The Historians' History of the World 01

Of awe and worship—even as these—

So, smitten with the sun’s increase,

Her glory mouldered and did cease

From immemorial Nineveh.—Rossetti.

A wish expressed by Herder early in the nineteenth century, that explorations might be made in the region of the buried cities of Babylonia and Assyria, was destined to meet with early realisation. The exact sites of various of these cities, long utterly forgotten, were discovered; excavations were made, and a harvest of buried records brought to light, surpassing in interest and importance the wildest dreams of anticipation. Not merely the ruins of city walls and of fallen palaces were exhumed, but with them wonderfully preserved sculptures and ornaments of surprising artistic excellence; and, more important still, voluminous written records, historical and literary, imprinted on slabs and cylinders of brick—the books of the period—in strange wedge-shaped characters of unknown import, which modern scholarship soon sufficed to decipher. How these marvellous feats were accomplished had best be explained before we turn to the historical records which they brought to light. It is a thrilling record, which has no exact counterpart elsewhere in history.a The story of how the work was begun is told by that pioneer in the field of Assyriology, Sir A. H. Layard:

THE RUINS OF NINEVEH AND M. BOTTA’S FIRST DISCOVERY

Were the traveller to cross the Euphrates to seek for such ruins in Mesopotamia and Chaldea as he had left behind him in Asia Minor or Syria, his search would be vain. The graceful column rising above the thick foliage of the myrtle, ilex, and oleander; the gradines of the amphitheatre covering a gentle slope, and overlooking the dark blue waters of a lake-like bay; the richly carved cornice or capital half hidden by the luxuriant herbage, are replaced by the stern, shapeless mound rising like a hill from the scorched plain, the fragments of pottery, and the stupendous mass of brickwork occasionally laid bare by the winter rains. He has left the land where nature is still lovely, where, in his mind’s eye, he can rebuild the temple or the theatre, half doubting whether they would have made a more grateful impression upon the senses than the ruin before him. He is now at a loss to give any form to the rude heaps upon which he is gazing. Those of whose works they are the remains, unlike the Roman and the Greek, have left no visible traces of their civilisation, or of their arts: their influence has long since passed away. The more he conjectures, the more vague the results appear. The scene around is worthy of the ruin he is contemplating; desolation meets desolation: a feeling of awe succeeds to wonder; for there is nothing to relieve the mind, to lead to hope, or to tell of what has gone by. These huge mounds of Assyria made a deeper impression upon me, gave rise to more serious thoughts and more earnest reflection, than the temples of Baalbec and the theatres of Ionia.