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no Plutarch to dissect the Pantheon, and to supply the names of the gods-no Manetho or Eratosthenes to classify the dynasties, and furnish the means of identifying the kings-how could it be supposed, with all the difficulties that beset, and none of the facilities that assist hieroglyphic students,. two or three individuals were to accomplish, in a couple of years, more than all Europe had been able to effect in half a century?"

After an ingenious analysis of the grammatical peculiarities discoverable in the Assyrian language, Major Rawlinson enumerated a list of about thirty of the commonest verbal roots, comparing them with their correspondents in the cognate languages, and remarking that those examples proved the Assyrian and Babylonian languages to be in a more primitive state than any other Semitic tongue open to our research; in as much as the roots were almost universally free from that subsidiary augment which in Hebrew, Aramæan, and Arabic had caused the triliteral to be usually regarded as the true base, and the bi-literal as the defective one. After citing a number of nouns and adjectives, all closely resembling wellknown forms in Hebrew and Arabic; he resumed the historical inquiry, part of which has already been con. sidered in a former chapter. One of the most interesting points commented on by him was the question which has been raised with regard to the identification of the Khorsabad kings, and which is of paramount importance to Assyrian chronology. It has been affirmed that the kings who built the palace of Koyunjik, and the southwest palace at Nimrud, were the Biblical Sennacherib and Esarhaddon; and if this were the case, of course the Khorsabad king, who was the father of the builder of Koyunjik, would be the Shalmaneser, or Sargon of Holy Writ. Major Rawlinson does not pretend to state authoritatively that these identifications are, or are not, true; he contented himself with giving the arguments for and

against, leaving others to draw their own decisions. In favour of the identification of the Khorsabad king with Shalmaneser or Sargon, there was, he remarked, firstly, the title of Sarghún attaching to the city as late as the Arab conquest; whilst the city is especially said in the inscriptions to be named after the king who built it. Secondly, the presumed synchronism of the king with Bocchoris, king of Egypt, who was the immediate predecessor of Sabacon, or So, this latter monarch being the party with whom Hoshea, the contemporary of Shalmaneser, formed an alliance. Thirdly, the remarkable accordance of the inscription on the Cyprus Stone in the Royal Museum of Berlin, with Menander's account of the assistance rendered by Shalmaneser to the islanders in their contest with Phoenicia.

With regard to the identification of the Koyunjik king with Sennacherib, Major Rawlinson noticed the reduction of Babylon, and the conquest of Sidon; and showed that the tablet at the Nahr-el Kelb might be very plausibly supposed to record the great expedition against Phoenicia and Egypt, described by Josephus.

In respect to the third king of the line, the most interesting point worth mentioning, is that the two first elements of the name are to be read Assaradon, which is almost the same as the Biblical Esarhadden.

Against the identifications, Major Rawlinson noticed the entire difference of the nomenclature, the ordinary forms of these kings' names on the monuments being, one, Arko-tsena; two, Beladonim-sha; and, three, Assar-adonassar; and the improbability-if the kings in question were the Biblical line-of such well-known appellations as Shalmanesser and Sennacherib never being employed, the latter name in particular having been preserved by Herodotus and the Chaldee historians, as well as in Scriptures.

He also observed that there are many cuneiform records

of Assyrian kings posterior to the builders of Khorsabad and Koyunjik; and these kings were evidently not less celebrated warriors than their predecessors. If then the Koyunjik line were really Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, and Esar-haddon, who, it might justly be asked, were the latter monarchs ?

Major Rawlinson finds from the inscriptions that the south-west Palace at Nimrud has not been built, as usually supposed, by the son of the builder of Koyunjik; but that it owed its origin to some monarch of an entirely different line, who was so reckless of the ancient Assyrian glories that, in erecting his new edifice, he destroyed the elaborate annals of the builder of Khorsabad engraven on the slabs of the centre palace. This different line, he thinks, must represent the second or lower dynasty of Assyria, in which case it will be necessary to assign all the other monuments to the upper and original line.

He has also noted other circumstances which he conceives to render impossible the identification of the builder of Khorsabad with Shalmaneser, or the builder of Koyunjik with Sennacherib.

We shall examine, however, still further, in the succeeding chapter, the chronological system of Assyrian history which has been already deduced from the partial, and necessarily extremely imperfect study of the newly deciphered annals of nations that perished before the dawn of the Roman power, or the rise of the civilization and arts of Greece.

CHAPTER VI.

ASSYRIAN CHRONOLOGY.

Time moveth not! our being 'tis that moves;
And we, swift gliding down life's rapid stream,
Dream of swift ages, and revolving years,
Ordained to chronicle our passing days.

WHITE.

THE utter oblivion into which the history of the capital and kingdom of Nineveh has fallen, is one of the many singular evidences of the literal fulfilment of prophecy. The earliest profane historians furnish only the most scanty and meager records of some late struggles of this ancient Asiatic kingdom, and we are indebted for the record of its greatest magnificence and grandeur to the same sacred annals of prophecy which foretold its doom and irretrievable overthrow. Dr. Keith remarks :-"The utter and perpetual destruction and desolation of Nineveh were foretold: 'The Lord will make an utter end of the place thereof. Affliction shall not rise up the second time. She is empty, and void, and waste. The Lord will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria, and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness. How has she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in!' In the second century, Lucian, a native of a city on the banks of the Euphrates,

testified that Nineveh was utterly perished,-that there was no vestige of it remaining,—and that none could tell where once it was situate. This testimony of Lucian, and the lapse of many ages, during which the place was not known where it stood, render it at least somewhat doubtful whether the remains of an ancient city, opposite to Mosul, which have been described as such by travellers, be indeed those of ancient Nineveh. The name, however, was attached to the spot by the inhabitants of the country in the beginning of the seventh century. The battle of Nineveh decided the fate of Chosroes. Its locality is thus described by Gibbon :-"The Romans boldly advanced from the Araxes to the Tigris, and the timid prudence of Rhazates was content to follow them by forced marches through a desolate country, till he received a peremptory mandate to risk the fate of Persia in a decisive battle. Eastward of the Tigris, at the end of the bridge of Mosul, the great Nineveh had formerly been erected the city, and even the ruins of the city, had long since disappeared: the vacant space afforded a spacious field for the operation of the two armies.' The great city had become 'the field' of Nineveh. An utter ruin had been made of it at once; affliction did not rise up a second time. One thing is sufficiently obvious to the most careless observer,' says Rich, who was himself a most careful observer, 'which is, the equality of age of all these vestiges. Whether they belonged to Nineveh or some other city, is another question, and one not so easily determined; but that they are all of the same age and character does not admit of a doubt.' 'Pottery, and other Babylonian fragments'-'fragments of cuneiform inscriptions on stone, similar in every respect to those got at Babylon,' are found in the mounds that constitute the ruins. In contrasting the then existing great and increasing population, and the accumulating wealth of the proud inhabitants of the mighty Nineveh, with the utter

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