graves were found of various kinds, those with brick walls being undoubtedly Assyrian. Many valuable historical inscriptions were found, while the discovery of a wall-decoration consisting of a series of rosettes was another interesting result. The so-called “Mushlala” of Adad-nirari I (circ. 1325 B.C.), according to whom it formed a part of the temple of Ashur, was found to be identical with that restored by Sennacherib with “mountain-stone,” and afterwards repaired by Esarhaddon (681-668 B.C.) with “pîlu”-stone. The foundations of the building situated at the southern side of the eastern plateau proved to be of very great depth, while the plan of the building itself is said to closely resemble the early Babylonian type. The temple of Ashur the great lord of Assyria is alluded to by Irishum, king of Assyria (circ. 2000 B.C.), by Shamshi-Adad who calls himself builder of the temple of Ashur, by Adad-nirari and by Shalmaneser I. In Shalmaneser I’s reign it was destroyed by fire, and that king undertook its restoration. An inscription of Tiglath-Pileser II informs us that he decorated the temple with enamelled bricks. Some of these inscriptions were found “in situ” thus fixing the precise locus of Ashur’s famous shrine. The temple was situated at the extreme north of the city, three of its sides overlooking the open country and the fourth over-towered by the ziggurat. Remains of Shalmaneser’s work have been found in the foundation and pavement constructed by that king, and some of the enamelled bricks which decorated the buildings of Sargon have also been recovered, while the pavement of the great court, as well as pieces of enamelled brick and the clay cones of Tiglath-Pileser II have been brought to light. The temple itself was originally high above the level of the street. A second smaller ziggurat was further found, which proved to be a part of the temple of Anu and Adad, and the work of three distinct periods has been traced in this structure.29 Of interesting relics here unearthed, we may specifically mention a three-pronged thunderbolt of wood sheathed with gold.

The remains of various palaces have been unearthed including those of Adad-nirari and Shalmaneser I, and the royal residence of Tukulti-Ninib has been also excavated. Many tablets were recovered, and a pot containing 113 unbaked clay tablets was also brought to light: the tablets are written in a script characteristic of the time of Tiglath-Pileser I, and are chiefly concerned with receipts for cattle. Much pottery was unearthed, together with a variety of objects including some Roman imperial coins of the second century. The northern part of the city was that which was favoured by the Assyrian kings, and accordingly contains the remains of several temples and palaces, but the ruins of private houses are perhaps of even greater interest than the palaces of kings and the abodes of the gods. They are small in size, but were evidently carefully drained. Within the houses a number of graves were discovered, apparently belonging to the same period as the houses themselves. In many cases the excavators state that they found clear traces of cremation in the graves. Seven distinctly different kinds of graves were found at Ashur—vaults, clay sarcophagi, baked clay trays placed over the corpse, jars, brick graves, potsherd graves, and earth graves. The vaults30 are of various shapes and dimensions, are made of burnt brick, and consist generally of a fairly spacious chamber and an entrance shaft. The bodies—always more than one in each vault—lay on the floor in a contracted position, surrounded with drinking vessels of every description, and in all cases there was a small niche for a lamp. The clay sarcophagi show even greater varieties, including jars into which the bodies were pressed, and tubs both high and short into which the corpse was placed in a seated position, while both of these classes comprise many different types.

Another class of jar-burial, known as the “capsule,” consisted in two jars drawn over the feet and head respectively and pressed together till they met, thus forming a “capsule.” The Brick-graves were practically Brick-sarcophagi, the graves being built coffin-wise, but few of these have been found. The Potsherd graves are so called from the use of potsherds to cover the corpse. Apparently these various methods of burial coexisted at the same time, and they accordingly cannot be classified into periods, as is the case to some extent in early Egypt.

The year 1908 saw the excavation of the temple erected in honour of the god Nebo at Ashur by Sin-shar-ishkun, the last king of Assyria (circ. 615 B.C.).31 The general ground-plan of this late Assyrian temple was found to correspond to that of the Anu-Adad temple, and also to that of the temple built by Sargon at Khorsabad.32 Numerous stelæ and other monuments of stone were recovered from the ruins of Ashur; they include a basalt stele of Tukulti-Ninib,33 a stele of Tiglath-Pileser III, and another of Ashur-resh-ishi II,34 a limestone stele of Ashur-naṣir-pal, an alabaster stele with the representation of a king adoring a god and goddess, which in some way resembles the Bavian relief of Sennacherib,35 and fragments of a diorite sculpture36 with small figures recalling the style of art characteristic of the Khammurabi period. The interest of these monuments is chiefly centred in the inscriptions which throw new light upon the number and order of the Assyrian kings.

Meanwhile the Americans, whose excavations in Babylonia had been inaugurated with so much promise, had again taken the field. On Christmas day 1903 an expedition sent out by the Oriental Exploration Fund of the University of Chicago, under the directorship of Professor R. F. Harper (E. J. Banks as field-director) commenced excavations at Bismâya, the name of a group of mounds situated between the Tigris and Euphrates, and due south of Bagdad. The mounds are very extensive, measuring about a mile in length and half a mile in breadth, but their altitude is very low compared with that of other mounds, such as Erech, Nippur (cf. Pl. X) or Borsippa. The temple was the first building at Bismâya to receive attention, partly owing to the fact that it happened to be concealed beneath one of the loftiest of the Bismayân mounds, and partly because the general shape of the mound suggested the possible existence of a stage-tower beneath its ruined débris. Trenches dug on all sides of the mound towards the centre soon revealed the lower storey of one of these temple towers, the second storey of which had disappeared, though some of the burnt bricks which formed its outer casing were found lying about. The surviving lower stage consisted in crude bricks and clay, but was provided with a facing of burnt brick some four feet thick. Many of these casing bricks were inscribed with the name of Dungi, king of Ur (circ. 2400 B.C.). Beneath the bricks of Dungi was found another layer of burnt bricks, some of which bore the name of Ur-Engur, Dungi’s immediate predecessor on the throne of Ur. Of small objects unearthed, the three most interesting were a thin strip of gold found about two feet below the baked bricks of Dungi, and bearing the name of the renowned Nârâm-Sin, the son of Shar-Gâni-sharri of Agade, and the second was a small white marble statuette found at no great distance from the strip of gold, and conforming to the style of art characteristic of the age of Narêm-Sin, while the third was another marble statue belonging to the earliest Sumerian period, and closely resembling those excavated in the lowest strata at Tellô (Lagash). This statue (cf. Fig. 32) is probably unique as a statue in the round belonging to so early a period, and is especially noticeable for the fact that the arms are in this case entirely free from the body, and carved altogether in the round.

Just below the place where the gold of Narâm-Sin was recovered, large bricks about 18 inches square and belonging to the age of Shar-Gâni-sharri were found, while numerous inscriptions of this same king were forthcoming from some of the other mounds at Bismâya. Beneath the large Sargonic bricks there was a layer of thin oblong and finger-marked bricks, while lower still, some five feet below the surface, small plano-convex bricks set in bitumen were brought to light.

A great number of vase fragments made of marble, porphyry, granite, alabaster and onyx, together with innumerable objects made of ivory, mother of pearl, metal and stone were found round about the temple tower.

In regard to the temple itself, an entrance was discovered on the south-east side, the principal remaining features of which were the marble gate-socket supported on two slabs of pink marble. At the south corner, an oval-shaped room was brought to light, which was once covered with a dome-shaped roof. But the base of the temple tower had depths even below the stratum containing the small plano-convex bricks, which yet remained to be fathomed.

Some sixteen or seventeen feet below the surface a large metal spike (cf. Fig. 40) terminating in a lion’s head was recovered, while much lower still, about thirty-nine to forty feet below the level of the mound a number of fragments of wheel-made black pottery were revealed. The date of this wheel-made pottery is of course unknown, but judging from the depth at which it was found, Dr. Banks, the Field-director of the expedition, suggests a date of 10,000 B.C. In the same year (1903) in which these successful excavations were being carried on at Bismâya, Nineveh, the ruined mounds of which once-famous city had already yielded such a rich harvest to the great pioneers in the field of Mesopotamian exploration, received further attention at the hands of the Trustees of the British Museum, who sent out an expedition under Messrs. L. W. King and R. C. Thompson, with a view to the further excavation of the Kouyunjik mound. The principal result of the excavations carried on there between the years 1903 and 1905 was the discovery of the site of Nabû’s temple, which had however been so ruthlessly destroyed—presumably by the Elamites—that no complete plan of the temple could be made.

Meanwhile the excavations at Tellô (Lagash) which had been brought suddenly to an end by the death of the brilliant French excavator (M. de Sarzec) in May, 1901, were resumed in January, 1903, under the directorship of Captain Gaston Cros. The principal fresh discovery made was a massive fortification wall built by Gudea (circ. 2450 B.C.). It is about thirty-two and a half feet thick, and in places is still in position to the height of twenty-six feet. Captain Cros also excavated a large rectangular building, and brought to light various objects of interest, including implements of flint and copper, together with a brick-stamp of Narâm-Sin, which latter may be regarded as evidence that building operations were carried on in Lagash by a Semitic king of Agade during the period of Semitic supremacy.

THE first person to bring reports of cuneiform inscriptions to Europe was Pietro della Valle, an Italian belonging to a Roman family of noble birth. In the years 1614-26 he made a journey to Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, Persia and India, and published an account of his travels in 1650, but the first communication of his discovery of cuneiform inscriptions at Persepolis was contained in a letter written from Shiraz and dated October 21st, 1621. Josafat Barbaro at the end of the fifteenth century had already taken notice of the strange signs found on the monuments at Persepolis, but Pietro della Valle was the first to suspect that the inscriptions were something more than mere decorative incisions on the rock. But though Pietro della Valle had made copies of a few of the inscriptions on the walls of the ruined palaces of Persepolis as early as 1621, to Chardin (1674) belongs the honour of making the first copy of a complete cuneiform inscription, the so-called “Window-Inscription,” the shortest of the trilingual Achaemenian inscriptions, and his copy is to be found in the account of his travels (published 1711). This same inscription was copied in 1694 by Kampfer, who also copied the Babylonian text of the “H” inscription found at Persepolis, and who was the first to adopt the term “cuneiform.” In the work which he published in 1712 he discusses whether the unknown script is alphabetic, syllabic, or ideographic, and decides in favour of the last. In 1701, the Dutchman De Bruin commenced his travels: he devoted the year 1704 to an examination of the ruins at Persepolis and ten years later he published two new trilingual inscriptions in addition to an Old Persian and a Babylonian inscription, but to copy was one thing and to decipher was quite another, and well nigh a century elapsed before any real progress was made towards the unravelling of these cryptic signs, and the reconstruction of the languages which they embodied. In 1762 the inscription on the Vase of Xerxes found by Count Caylus was published, and a quadrilingual inscription of this king was published the same year. In 1765 Carsten Niebuhr, a Dane, copied several Achaemenian inscriptions at Persepolis, and pointed out that the first of the three columns on each of the trilingual inscriptions that had been found, contained only forty-two varieties of cuneiform characters from which he surmised rightly that the system in the first column was neither ideographic (each sign representing a word), nor syllabic (each sign representing a syllable), but alphabetic. From 1798 onwards, Tychsen and Münter, also a Dane, carried on the work begun by Niebuhr, and published their results in 1802. Münter had correctly guessed that the ubiquitous diagonal wedge diagonal wedge served to separate the words from each other, and one word which occurred at the beginning of each inscription, he rightly adjudged to be the word for “king.” In the meantime the Zend37 language of the later Zoroastrian faith had been rediscovered, and with the aid of it, de Sacy had been able to decipher the Pehlevi38 inscriptions. Now only the older Persian inscriptions of the Achaemenian kings awaited interpretation. In 1802 G. Friedrich Grotefend, of Hanover, a schoolmaster by profession, entered the field, and by the following process of reasoning he became the pioneer discoverer of part of the Persian cuneiform alphabet, and the first decipherer of a complete cuneiform inscription. Old writers had provided him with the all-important information that the palaces of Persepolis, amid the ruins of which so many of these cuneiform inscriptions had been found, were built by the Achaemenian kings. The Pehlevi inscriptions moreover, which had also been found on this site and had been deciphered by de Sacy, led him to expect that the cuneiform inscriptions would contain something analogous. Grotefend had already satisfied himself that the inscriptions read from left to right, and selecting two short inscriptions, one engraved on a gate-post of a building on the second palace-terrace, and the other engraved on the wall of a building on the third palace-terrace at Persepolis, he commenced his successful investigations. Both inscriptions contained the group of signs which Münter had already rightly inferred represented “king,” though what was the Persian for “king” remained as yet unknown, the only difference being that in Inscription I “king” was preceded by a group of signs which may be conveniently designated “X,” while in Inscription II “king” is preceded by a group of signs which may be called “Y,” and that moreover in Inscription II “X” and the word for “king” following it occurred after the “Y” + “king.” In I on the other hand “X” + “king” was followed by another group of signs which may be labelled “Z,” without however the usual accompanying “king.”

From this, Grotefend concluded that the groups of signs “X” “Y” and “Z” represented proper names, and that as “X” and “Y” were accompanied by “king,” they must be king’s names, and lastly Achaemenian kings’ names, for ancient writers stated that these palaces at Persepolis were built by Achaemenian kings, and furthermore their position suggested that these proper names must stand in genealogical relation to each other. In I “X” must be the son of “Z,” and in II “Y” must be the son of “X”; “X” and “Y” are accompanied with the sign for “king,” “Z” is not, therefore “Z” the father of “X” is not a king, and consequently “X” is presumably the founder of the dynasty. But apart from this hypothesis, some of the names of the five kings composing the (fortunately) short Achaemenian Dynasty—Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes—were at once ruled out of court: thus Cyrus and Cambyses were out of the question, for “X” and “Y” did not commence with the same cuneiform letter (it must be remembered that it had already been rightly assumed that the system was an alphabetic one), and moreover Cyrus’ father and son were both named Cambyses, and accordingly if “X” were Cyrus then “Y” and “Z” should be the same, which they are not. Cyrus and Artaxerxes were likewise disqualified, as there was no such discrepancy in the length of the words, there thus remained only Darius and Xerxes to be considered, and as “X’s” father “Z” is not called king, and it is further known that Hystaspes the father of Darius is not styled “king” by the classical writers, “X” was rightly assumed to be Darius. Having ascertained the oldest forms of the names of the Achaemenian kings in question from the classical writers, and Hebrew and Persian literature, he applied these forms to the groups of cuneiform signs which he had been led to believe they represented, and he found the respective groups contained the same number of individual signs as the proper names in question contained letters, and for

But “Y,” which on his hypothesis should be Xerxes, was not quite so easy to explain. He already knew the values of four or five of the seven signs composing group “Y,” and these known values occurred in the order he expected, but the first and third signs in the group remained to be dealt with. Grotefend observed that the first sign was the same as the first sign of the group correctly guessed by Münter to represent “king”: he ascertained that the Greek letter “x” was transliterated in the Zend by “kh,” and rightly inferred that the Greek “x” commencing the proper name Xerxes would be similarly transliterated by “kh” in old Persian, in other words that the first sign in the group should be read “Kh.” The result of Grotefend’s investigations was the discovery of the correct values for eight letters in the Persian cuneiform alphabet, the letter “a” having been already rightly read by Tychsen and Münter. His method of decipherment was proved to be correct by the quadrilingual vase-inscription already alluded to. The first version of this latter inscription is written in Egyptian hieroglyphics and was deciphered by Champollion as the name of Xerxes. The other three versions are written in cuneiform characters, the first of which, the old Persian, gave precisely the same group of signs as that which Grotefend read as Xerxes on the inscription from Persepolis. As Sayce39 well says, the decipherment of cuneiform and all the far-reaching consequences resultant from it, depended upon a successful guess, but a guess made “in accordance with scientific method,” and it was upon Grotefend’s discovery that all subsequent attempts to decipher cuneiform—Persian, Median, or Assyrian—were based. But unfortunately, though Grotefend had thus given the clue, and scented the track for all future scholars, his own ignorance of eastern languages prevented him from reaping himself the full harvest of his brilliant commencement, and the work so nobly begun was not completed till a later day.

Meanwhile Rawlinson had entered the field, and being attached to the British Mission in Persia, he had opportunities which others lacked, his position making it possible for him to copy and on a subsequent occasion take squeezes40 of the inscription on the sacred rock of Behistun, which is filled with proper names. The French traveller Otter was apparently the first European to draw attention to the inscribed rock of Behistun, about the year 1734, and it is also mentioned by Oliver, but the earliest reference to it is contained in the History of Diodorus Siculus who flourished in the first century A.D. Kinneir who saw it in 1810 states that it is clear that the figures portrayed there are of the same age and character as those from Persepolis. In 1818 Porter made a sketch of the figures, but did not attempt to copy the inscription in spite of the experience he had gained in copying the inscription at Persepolis. The copying of it was no easy task, for Rawlinson had to be lowered in a basket from the top, the ladders which he had with him not being long enough to reach the upper part of the inscription from below. He sent his copy41 to Edwin Norris, the secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, who carefully revised it, and in 1849 an analysis and commentary on the text was published. With Rawlinson and Norris must be mentioned the Irish clergyman Hincks, who with his unrivalled genius in the decipherment of inscriptions was the first to discover that the alphabet was not a true one, but that a vowel-sound was attached to each of the consonants; and also Beer Holtzman and Westergaard, all of whom contributed to the work of investigation and made discoveries in regard to both the grammar and lexicon. Rawlinson cannot indeed claim to have actually discovered the first clue which led to the decipherment of cuneiform, but his translation of the Behistun inscription was unquestionably the most valuable contribution ever made towards the unravelling of the old Persian language. His work was moreover at first quite independent of Grotefend’s, and without any assistance from the latter he had deciphered the names of Cyrus, Hystaspes and Darius on the inscriptions from Elvend and Hamadan as early as 1835. Thus the efforts of half a century resulted at length in the discovery of a new alphabet and the resurrection of an old language. The Persian texts on the inscriptions were accompanied by two other texts, which as Grotefend divined must have been the two other principal languages used in the Persian Empire. The third text closely resembling the inscriptions on bricks and cylinder seals found in Babylon was naturally and correctly assumed to be Assyrian.42 The decipherment of this third transcript was fraught with difficulties of every description; there was such an endless variety of signs of a simple and complex order, and there was nothing whatever to indicate where a word or a sentence started or finished, and further the characters on the monuments from Persepolis differed very considerably from those found on the Babylonian monuments, which also varied among themselves very greatly. On the seal-cylinders they were especially complicated, and it was almost impossible to see any resemblance whatever between the characters on the latter and those of the Persepolitan inscriptions.

But light was to come from another quarter: in 1842 Botta, French Consul at Mosul, began excavating on the site of Nineveh, but not meeting with success he transferred his operations to Khorsabad further north, and there excavated a large palace which subsequently turned out to be that of Sargon. In 1845 Layard entered the field, and carried on most successful excavations at Nimrûd (the ancient Calah) and then at Kouyunjik, one of the mounds which represents the site of Nineveh.

Botta published the inscriptions he had found in 1846-50, and also classified the signs, which numbered 642, while he further demonstrated the identity of the cuneiform system of the Nineveh inscriptions with that of the third column on the Persepolitan monuments, but it was reserved for the incomparable Hincks to discover the fact that the Assyrian cuneiform system was syllabic and not alphabetic like the Persian.

Many other scholars deserve our gratitude for the share they took in the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions, of whom one may perhaps specially name Westergaarde, Löwenstern, De Saulcy and Longperier, but for an account of the particular achievements of each, the reader must refer to general works on the subject.43

The early decipherers of cuneiform had no specific knowledge of its pictographic origin, for all the inscriptions at that time discovered showed the same stereotyped and cursive script, but since their day a vast number of archaic inscriptions have been brought to light which prove conclusively that cuneiform as such was no invention of either Semites or Sumerians, but was simply the last stage in the process of degeneration to which the early pictures of the pre-Semitic Sumerians were subject. In the following illustrations (Figs. 1 and 2) we have a number of characters taken from actual inscriptions and arranged in order of evolution so to speak,44 the sign in the left-hand column containing the most archaic form of the sign as yet discovered, the signs in the right-hand column showing the gradual transition to cursive cuneiform, while the last sign in the column is the ordinary late Assyrian ideograph. Thus in “A” we have the crude picture of a man recumbent, and one can follow the course of its development or deterioration from the various forms it has assumed on monuments and bricks arranged in order of sequence. Given the ordinary cuneiform sign for “man” by itself, it would be quite impossible to conjecture that it originated in the picture of a man at all. Below (“B”) we have the old Sumerian hieroglyph for “king,” consisting in a man lying down, surmounted by either a crown or an umbrella as part of the insignia of royalty. In “C” we have the picture of a man’s head in recumbent posture, the lips being represented by two slanting lines, while the series of characters in the centre illustrates the various forms the sign has assumed on the bricks and monuments, and the arrangement shows the process whereby the original hieroglyph gradually discarded all trace of its pictorial origin, and became a cursive stereotyped sign the principal value of which is “mouth.” Below we have another rude picture of a man’s head, but on this occasion he wears a beard, which would suggest a full-grown man; hence the meaning of the Assyrian ideograph is “strength,” “be strong,” or “protection.” In figure “E” there is a representation of a potted plant: this sign, instead of becoming simpler as it makes each progressive step towards cuneiform, becomes paradoxically more complex, until it finally subsides and assumes its normal cursive form, the principal value for which is “cypress-tree.” Below (“F”) two plants are seen, growing likewise in a pot: the progress is again obvious, the meanings of the ideogram being “plant” and “garment”; this latter meaning is probably attached to the sign through the use of flax as a material for clothing. “G” appears to be a tree growing by water; the late cuneiform sign has numerous values, but none of them suggest any immediate connection with the obvious signification of the picture-character from which it was developed. “H” gives us a picture of a reed, the late cuneiform character being the ideogram for “kanu” which means a “reed.”

In Fig. 2, “Q” we have a picture of a fish; the meaning of the Assyrian ideogram derived from it are a “fish,” to “peel” (from preparing a fish for eating), the god Ea, on account of his sometimes being represented in the form of a fish, and finally a “prince,” and “great” from its association with Ea. Below (“R”) is another fish, provided with what appears to be a dorsal fin, hence the signification of the Assyrian sign is “broad” or a “monster.”

Our next illustration (“I”) is concerned with water: we have here the wavy lines for water which is similarly represented in both Egyptian and Chinese hieroglyphics. Below (“J”) we have a representation of the little irrigation ditches by which gardens are watered: hence the cuneiform ideogram derives the meaning of “field” and stands for two distinct Assyrian words—“ginu” and “iklu,” both of which mean “field.” It is somewhat doubtful what the hieroglyph in “K” is intended to represent: Hommel regarded it as a picture of a leathern bottle which would not unnaturally suggest the meaning “desert”; Barton, on the other hand, with perhaps greater probability regards it as a rude outline of the Euphrates valley, with its two rivers and its “occasional sections of irrigated and so fertile land,” indicated by the cross-lines, and he rightly says that this would account for the meanings “plain” and “lands,” and by an extension “desert,” “elevated country,” and last of all “back.” In “L” we see the picture of a house, which however hardly corresponds with our conception of what a house should be: the cuneiform sign derived from it is the ideogram for “bitu” (the Hebrew “Beth” occurring in the proper names Bethlehem, “house of bread,” Bethshemesh, “house of the sun,” etc.), the ordinary Assyrian word for “house.”

As has been already indicated, clay was the material mostly used by the Assyrian and Babylonian scribes for the purposes of writing; but stone was also extensively used from the earliest to the latest times. Stone obelisks, colossal statues of bulls and lions, and last but far from least the bas-reliefs which decorated the walls of the royal palaces were generally covered with an inscription, the wedges sometimes measuring as much as two inches. In writing on sculpture the carved figures were completely ignored, the inscription being chiselled regardlessly through every detail of the carving. Stone was however sometimes used solely and exclusively as the material medium for perpetuating a legal agreement, or immortalizing the work of some self-satisfied grandee, and tablets of limestone or alabaster exist in large numbers, good examples of which are those of Rîm-Sin and Sin-Gamil, rulers of the ancient city of Larsa.

Boundary-stones or land-marks form another interesting class of inscribed stone objects. The texts refer to land-tenure and property conveyancing, while the upper part of most of these boulder-shaped monuments is sculptured in relief with mythological emblems. They belong almost exclusively to the Kassite period. Sometimes a plan of the field seems to have been chiselled on the stone which marked its boundary. A good example of such a boundary-stone is that of Nebuchadnezzar I, which was discovered at Nippur and is published by W. J. Hinke;45 a further point of interest about this stone is that it is inscribed with a hymn to En-lil, the god of Nippur.

But neither the Babylonians nor the Assyrians confined themselves exclusively to the use of clay and calcareous stone as the material whereon to write their inscriptions. Sometimes the hardest volcanic rocks were employed for the purpose, doubtless in consideration of their durability and power of resisting the devastating influences of time and climate. Thus in the course of the German excavations at Babylon a plate of dolerite measuring about a foot and a half square and bearing an inscription of Adad-nirari the son of Ashur-dan was discovered. So too Dungi and Bur-Sin, kings of Ur (circ. 2350 B.C.), have left us inscriptions chiselled on hard diorite, the inscriptions themselves being of a votive character, while a club-button made of the same material and bearing an inscription of ten lines was found at Babylon. The various statues and stelæ made of these hard igneous stones and found both in Assyria and Babylonia, though more frequently in the mother country, practically always bear an inscription. A good example of an Assyrian inscription on basalt is that found on the basalt statue of Shalmaneser II (860-825 B.C.), which was brought to light in the course of the recent excavations conducted by the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft at Ashur. Again the numerous stone gate-sockets discovered in the ruins of early buildings in Babylonia are nearly all inscribed with the name and titles of the person who erected the building, and sometimes the original inscription has been erased or obliterated to make room for the inscription of a later ruler, who knowing full well the difficulty of procuring stone in the low-lying country of Babylonia, was not so short-sighted as to cast away the gate-sockets of his vanquished predecessor, but on the contrary utilized them for his own new building. Thus for example the gate-socket of Lugal-kigub-nidudu, an early king of Sumer, was subsequently used by Shar-Gâni-sharri, king of Akkad, in the construction of his temple at Nippur.

But sometimes stones of comparative rarity, such as lapis lazuli, were employed as a material whereon to engrave inscriptions: thus a tablet made of that material and dedicated by Lugal-tarsi, an early king of Kish, to the god Anu and the goddess Ninni, is preserved in the British Museum, and in the course of the recent excavations at Babylon two bars of lapis lazuli with reliefs and both bearing cuneiform inscriptions were discovered. One of these showed the picture of a god standing up, surmounted with a feather crown, and holding the symbol of lightning in each hand, while his dress is decorated with three shields, and a cuneiform inscription of five lines is further added; on the other, a god in similar posture and dress but holding a staff and ring on his breast and grasping the tail of a double-horned dragon in his right hand is portrayed: the god’s girdle is decorated with figures, while on one of the three shields adorning the raiment, horses are depicted, and there is an accompanying inscription of eight lines.

But the inscribed clay tablets, countless in number and infinitely various in size, shape and contents, far outweigh in importance all other kinds of cuneiform inscriptions in existence. A detailed treatment of the latter would far exceed the necessary limits of this little volume, but a few words may be said regarding the main classes of tablets discovered. Their size and shape are sometimes indicative of the period to which they belong, sometimes of the subject-matter with which they deal. A very early type is represented by those found below the level of Ur-Ninâ’s building at Tellô; the tablets in question which have not been baked in an oven, and are round in form, deal with the sale and purchase of land. Similar round tablets were found by the German excavators at Fâra, which were however baked and not sun-dried. The same rounded baked clay tablets were evidently in vogue at the time of Bur-Sin, for several have been brought to light which are dated in his reign, and contain details regarding certain landed property. But the commonest type of clay tablet is that characterized by its rectangular shape, sometimes square, but more frequently oblong, and varying greatly in size. The tablets in the Kouyunjik collection, which represents the largest, and in one sense the only Assyrian library as yet discovered, vary from one to fifteen inches in length when complete, many of them being made from the very finest clay. The writing is sometimes exceedingly minute, though marvellously clear and sharp, and is more or less stereotyped in character. Astrology, astronomy, history, mythology, magic, medicine, mathematics, prayers, hymns, lists of gods, omens, lexicography and grammar are all well represented in this famous library. Many of the texts are copies of older Babylonian literature made by Ashur-bani-pal’s scribes, and stored away in the royal archives. Some of the texts are bilingual, the top line containing the Sumerian ideographic version, and the lower line giving the Assyrian translation, and these bilingual inscriptions together with the syllabaries have enabled scholars to unravel and elucidate at all events to some extent the old Sumerian language.

By the year 1873 all scholars were agreed that the cuneiform script was not invented by the Semitic Babylonians, but by a people who spoke an agglutinative as opposed to an inflexional language, a language which was therefore, at least in this respect, akin to the Tartar languages. In the following year however Joseph Halévy, the famous French Semitist, started a theory which denied the existence of a Sumerian language altogether, and explained the ideographic texts in the bilingual inscriptions already alluded to, as a secret writing intelligible only to the priests; but primâ facie the theory lacked probability and even plausibility. Halévy, it is true, propounded his theory at a time when the study of Sumerian was in its infancy, though it can hardly be said to have grown out of its childhood even at the present day, but this notwithstanding, it would be indeed singular if the priests took the precaution to enshrine their secret lore in cryptic language, and then frustrated themselves by subscribing an Assyrian translation. Moreover many of the Sumerian inscriptions treat of such very ordinary matters, that it is extremely difficult to see how it could have been necessary to employ a cryptic language to conceal them. A more ready explanation is to be found in the theory accepted by the majority of scholars to-day,—that the Sumerian language existed side by side with Semitic Babylonian, and was used much as Latin is to-day.

One class of tablet especially easily distinguishable by its shape and size is that comprising legal contracts for the exchange of land, cattle and property of every description. They are small in size, oblong in shape, both sides being slightly concave, and the whole not unlike a small narrow pillow in general appearance. Many of these contract tablets were enclosed in clay envelopes to ensure their preservation. When a contract was effected by the Babylonians, the contracting parties had recourse to a legal or priestly official, and the terms of the agreement were set forth on a clay tablet which was deposited either in the temple or the record chamber: it was furthermore protected by a clay envelope upon which the terms inscribed on the contract tablet were copied in duplicate; thus every precaution was taken to secure the preservation of the original document. Sometimes the text on the envelope varies somewhat from that contained in the document itself, and in such cases the envelopes therefore have more than a purely archaic interest, and are of actual linguistic value. One or two copies were made of the contract and were kept by either or both of the contracting parties. The deed was subscribed by the witnesses, one of whom was the scribe who drew up the document and sealed it. The seal was generally affixed by rolling a small cylinder seal over the tablet while still moist, though sometimes a three-sided clay cone received the impress of the seal, and this cone was attached to the tablet by means of a reed inserted in the apex of the cone, the other end of the reed being joined to the tablet by a piece of moist clay. Many of these contract “case” tablets belong to the times of Khammurabi, the most celebrated king of the First Dynasty of Babylon (circ. 1900 B.C.). Some of the envelopes of these tablets bear the impression of a cylinder-seal, a good example of which is found on a tablet recording the sale of a piece of land by Sin-eribam and his brother to Sin-ikisham (Brit. Mus. No. 92649). The clay of this class of tablet is generally somewhat dark in colour, and the characters are often difficult to read.