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ruins, whenever they fancied themselves near the site of Babylon, universally fixed upon the most conspicuous eminence to represent the tower of Belus."

The rise of the great Assyrian empire is related in a still earlier portion of the sacred narrative. Ham, the son of Noah, begat Cush, and to him was born Nimrod, who began to be a mighty one in the earth; and was called the mighty hunter before the Lord. The course of the sacred history is most brief and concise. "The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar." It was the early origination of those great social and political unions which have ever since bound men together by more or less strong and beneficial ties. The impression, however, which we are taught to form of the first mighty one on the earth, the powerful hunter, and the earliest sovereign among men, is not one very favourable to him as a distinguished scion of the new father of the human race. We shall regard him more justly if we look upon him as the premature introducer of sovereign rule and despotic sway, into the young world. The patriarch Noah set the needful example of paternal rule; and there could be little necessity in the days of his great-grandson Nimrod, that the patriarchal government, so suited to a simple pastoral life, should be superseded by any premature anticipation of the social necessities of later times. The world was all before them, as it had been before our first parents. Ambition alone, and pride, and the haughty love of dominion, induced men to forsake the fertile and peaceful plains of Asia, to crowd within the narrow limits of brick-built cities. Their experience of the restraints of absolute dominion appear to have differed in no way from those of later ages. It was not seemingly from any feeling of love that men cherished the memory of the founder of Babel. It must be understood, rather as a proverbial expression of his haughty dominion, when the sacred historian

remarks: "Wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord." His game it is obvious was not always the wild beasts of the field, and we should rather perhaps assume as the meaning of these words, "before the Lord," that not even the consciousness of God's presence and oversight could restrain his

excesses.

The site of the chief city of earth's first empire, was chosen in the midst of the vast plains of Shinar. The bricks were made and burned, and the city and its tower arose, the fame of which was to keep them in remembrance, and preserve their social unity. "And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded." When we reflect on this remarkable passage, and think of that first great effort of architectural power and skill, which thus attracted the notice of heaven by its impious ambition; it becomes a subject of curious speculation to think that it is assumed, not without considerable probability, that the ruins of that primal structure, have not yet yielded entirely to the obliterating hand of time. A new and lively interest has been excited in these primitive ruins of ancient empire, by the recent important discoveries effected by M. Botta, and our own enterprising countryman, Dr. Layard. We must not, however, confound the two great first empires of Asia. The empire of Nimrod, the beginning of whose kingdom was Babel, is altogether distinct in origin from that of Assyria. There was abundant room for both, on the vast continent of Asia, though aggressive ambition afterwards forced them into union under one supreme despot.

The sacred historian thus describes the rise of the Assyrian empire as the first offshoot from the kingdom founded by the mighty hunter: "Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city of Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen, between Nineveh and

Calah; the same is a great city.” It is this very city of Calah, that Dr. Layard is believed to have exumed from the heaps beneath which it has lain intombed for so many centuries. On this subject much curious, and frequently ill-grounded speculation has been indulged. The strangely recovered Nimroud, on the banks of the Tigris, has been assumed to be Nineveh, or sought for among records of other elder cities of Asia. But Major Rawlinson, who has been the first to master the key of the cuneiform characters, impressed on the bricks, and carved on the sculptured marbles of Nimroud, has also cleared up some of the chief mysteries and errors regarding the ancient city to which tradition still attaches the name of the mighty hunter. At a recent meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society of London, Major Rawlinson laid before the members an interesting communication descriptive of his recent visit to explore the ancient ruins, from whence the Assyrian marbles have been procured, and to explain in what way the cuneiform or arrow-headed characters inscribed on them are to be read. After assuming the general familiarity with the interesting work of Dr. Lay ard, to which we shall have repeatedly to refer, Major Rawlinson proceeded to combat the popular error, which confounds Nimroud and Nineveh :-"The greater number of the inscriptions," he remarked, "were generally supposed to have been found at Nineveh; but the correct modern name of the place was Nimrud; and though it was in all probability one of the group of cities to which Jonah was sent, yet it had no claim to be considered Nineveh itself. Its ancient name, as denoted on the inscriptions, was Khala, or Sala, and it was probably the Calah mentioned in the tenth chapter of Genesis." The real metropolitan Nineveh he conjectures to have stood on the site now occupied by that huge mound on the opposite side of the Tigris from Mosul, on the top of which is the pretended tomb of the prophet Jonah.

That mound, Major Rawlinson remarked, was held so sacred by the Turks that they would not allow Europeans to excavate it; but he did not believe Dr. Layard would leave the country without some of its inscriptions. There were two other towns in the neighbourhood whose modern names were Khorsabar and Konyinjuk; and these two towns he believed were the two chief cities of the kingdom of Nineveh. The early history of that country was buried in the deepest obscurity. Even if they should be able to decipher all the inscriptions, still these would give little insight into the chronology of the period unless they could lay hold of some event which touched upon the history of other countries. They had already obtained some valuable notices of the reigns of six monarchs in succession, but any one must see that that was but a short way towards a connected history of the nine centuries to which the Assyrian empire extended. Of the six monarchs mentioned, there was little to mark the era of their reigns; but, after being engaged in the examination of the question for many years, the conviction had been forced upon him that the date of the building of the north-west palace of Khala or Nimrud, on which palace the inscriptions relating to these monarchs had been found, was nearly coeval with the extinction of the eighteenth dynasty of Egypt, and the first establishment of the Jews in Palestine. The earliest cuneiform descriptions which he had been able to decipher, related to a king whose name he read Sardanapalus, not the voluptuary with whose name they were so familiar, but a monarch much anterior, the builder of the north-west palace; but it did not therefore follow that he was the first king, or the builder of the city, for several other names of monarchs are incidentally mentioned, and his own father and grandfather are always spoken of as kings. He might mention a great difficulty that was thrown in the way of identifying a monarch referred

to in different inscriptions, or in various parts of the same inscription, from the fact that the names were not marked by any definite phonetic sound, but rather by the sense, so that synonymes were employed to any extent. The inscription to which he had referred began,— "This the Palace of Sardanapalus, the humble worshipper of Assarach." There could be no doubt that this Assarach was the Nisroch mentioned in Scripture, in whose temple Sennacherib was slain. He was most probably the deified father of the tribe, the Assur of the Bible. This Assarach was styled in all the inscriptions as the king, the father, and the ruler of the gods, thus answering to the Greek god Chronos, or Saturn, in their AssyrioHellenic mythology. The inscription then went on to record the extent of the dominions of King Sardanapalus, from which it appeared that Phoenicia was not at that time subject to his sway; but another inscription stated, that after passing the great desert, he received tribute from the kings of Tyre and Sidon and Accaia on the sea coast. There was another inscription, giving an account of various wars, but in so mutilated a condition that it was impossible to make out a connected narrative. He therefore passed on to another inscription, giving an account of the reign of Tummum Bahr, the son of Sardanapalus. This inscription was complete, and it gave an account of an active and restless monarch, who, during a period of more than thirty years, carried on his wars and conquests on every side, quelling rebellions, plundering cities, leading princes into captivity, and slaughtering thousands in battle. These expeditions were invariably headed by the king himself, till towards the thirtieth year of his reign, when, sated with glory, and probably worn out with action, he remained at home and sent his armies to rob, plunder, and slay, under the command of his lieutenant. The whole of this long and deeply-interesting inscription, which gave much curious information

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