The Historians' History of the World 01

Maccalester, S. H., Babylon and Nineveh. Boston, 1892.—Macphail, S. E., Monumental witness to Old Testament History. London, 1879.—Martin, G., La campaigne de Sennakerib en Palestine, etc. Montauban, 1892.—Martin, F., Textes religieux assyriens et babyloniens. Paris, 1900.—Maspero, G. C. C., Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient. Paris, 1886; The Struggle of the Nations. London, 1896; The Dawn of Civilisation. London, 1897; Life in Ancient Assyria. London, 1892.—Meissner, B., Beiträge zum altbabylonischen Privatrecht. Leipsic, 1893.—Menant, J., Babylone et la Chaldée. Paris, 1875; Découvertes assyriennes. La Bibliothèque du palais de Ninive. Paris, 1880; Empreintes de cachets assyrio-chaldéens relevés au Musée britannique sur des contrats d’intériet privé. Paris, 1883; Les pierres gravées de la Haute-Asie. Recherches sur la glyptique orientale. Paris, 1883, 1886; Les noms propres assyriens; recherches sur la formation des expressions idéographiques. Paris, 1861; Hammourabi (King of Babylon) Inscriptions. Paris, 1873; Les langues perdues de la Perse et de l’Assyrie. Paris, 1890; Annales des rois d’Assyrie. Paris, 1874; Ninive et Babylone. Paris, 1888; Les fausses antiquités de l’Assyrie. Paris, 1888.

Joachim Menant was born at Cherbourg, France, 16th April, 1820. The life of this famous orientalist furnishes yet another illustration of the practical man of affairs who finds also time for the most abstruse scholarship. Throughout a long life until 1890, when at the ripe age of three score years and ten, he was retired with the title of Honorary Councillor. Menant lived the practical everyday life of a magistrate, and practised this profession with such assiduity and judgment as to attain the highest distinction. Yet, at the same time, he found leisure hours enough to make himself everywhere recognised as one of the most accomplished of Assyriologists. A comparatively young man, when the discoveries of Botta and Layard and their successors first brought the Assyrian treasures to the attention of the world, Menant seemed from the very first to have been seized with a desire to investigate the strange inscriptions from Nineveh. He was among the first who undertook the investigation of the strange cuneiform writing and from then till now he has kept well in the van of the constantly growing company of Assyriologists. The list of his works is little more than a succession of papers on one or another of the subjects most intimately connected with this field. Most of them are of a technical character, and, therefore, have necessarily appeared only to a limited audience. In one or two instances, however, and notably in the case of the little book on the library of Asshurbanapal, he has descended to the popular level, and has shown himself capable of handling the most abstruse topics in a way to make them delightfully interesting to the least scholarly of readers. Strange to say, this beautiful little book has never been hitherto translated into English, and a like neglect has attended nearly all the other publications of the author. It is difficult to find an explanation of this neglect unless it be the author’s well-known attitude towards the status of the ancient Hebrew records. On more than one occasion he has expressed the opinion that to single out the Jews among the peoples of antiquity as the one important race of their time is wofully to distort the perspective of history. Needless to say such an opinion as this throws one counter to the prejudices of a large proportion of people, including the mass of Assyriologists among the rest.

Ménard, L., Histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient. Paris, 1883.—Meyer, E., Geschichte des Alterthums. Stuttgart, 1884, etc., 5 vols., in progress.—Monaco, A., Orientalia. Rome, 1891.—Muecke, Ch., Von Euphrat zum Tiber. Untersuchungen zur alten Geschichte. Leipsic, 1899.—Mueller-Simonis, P., Relations des missions scientifiques. Washington, 1892.—Mürdter, F., Gesch. Babyloniens und Assyriens. Stuttgart, 1891.

Niebuhr, B. G., Lectures on Ancient History. London, 1852, 2 vols.—Niebuhr, M., Geschichte Assurs und Babels. Berlin, 1854.—Niebuhr, C., Die erste Dynastie von Babel (in Vorderasiat. Ges. Mitt., vol. 3, p. 43). Berlin, 1897; Studien zur Geschichte des alten Orientes. Leipsic, 1894; Die Chronologie der Geschichte Israels, Aegyptens, Babyloniens und Assyriens von 2000-700 v. Chr. Leipsic, 1895.—Nikel, J., Herodot und die Keilschriftforschung. Paderborn, 1896.