CHAPTER XIV

NINEVEH AND ITS WONDERS

_Here thou behold’st_ _Assyria, and her empire’s ancient bounds,_ _Araxes and the Caspian Lake; thence on_ _As far as Indus east, Euphrates west,_ _And oft beyond; to south the Persian bay_ _And, inaccessible, the Arabian drouth;_ _Here, Nineveh, of length within her wall_ _Several days’ journey, built by Ninus old,_ _Of that first golden monarchy the seat,_ _And seat of Salmanassar, whose success_ _Israel in long captivity still mourns._ MILTON, “Paradise Regained.”

Wrapt in the crispy air of a bright October morning, we found ourselves on the shaky and crowded pontoon bridge that connects Mosul with the long-buried city of Nineveh. Horses and camels jostled heaving, shouting, unwashed Turks and Kurds and Arabs, who seemed to be constantly in imminent danger of being shoved into the swift-flowing Tigris. The variety of garb and multiplicity of tongues of the motley and vociferous throng on the swaying and creaking bridge strikingly recalled the clamorous and varicolored multitude that always crams the outer bridge between Galata and Stamboul.

How often, during our delightful sojourn in Mosul, had we gazed on the mysterious mounds on the eastern bank of the Tigris which were insistently beckoning us to visit them! And how eager were we to respond to the silent invitation and to explore the site of the once proud capital of Assyria! But we resisted the persistent temptation to interrupt our work in Mosul. We had there, with the assistance of the scholarly sons of St. Dominic, a rare opportunity of getting first-hand information regarding the social and economical condition of the people of this part of Asia and of completing our investigations, begun almost at the inception of our journey, respecting the various schismatic churches of the East. Not, then, until we had completed our observations in Mosul and coördinated our impressions, could we be induced to suspend our self-imposed task. We wished to have it completely off our hands in order that, once on the historic soil of Nineveh, we might indulge in reverie without let or hindrance.

When, finally, we were ready to visit the ruins of Nineveh, ours was the good fortune to have with us a learned Dominican of Mosul, who was as familiar with the early history of the famous old Assyrian metropolis as he was with the excavations which during the last two generations have revealed artistic and literary treasures that have been the marvel and the delight of the world. We could not have had a more intelligent or a more enthusiastic guide among the devious ways which led to the sites of ancient temples and palaces, whose existence was absolutely unknown until uncovered by the pick and spade of the archæologist but a few decades ago.

How strange it seemed to me, as we threaded our way through the maze of passages that led to the locations of once famous palaces and temples, that it was also a Dominican--a brother in religion of our guide--who first awakened my interest in Nineveh! That was more than three score years ago. And yet, so vivid was the impression then made on my youthful mind that it seems but yesterday when I first came under the spell of the famed lands of Assyria and Babylonia.

It came about in a very simple way. The Dominican in question--a dear, venerable man--had visited the Holy Land shortly before I met him, and took great pleasure in telling me his experiences in the East. Seeing that I was greatly interested in his narrative he gave me a large history of the Bible. It was not such a book, I have often since thought, as the average boy would have cared to read. But the good priest could not have selected a work that would have given me more pleasure--certainly not one that would have benefited me more deeply or influenced more profoundly all my subsequent reading and study. It was, too, I must add, the first book I ever had in my hands outside of my elementary school readers. But how I prized that book! And how I read it again and again, and always with ever-increasing interest and delight! I do not know how often I read it carefully from cover to cover, but I do know that there is only one other volume that I have read more frequently, and that, after the Bible, is my favorite of all books--_The Divina Commedia_.

How often I have had reason to be grateful to the good old Dominican who unconsciously directed my studies in such wise as to afford me life-long pleasure and profit! As a consequence of the repeated reading of the book which he placed in my hands I became familiar with the history of the cradle of our race long before I had entered my teens, and I felt quite well acquainted with Nineveh and Babylon when Athens and Rome were yet to me but little more than mere names without significance. And, although as I grew older, I became interested in many other subjects, I never lost my early love of sacred history or of the history and geography of the Near East. For no matter how occupied I might be, I always contrived to find time to continue the studies which had such a fascination for me in my early boyhood.

To the student of Assyrian or Babylonian history, nothing is more impressive than the first view of one of those stupendous mounds which are so frequent along the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates and in the vast plain between Bagdad and Abu Sharein. But the impression is greatly intensified when the place visited is associated with the happiest days of one’s youth and when one may again dream the dreams that once afforded such exquisite pleasure and such delightful visions of long-departed glory and magnificence. This was my experience when I first set foot on the soil that covers the superb structures which, in my early boyhood, I had so frequently pictured in fancy that it almost seemed that I had really wandered through their sculpture-adorned halls and had been an actual spectator of the gorgeous processions which they had so frequently witnessed when Nineveh was at the zenith of her power and greatness.

I had been deeply impressed when I first ascended the hill on which stood Homer’s Troy, but my emotion was not so great as when I found myself on the crumbling ruins of “Nineveh, that great city in which there were more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons that knew not how to distinguish between their right hand and their left.”[353]

But this is easily explained. I was much younger when I became acquainted with the enchanting story of Nineveh than when I first conned the spell-weaving pages of the _Iliad_. My earlier impressions were more vivid and, because of the intimate relation of Assyria to the Holy Land, as exhibited in the Sacred Text, my interest was correspondingly greater.

As I contemplated the remains of the great city which had in tender years been so frequently the subject of my dreams and in mature age had been the subject of so much study and reflection, I found a thousand thoughts presenting themselves to my mind regarding the great capital which for so long a period played so important a rôle during the dawn of civilization.

_The days of old return;--I breathe the air_ _Of the young world;--I see her giant sons_ _Like a gorgeous pageant in the sky_ _Of summer’s evening, cloud on fiery cloud_ _Thronging upheaved,--before me rise the walls_ _Of the Titanic city--brazen gates,--_ _Imperial Nineveh, the earthly queen!_ _In all her golden pomp I see her now._

No region in the world has a more venerable historic past than that vast territory enclosed by the Euphrates and the Tigris, and no city in this region, with the possible exception of Babylon, was for centuries the center of greater power and influence than Nineveh. According to the book of Genesis,[354] it was built by Asur, who came from the land of Sennaar. How long ago this was is a matter of mere conjecture. Its first certain mention occurs in the code of Hammurabi, who ruled over Babylonia in the twenty-third century before our era, but it was doubtless in existence many centuries before the time of this great Babylonian lawgiver. It is, however, certain that from the time of its foundation, it gradually increased in size and importance until it became the celebrated capital of the Assyrian Empire--an empire which at one time embraced the whole of the civilized world. But when it was at the zenith of its greatness, when it was feared and hated from the Nile to the Persian Gulf and from the scorching deserts of Arabia to the Hittite lands to the north of the Taurus, it suddenly, in 707 B. C., collapsed under the combined attacks of the Medes and the Babylonians led by Cyaxares and Nabopolassar, who left it a smoking ruin, where, according to the victors, “the words of men, the tread of cattle and sheep and the sound of happy music” were heard no more.

How execrated was the name of Assyria throughout the length and the breadth of western Asia, and how the peoples whom she had so long plundered and enslaved rejoiced when they heard of the downfall of her capital is made clear by the prophet Nahum when he declares:

All who have heard of the fame of thee [thy destruction] have clapped their hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually.[355]

But the Prophet Zephaniah, who was a contemporary of the stupendous event, gives an even more graphic account of the utter desolation which followed the overthrow of the far-famed metropolis:

And the Lord of hosts ... will stretch out His hands upon the north and will destroy Assyria and He will make the beautiful city [Nineveh] a wilderness and as a place not passable and as a desert.

And flocks shall lie down in the midst thereof, all the beasts of the nations; and the bittern and the urchin shall lodge in the threshold thereof; the voice of the singing bird in the window, the raven on the upper post, for I will consume her strength.

This is the glorious city that dwelt in security; that said in her heart: I am, and there is none beside me; how is she become a desert, a place for beasts to lie down in? Everyone that passeth by her shall hiss and wag his hand.[356]

How completely these dire words of the Hebrew prophet were verified is evidenced by the fact that when Xenophon and his Ten Thousand Greeks two centuries later passed by the mounds which covered the remains of Nineveh’s one-time magnificence, they were quite unaware of being in the immediate vicinity of the sumptuous palaces and temples of the erstwhile Queen City of the Tigris.[357]

Lucian, the Greek Voltaire, who was born at Samosata on the Euphrates in the second century after Christ, tells us in one of his satirical dialogues that all trace of Nineveh had disappeared. Representing Charon as on a leave of absence from the infernal regions, where he officiated as ferryman of the dead, and as starting with Hermes, the swift-footed messenger of the gods, who acts as his guide, on a short tour of this upper world, he gives us these two characteristic paragraphs:

CHARON.--Show me the famous cities of which we hear so much down below: The Nineveh of Sardanapalus and Babylon and Mycenæ and Cleonæ and especially Troy. I remember to have ferried over the Styx so many times from this last place that I could not haul my boat upon the bank, or have it thoroughly dried for ten whole years.

HERMES.--Nineveh, O Ferryman, perished long ago and there is no trace of her remaining; nor would you be able to tell where she stood. Babylon is yonder city with the fair towers and the immense circuit of wall, but will soon have to be sought for like Nineveh.[358]

But, although Assyria’s capital was so thoroughly demolished, its name and fame still persisted. In the course of time a new Nineveh arose on the site of the ancient metropolis and, although quite unimportant as compared with its famous predecessor, it served at a later date to aid in the identification of the ancient site and to pave the way to some of the most extraordinary archæological discoveries of the last century.

The great Assyrian Empire came to an end after enduring more than a thousand years, and being, a great part of this period, one of the greatest powers of western Asia. Its downfall, after its long centuries of glory and preëminence, occurred while Rome was yet in its infancy and little more than a rendezvous of robbers and refugees from justice. From that date, 707 B. C., nearly twenty-five centuries passed over the grass and shrub-covered mounds on the site of ancient Nineveh before any serious effort was made to determine whether they concealed any remains of the long-buried metropolis of Mesopotamia.

Until the middle of the last century our knowledge of the history of Assyria and Babylonia was based entirely on the historical books of the Old Testament and on the accounts given by certain Greek and Latin writers. The books of Scripture which are of special importance in their relation to Assyrian and Babylonian history are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Nahum, and the Fourth Book of Kings.

Chief among the classical writers is Herodotus. He was not only, as Cicero calls him, the “Father of History,” but he was also the greatest traveler of his time. Not only did he traverse a great part of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, but there is a strong probability that he extended his peregrinations to the Euphrates and proceeded on its waters to Babylon. Making all due allowance for numerous inaccuracies which exist in his picturesque work and for not a few travelers’ tales,[359] the history of the brilliant Greek writer will always possess value not only for its matchless style but also for the facts which it contains and its descriptions, which are evidently from the pen of an eye witness. I refer especially to that part of his charming work which treats of Babylon and the culture of its inhabitants.

Of more importance was the great history of Babylonia written by Berosus, a contemporary of Alexander the Great and a priest of Bel in Babylon. Unfortunately we have only the fragments of this work which have been preserved by Eusebius, Josephus, and other ancient writers.

But the works mentioned, as well as those of Ctesias, Dinon of Colophon, and others, threw but little light on the civilization and achievements of Assyria and Babylonia during their long and eventful history. Detailed information respecting the development and decline of these two mighty empires was to come only from native annals of which not even the existence was suspected until the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Nor was there before the beginning of the last century any certitude regarding the sites of the great Assyrian and Babylonian cities which had made such a profound impression upon the peoples of the ancient world. Although history and tradition still spoke of the grandiose palaces and temples of Nineveh and of the towers and hanging gardens of Babylon, the general ignorance which almost from the time of the Arab conquest had prevailed regarding the actual sites of Babylon and Nineveh was not removed until the illustrious Danish scholar, Carsten Niebuhr, proved that the site of Babylon was in the vicinity of the modern village of Hillah, and the noted English investigator, Claudius James Rich, demonstrated in 1821 that the mounds on the left bank of the Tigris, just opposite Mosul, covered all that remained of the famed city of Nineveh.[360]

But even after the sites of Nineveh and Babylon had been identified, it was yet to be proved that amid the ruins of these famous cities there were records and monuments which would shed light on the civilization of which they were once such noted centers. The potsherds and fragments of cylinders which travelers had found in and about the mounds of Babylon and Nineveh led scholars to believe that discoveries of greater value awaited the explorer. This conclusion was confirmed by the finding in various places of bricks, tablets, and monuments covered with strange inscriptions which were written in characters which are now designated as cuneiform.

It was not, however, until 1842 when the French Government--to which the world of science has long been indebted for intelligent encouragement and generous assistance in every branch of research--sent Paul Emil Botta to Mosul that decisive results were obtained. He was ostensibly appointed to fill there the newly-created position of vice-consul, but, as French commerce did not require the service of such an official at that point, he was really designated to act as the head of an archæological mission to Nineveh and its environs. His appointment, as subsequent events proved, was a red-letter day in the annals of Assyrian research. For, not long after his arrival in Mosul, the world was thrilled by the news of his marvelous discoveries in the long-buried city of Nineveh and the report that he was “sending home the spoils of superb ancient edifices to increase the treasures of the Louvre.... A city buried for more than twenty centuries offered its remains for comparison with the aspects of modern London and Paris; and the sculptured monuments of a bygone race rose up to offer a contrast with the works of modern art.”[361]

Three years after Botta’s arrival in Mosul, Austen Henry Layard began his memorable excavations at Nimroud, a short distance to the south of Nineveh. So successful was he in his work here and subsequently at Kuyunjik--Citadel of Nineveh--that he was soon able to send a larger and a more valuable collection of antiquities to the British Museum than that with which Botta had enriched the Louvre. Great, indeed, was the excitement in France and England when the treasures of the long-buried palaces of Nineveh were placed on exhibition and when people had before their eyes tangible evidence of that famed Assyrian capital which for more than twenty centuries had left no other trace of its existence than a name which was a synonym of fabulous wealth and magnificence.

In a work published shortly after Botta and Layard had electrified the world by their startling discoveries, a well-known English scholar, speaking of the unearthing of Nineveh, wrote:

More than two thousand years had it thus lain in its unknown grave, when a French savant and a wandering English scholar, urged by a noble inspiration, sought the seat of the once powerful empire, and, searching till they found the dead city, threw off its shroud of sand and ruin and revealed once more to an astonished and curious world the temples, the palaces, the idols; the representations of war and the triumphs of peaceful art of the ancient Assyrians. The Nineveh of Scripture, the Nineveh of the oldest historians; the Nineveh--twin-sister of Babylon--glorying in a civilization of pomp and power, all traces of which were believed to be gone; the Nineveh, in which the captive tribes of Israel had labored and wept, was, after a sleep of twenty centuries, again brought to light. The proofs of ancient splendor were again beheld by living eyes, and, by the skill of the draftsman and the pen of antiquarian travelers, made known to the world.[362]

Notices like this which frequently appeared in books and periodical literature had the effect of exciting widespread enthusiasm for the advancement of Assyrian research. Societies were organized for promoting excavations on a larger scale than was feasible for the first explorers, who were greatly hampered by the lack of adequate funds, and for giving due publicity to the work of the archæologists in the field. The results were most gratifying, for it was not long before explorers were investigating the mounds of Babylonia as well as those of Assyria.

Meantime, under the direction of George Smith and Ormuzd Rassam, the mounds which covered the site of Nineveh were made to yield further treasures which were quite as extraordinary as any which had been brought to light by Botta and Layard. A discovery by Smith of a tablet relating, it was supposed, to the Noachian deluge, convinced many that Assyrian archæology was destined to render incalculable aid in the study of Sacred Scripture. Although its apologetic value subsequently proved to be greatly overestimated by some of the more enthusiastic students of Assyrian antiquities, it soon became manifest that the new science was destined to throw a flood of light not only on the Old Testament but also on the history of the greatest nations of the ancient world.

We experienced special pleasure in exploring the mounds which covered the remains of imperial Nineveh. There was not, truth to tell, much to see which was either of interest or value, for everything of importance, that could be transported, had been forwarded to the museums of Europe as soon as they had been disinterred.

On the mound of Nebi Yunus--Prophet Jonas--we visited the mosque which the Moslems declare contains the remains of the prophet who preached repentance to the sinful Ninevites.

This mosque [said our Dominican companion] was originally a Christian monastery that was built in the fourth century by a disciple of St. Anthony of Egypt. He named it in honor of the Prophet Jonas, but when the building, long afterwards, came into the possession of the Mussulmans, it was converted into a mosque. It, however, retained its original name--Prophet Jonas--which it bears to this day.

The inhabitants here exhibit a flat stone which they guard as a treasure beyond price. “It was upon this stone,” they aver, “that the great fish deposited Jonas when it returned him to _terra firma_.” Since that time the stone is reputed to have the power of curing rheumatism by simply being brought into contact with the afflicted part. So highly do the natives prize this remedial agent that nothing could induce them to part with it. When we told them of the curative powers attributed to the Hittite stone at Aleppo they gravely assured us that the stone of Nebi Yunus possessed incomparably greater efficacy and that it afforded certain relief to all cases of rheumatism however malignant.

Although we were always interested in listening to the folklore of the Mussulmans of the Near East, we preferred on this occasion to stroll over the mounds beneath which were buried the remains of one of antiquity’s most celebrated cities and to inspect the localities where Botta and Layard and Ormuzd Rassam had made those famous finds which contributed so greatly to our knowledge of Assyria and Babylonia. Most of the excavations whence they drew such priceless treasures had been refilled with earth, but this did not matter. We had in various museums seen the valuable monuments that had been taken from them and were, therefore, freer to indulge in day-dreams than we had been when we visited Homer’s Troy.

Aided by the drawings of Place and Fergusson we found it easy to reconstruct in fancy the superb palaces of Sargon and Eserhaddon and Tiglath-pileser, whose names and achievements had so impressed us in our youth. In imagination we contemplated the colossal statues of winged lions with human heads, which stood at the portals of the palace of Sennacherib, and fixed our gaze on the marvelous bas-relief and sculptures--reminders of the frieze of the Parthenon--which adorned the vast halls and exhibited the monarch’s exploits in the chase and in wars innumerable.[363] We could observe Sennacherib himself standing on an elevated outlook of his palace and watching “the marching forth of the hosts of Assur and the smoke of their holocausts spreading over all the lands,” or pensively pacing a lofty tiled terrace which overlooked the swift-flowing waters of the Tigris and the broad expanse of the western desert illumined by the crimson glow of the setting sun.

But a more fascinating scene engages our attention. It recalls one described in the book of Esther,[364] in which King Assuerus is represented as having his annalists and wise men read for him “the histories and chronicles of former times.” Before us is Asurbanipal--the Grand Monarch of Assyria--surrounded by his scribes and sages and intent on the examination of a recent addition to the royal library. For, after many years spent in military campaigns in Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Susiana, and elsewhere, he resolved to devote the remainder of his life to the arts and avocations of peace. Numerous temples and palaces in many parts of Assyria and Babylonia bear witness to his activity as a builder and to the magnificence of the structures erected to his own glory and to that of his gods.

But it was in his gorgeous palace at Nineveh that he had the joy of his life--that which was to perpetuate his name to the end of time. This was his library--the largest and most valuable collection of documents that the world had yet seen. Composed of myriads of inscribed tablets, they were fortunately made of a material--baked and unbaked clay--which, for more than two millennia, successfully withstood all the ravages of war and the elements. They treated of mathematics, astronomy, history, poetry, grammar, lexicography, law, religion--in a word, of the entire circle of the sciences of the ancient world.

Asurbanipal--an Assyrian Mæcenas--was not only the patron of scholars, whom he encouraged to produce new books on every branch of science and literature, but was also, as a collector, the worthy forerunner and rival of the bibliophilous rulers of Pergamum and Alexandria. He had his scribes visit all the libraries of Babylonia--the earliest home of science and letters--and had them make copies of all works of value which did not exist in his own library. So indefatigable, indeed, was the King as a collector that it is probably true--as has been stated--that he had in his extensive library a copy of all the books that existed in the numerous libraries of Assyria and Babylonia.

The discovery of Asurbanipal’s library surpassed in importance any that had ever been made in either the valley of the Tigris or of the Euphrates. But every tablet in this immense collection was absolutely a sealed book, for there was not anyone living then who was able to decipher a single sentence of those mysterious documents which had thus so unexpectedly been brought to day. When Layard, in the course of his exploration of the vast palace of Asurbanipal, first beheld the priceless contents of the royal halls of records, his emotions must have been like those of Shelley’s Alastor in the temples of Egypt, for

_Among the ruined temples there,_ _Stupendous columns and wild images_ _Of more than man, where marble demons watch_ _The zodiac’s brazen mystery, and dead men_ _Have their mute thoughts on the mute walls around._ _He lingered, pouring on memorials_ _Of the world’s youth; nor when the moon_ _Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades_ _Suspended he that task, but ever gazed_ _And gazed_

on precious monuments before him which he knew full well contained

_The thrilling secrets of the birth of time_.[365]

The identification of the site of Nineveh and the unearthing of its long-concealed monuments marked the beginning of a new era in Oriental research. But nothing gave so great a stimulus to the study of all things Assyrian and Babylonian as the discovery of the precious library of Asurbanipal. For this wonderful collection of documents was destined to disclose much of the history, science, literature, and politics of the famous land bounded by the Tigris and the Euphrates, and to show--what would not otherwise have been possible--the relation of this land to the other great nations of the Near East.

But who was to decipher the cuneiform tablets which were thus so unexpectedly brought to the light of day? That was the question that was on the lips of everyone. Until this could be accomplished the countless books of the royal library would be of little more value than so many useless curiosities.

That the work of decipherment would eventually be achieved, scholars had no doubt. That the languages in which the mysterious inscriptions were written would one day be read with ease and certainty, all investigators were convinced. The achievements of Champollion in deciphering the hieroglyphics of Egypt and of De Sacy in reading Pehlevi gave an assurance that eventually the mysterious Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions would also be elucidated and that the long-forgotten documents of Asurbanipal’s library would then become the chief sources of our knowledge of the most ancient and most powerful empires of western Asia.

Nothing in the entire history of intellectual advancement is more interesting and romantic than the story of the gradual decipherment of those strange cuneiform inscriptions whose interpretation long baffled the powers of the greatest linguistic geniuses of Europe.

The discovery of the key to the Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions was practically the work of one man--the immortal Jean François Champollion. The decipherment of the Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions was the joint achievement of many men, laboring during many generations, in many and widely separated parts of Asia and Europe. It was effected by daring travelers and explorers, by philologists, philosophers, and historians, most of them laboring independently of one another, but all working, although nearly always unconsciously, toward the same goal.

And an even more singular fact was that the first clue towards the unraveling of the great enigma was found far away from both Assyria and Babylonia and in a place where an explorer bent on searching for it would certainly not look for it. This place was Persepolis, where are the remains of the splendid edifices constructed by Darius I, Xerxes I, and Artaxerxes I, the celebrated Persian Kings of the Achæmenian dynasty.

So far as known the first European to visit these remarkable ruins was the noted Franciscan friar, Fra Oderico, on his way to Cathay in the first quarter of the fourteenth century.

In the latter half of the sixteenth century Persepolis was visited by an Augustinian monk, Antonio de Gouvea, whom Philip III, King of Spain and Portugal, had sent as an ambassador to Shah Abbas the Great, King of Persia. Among the many things which attracted his attention in the old Persian city were the inscriptions which he saw on the monuments, which, “although they are in many parts very distinct, there is nevertheless no one who can read them, for they are not written in Persian, or Arabic or Armenian or Hebrew, which are the languages spoken in this land.”[366]

Some thirty years later Gouvea was followed, as ambassador to Shah Abbas from Philip III, by Don Garcia de Sylva y Figueroa, who wrote a letter on the monuments of Persepolis which attracted deep interest when published in Europe in 1620. In this communication he speaks of “one notable inscription cut in a Jasper-table, with characters still so fresh and faire that one would wonder how it could escape so many ages without touch of the least blemish. The Letters themselves are neither Chaldæan nor Hebrew, nor Greeke, nor Arabike, nor of any other Nation which was ever found of old, or at this day, to be extant. They are all three-cornered, but somewhat long, of the forms of a pyramide, or such a little Obliske as I have set in the margine: (△) so that in nothing do they differ one from one another, but in their placing and situation, yet so conformed that they are wondrous plaine, distinct and perspicuous.”[367]

But the first one to make known these peculiar characters to the scholars of Europe was the learned traveler, Pietro della Valle, of whom we have already spoken. And it was thus that this eminent Roman patrician had the honor of being the first of that long line of investigators whose labors have resulted in building up that comprehensive branch of science now known as Assyriology.[368]

From the time of Pietro della Valle the number of travelers who visited the ruins of Persepolis and wrote of the inscriptions which they saw on the ruins of this old Persian capital rapidly increased. But, although their published observations failed to arouse any special interest at the time, some of them deserve at least a passing notice for the quaint language in which the views of the authors found expression. Thus Thomas Herbert, referring to the inscriptions of Persepolis, writes:

Wee noted above a dozen lynes of strange characters, very faire and apparent to the eye, but so mysticall, so oddly framed, as no Hierogliphick, no other deep conceit can be more difficultly fancied, more adverse to the intellect.... And, though it have small concordance with the Hebrew, Greek, or Latine letter, yet questionlesse to the Inventer it was well knowne; and peradventure may conceale some excellent matter, though to this day wrapt up in the dim leafes of envious obscuritie.[369]

The Italian, Spanish, and English writers on Persepolis were followed by travelers and writers of other nationalities. Among these were Jean Chardin of France, Cornelis de Bruin of Holland, Engelrecht Kaempfer of Germany, and Carsten Niebuhr, a German, long in the service of Denmark. Each of these men made a contribution--small though it was--towards the decipherment of the Persepolitan inscriptions.

Chardin was the first to reproduce in his superbly illustrated work[370] an entire inscription from one of the monuments of Persepolis. This, to scholars, was incomparably more valuable than any of the fragments that had hitherto come to Europe. De Bruin, who visited Persepolis in 1704, and subsequently published a book with magnificent views of the ruins of the old Achæmenia capital, together with numerous inscriptions from its monuments, put more material in the hands of scholars than had any of his predecessors. Kaempfer advanced a step further when he published in 1712 a long inscription in Assyro-Babylonian.

But of the four travelers mentioned the one who performed the most important work was Niebuhr, an experienced traveler, an accurate observer and a man of broad scholarship. Besides making careful drawings and measurements of the monuments of Persepolis--monuments which in many respects were the most important in the East--he made copies of numerous cuneiform texts which had not appeared in any preceding work. His studies of the inscriptions also led him to conclude that there were three classes of them and that they were, as some of his predecessors had surmised, to be read from left to right. He had thus not only supplied scholars with new and valuable material but, by his comparative study, blazed the way which led to their final decipherment.

Among the first to attempt decipherment of these inscriptions were such distinguished philologists as Professor Tychsen, of the University of Rostock, and Friedrich Munter, of Copenhagen, and such eminent Orientalists as Eugène Burnouf, Anquetil-Duperron, and Silvestre de Sacy, who was the most eminent Arabist of his age. They did not succeed in solving the problem which had so long baffled the keenest minds of Europe, but they had accumulated the material that was necessary for its solution.

Several years before Botta and Layard sent their vast stores of tablets from Nineveh and Nimroud to the Louvre and the British Museum, it was evident from the few specimens of cuneiform inscriptions which had reached Europe from Mesopotamia that the script on the Babylonian tablets was the same as one of the varieties occurring in the trilingual inscriptions of Persepolis. It was then only a step to the conclusion that these two scripts were identical and represented identical languages. Thanks to the researches of De Sacy, Burnouf, Anquetil-Duperron, and others, it was now possible to make the old Persian script--the first class--of the trilingual inscriptions of Persepolis serve as a key to the third class, or what is now designated as the Assyro-Babylonian script. The process was exactly similar to that which enabled Champollion to use the Greek on the Rosetta stone as a key to the mysterious hieroglyphics of the Egypt of the Pharaohs.

But, although the method to be adopted seemed simple enough, the labor involved was incomparably greater than that which was required of the illustrious French _savant_. For the Greek on the Rosetta stone was a well-known language, whereas Old Persian, which was to serve as the key for deciphering the Babylonian script, was itself quite as unknown as the writing to be deciphered. It was only after a knowledge of Old Persian had been acquired by comparing it with Avestan, Pahlavi, and Sanscrit, that it could serve as the long-sought key to Assyro-Babylonian.

The first one to read an Old Persian word was Georg Friederich Grotefend. This was in 1802, when he was only twenty-seven years of age and without any knowledge of oriental languages. Nevertheless, he was, wonderful to relate, able “to solve the riddle practically in a few days, that had puzzled much older men and scholars apparently much better qualified than himself. Under the magical touch of his hand the mystic and complicated characters of ancient Persia suddenly gained new life. But when he was far enough advanced to announce to the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen the epoch-making discovery which established his reputation for ever, that learned body, though comprising men of eminent mental training and intelligence, strange to say, declined to publish the Latin memoirs of this little-known college teacher, who did not belong to the University circle proper nor was even an Orientalist by profession. It was not until ninety years later--1893--that his original papers were rediscovered and published by Prof. Wilhelm Meyer, of Göttingen, in the Academy’s transactions--a truly unique case of _post mortem_ examination in science.”[371]

Notwithstanding, however, the attitude of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, scholars like De Sacy, Heeren, and others were not slow to recognize the importance of Grotefend’s far-reaching discoveries. The number of investigators in the studies of Europe and in the ruin-dotted plains of Persia and Mesopotamia gradually increased. The careful researches of Niebuhr were followed in the first half of the nineteenth century by the painstaking observations of Rich, Ker Porter, and Colonel Chesney. But while those noted explorers were winning laurels in the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates, Sir Henry Rawlinson “forced the inaccessible rock of Behistun to surrender the great trilingual inscription of Darius, which, in the quietude of his study on the Tigris, became the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of Assyriology and in his master hand the key to the understanding of the Assyrian documents.”[372]

While Rawlinson was conducting his celebrated investigations relating to the trilingual inscription of Behistun, and Layard and Rassam were unearthing the priceless documents of Asurbanipal’s library, Edward Hincks in Ireland, Edwin Norris in England, Eugène Burnouf and M. de Saulcy in France, Westergaard, a Dane, and Lassen, a Norwegian, both living in Germany, were astonishing the learned world by their wonderful contributions towards the decipherment of the inscriptions of Persepolis and Behistun and of tablets and seals and cylinders taken from the temples and palaces of Assyria and Babylonia.

Thanks to the investigators named and to a rapidly increasing number of others, the decipherment of Assyrian inscription was gradually assuming the dignity of an exact science. But there were still scholars of acknowledged eminence who questioned the validity of the system employed and who openly expressed grave doubts about the translations of the cuneiform inscriptions which had been published by divers scholars of Great Britain and the Continent.

Finally, in 1857, it was suggested to make a test which should silence all objectors and demonstrate that the method of the decipherers reposed on a scientific basis. An Assyrian text was translated independently by Hincks, Talbot, Oppert, and Rawlinson, and sent sealed to the Royal Asiatic Society. When these versions were compared by a committee of distinguished scholars they were found to show such a remarkable correspondence that there could no longer be any reasonable doubt as to the system of decipherment or the substantial accuracy of the four translations which had been offered to the distinguished committee of the Royal Asiatic Society.

But, notwithstanding this remarkable confirmation of the correctness of the method of decipherment employed by Assyriologists, there still remained a certain number of skeptics even among the most noted scholars of the age--men like Gutschmid in Germany and Renan and Gobineau in France--who refused to admit the conclusiveness of the demonstration which had silenced most other objectors. Even after the French Institute on July 15, 1863, had awarded to Oppert the coveted quinquennial prize of twenty thousand francs for “that work or discovery which is best calculated to honor or serve the country,” skepticism still persisted among certain Orientalists.[373] Indeed, it was not until the appearance in 1872 of the masterly _Die Assyrisch--Babylonischen-Keilinschriften_ of Eberhard Schrader that general confidence in the prevailing system of cuneiform decipherment was firmly established and that all opposition to its methods was finally abandoned.

Seventy years had elapsed from the reading by Grotefend of his epochal paper before the Göttingen Academy to the publication of Schrader’s great work on the cuneiform writing and language. From the time of Schrader, who has been called the father of early Assyriology, to the splendid achievements of his illustrious countryman, Friedrich Delitzsch, who is known as the father of contemporary Assyriology, progress in the new science has been as rapid as the activity of its countless votaries has been enthusiastic. This is evidenced by the large number of cuneiform monuments which are now found in the museums of Europe and America and by the ever-increasing number of scholars who are devoting all their time to the study of Assyrian science, religion, and literature.

It is estimated that there are now, in the divers museums of the world, more than a half million inscribed tablets. Besides the immense number of tablets found in the great library of Asurbanipal, Rassam discovered in Abu-Habba, formerly Hillah, no fewer than seventy thousand. In 1894 M. Ernest de Sarzec took from a single chamber in the ruined city of Telloh, in the alluvial plain of Babylonia, fully thirty thousand tablets, while a few years later Haynes and Hilprecht to the north of Telloh, in the ruins of Nippur, discovered more than forty thousand tablets, which have proved to be of inestimable value to the student of the history, religion, and social conditions of the inhabitants of ancient Sumer and Akkad. Still other stores of tablets were unearthed by Banks at Bismya and De Morgan at Susa. Among the precious monuments brought to light by the distinguished French explorer of Susa was the important code of Hammurabi--the oldest compilation of laws in the world--the code by which Babylonia was governed at a period which antedated the Christian era by fully two thousand years.

But the inscribed clay tablets--some baked, others unbaked--are not the only monuments of value as sources of history which have been uncovered by the pick and spade of the excavator in the tells of Assyria and Babylonia. There are also seals, statues, cylinders, and bas-reliefs innumerable which bear cuneiform inscriptions of the utmost value to the historian and the man of science. There are even numberless uninscribed monuments which are also of immense historical importance. Such are the sculptured alabaster slabs which once adorned the palace of Sennacherib in Nineveh. These marvelous bas-reliefs exhibit scenes of domestic life, the peculiar garbs of men and women, of masters and slaves, of natives and foreigners with almost photographic exactness. They likewise show spirited representations of battles and sieges, which portray in the most lifelike manner the types of the combatants, their divers instruments of warfare, the punishments inflicted by the victor on helpless captives, and long processions of the vanquished bringing tribute to the triumphant monarch of Assyria.

Without the knowledge of a single cuneiform character [declares Professor Hilprecht] we learned the principal events of Sennacherib’s government, and, from a mere study of those sculptured walls, we got familiar with customs and habits of the ancient Assyrians, at the same time obtaining a first clear glance of the whole civilization of Western Asia.[374]

The foregoing pages show the extraordinary progress that has been made in Assyriology since Botta and Layard began their famous excavations in the ruins of Nineveh in the middle of the last century. But, although much, very much, has been achieved, far more remains to be accomplished. For there are, we are assured, hundreds of ruin-mounds and earth-covered cities in Western Asia awaiting the spade and the pick of the excavator to disclose treasures that will equal, if not surpass in value any that have yet rewarded the labors of the explorer. Even such important ruins as those of Babylon and Nineveh, where such splendid results have been obtained, have so far yielded, there is reason to believe, but a part, possibly but a small part, of their precious stores. For it has been computed that to excavate Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunus--the two principal mounds of Nineveh--would require the labor of a thousand men working continually for a hundred and seventy-four years. “The recent excavations and tunnelings at Kuyunjik”--the Citadel of Nineveh--“fruitful as they have been in results, have made little impression on the vast mass of ruin, and only prove how much might be gained by complete clearance.”[375]

But as the work of excavation is still almost in its infancy, so is also that of decipherment and coördination of the myriads of inscriptions now in the museums of the world. For, notwithstanding the wonderful achievements of Assyriologists during the last three-quarters of a century, many generations must yet elapse before the vast amount of material which has been already collected and to which additions are being constantly made, can be properly interpreted and made available for students who are not professional Orientalists. As yet there is in Assyrian neither a complete grammar nor a complete dictionary, and, on account of the immense number of ideograms yet undeciphered and the astonishing number of polyphonous signs in the Assyrian language--signs which have each several distinct syllabic values--it is certain that many decades will elapse before the countless difficulties can be overcome.

Considering, however, the complexity of the problem which confronted Orientalists at the beginnings of their researches, it is, indeed, a wonder that their achievements during the last two generations have been so fruitful and of so far-reaching importance. For in a few decades they have changed completely our conception of the ancient peoples of Assyria and Babylonia and shown that their civilization “stands before us in all its ramifications as one of the great forces in the ancient history of mankind, the direct or indirect influence of which is to be seen in many a phase of our modern culture.”[376] They have proved that the Assyrian language was not only the speech of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia but that it was also long used as the language of diplomacy by the Hittites and the Egyptians and by the peoples of Syria and Palestine. More than this, it was a kind of _lingua franca_ from the Euxine to the valley of the Nile and from Cyprus to the plateau of Susiana. This fact is most strikingly proved by the priceless collections of cuneiform inscriptions which, only a few years ago, were found in Tel-el-Armana, Egypt, and in Boghaz-Keui, Asia Minor. These finds are indications that there are other, probably many other, similar discoveries to reward the patient and well-directed excavations of the explorer in the ruin-spread lands of the Near East.

How often, while wandering among the ruins of Kuyunjik, Nebi Yunus, and Khorsabad, have I not had brought home to me the far-reaching changes in our knowledge of the Near East, which have been effected by the startling discoveries that were made three-quarters of a century ago in the palaces of Sargon and Sennacherib and Asurbanipal! But nothing impressed me more than the first question which Scriptural students always make regarding these discoveries, “How do they bear on the Bible”? It is the same question which has so often been asked about the revelations of geology in their bearings on the Sacred Text. Something is discovered which at the first blush is regarded as militating against the accuracy of the Sacred Scriptures. After further investigation, this same discovery is viewed as being strongly confirmatory of the Bible, while still more careful examination shows that the teachings of the new science not only do not but, by their very nature, cannot question, much less impeach the veracity of the Book of Books.

It is true that one’s view of the Bible may be enlarged with one’s advancing years; that one’s understanding of it may be improved by more profound study, and by the progress of research; but science, whether it appear in the guise of geology, or Assyriology, or of what has falsely been called the science of evolution, can never invalidate a single one of the fundamental teachings either of Scripture or of the Church of Christ.

This thought was borne in upon me with unwonted force as I stood one day above the ruins of Asurbanipal’s library. Gazing at a cluster of keleks--skin rafts--bearing their light traffic down the historic Tigris, as they did when Assyria ruled the East, and recalling the pictures I had formed of “Nineveh the great city” when as a boy I read my first history of the Bible--a book that was to exert so paramount an influence on the studies and thoughts of my after life--I asked myself, “In what respect does my faith to-day differ from that which I held three score years ago”? I had then, as Pasteur once said of himself when at the zenith of his fame and mental vigor, the faith of a Breton peasant.[377] Since that far-off time when I delighted to picture the glories of Nineveh and Babylon and dwell on the famous campaigns and victories, the superb palaces and entertainments of Sennacherib and Assuerus and Nebuchadnezzar, I have striven to keep abreast with the intellectual movement of my time and, in so doing, I have never found anything in any of the new sciences that could by any legitimate interpretation be construed as being at variance with the teachings of the religion of my boyhood. We now know incomparably more about the history, the social and economic condition of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians than we did before the explorer brought to light the literary treasures of Nippur, Telloh, Abu-Habba, and Nineveh; but we have discovered nothing which is competent to discredit any of the eternal verities on which our faith is founded. The higher criticism may, indeed, cause us to modify some of our views regarding literary or textual problems, but as to the basal truths of Scripture, they stand absolutely in all their divine immutability untouched and absolutely unassailable. It was, indeed, with a feeling of joy and gratitude that I could, sixty years after my first acquaintance with Nineveh, feel, while contemplating the ruins of the famous city, that there was still in my soul nothing changed of that faith of a Breton peasant--a faith which, as it was my most precious inheritance in early youth, has ever continued to be my greatest consolation from then to beyond the Scriptural age of three score years and ten.

That the discoveries at Nineveh or elsewhere should ever prove to be in conflict with revealed truth, has to me never seemed possible. How could they be? Science and religion belong to entirely different spheres of thought. They are as far separated from each other as are the theories of electricity, of the constitution of matter, of the origin of species, and of universal gravitation from the doctrines of creation, redemption, Providence, sanctification. For this reason I can now repeat as unreservedly as I did a quarter of a century ago that “I am as firmly convinced as I can be of anything, that God is the Lord of science, that science is the handmaid of religion, that the two, speaking of the same Author, must voice the same testimony, and that this testimony must be not only unequivocally true but also unequivocally one.”[378]

When, therefore, the eminent Assyriologist, Friedrich Delitzsch, tells us that “the conviction is becoming more general that it is the results of the excavations in Babylonia and Assyria in particular, that are destined to inaugurate a new epoch as regards both the way in which we must understand the Old Testament and the estimate we must form of it,”[379] we must tell him that our viewpoint will be unchanged in all essential matters and that, whatever may be the future discoveries of Assyriologists, all of them will eventually be harmonized with the Bible and with the fundamental doctrines of the Church just as science and religion have always been reconciled with each other from the days of Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine of Hippo to those of Bossuet of Meaux and Wiseman of Westminster.

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