Myths of Babylonia and Assyria | Page 4

be dwelt
in from generation to generation." The Christian Saint rendered more
profound the brooding silence of the desolated city of his vision by
voicing memories of its beauty and gaiety and bustling trade:
The voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers and trumpeters shall
be heard no more at all in thee; And no craftsman, of whatsoever craft
he be, shall be found any more in thee; And the light of a candle shall
shine no more at all in thee; And the voice of the bridegroom and of the
bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: For thy merchants were the
great men of the earth; For by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.
_And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, And of all
that were slain upon the earth_.[3]
So for nearly two thousand years has the haunting memory of the
once-powerful city pervaded Christian literature, while its broken walls
and ruined temples and palaces lay buried deep in desert sand. The
history of the ancient land of which it was the capital survived in but

meagre and fragmentary form, mingled with accumulated myths and
legends. A slim volume contained all that could be derived from
references in the Old Testament and the compilations of classical
writers.
It is only within the past half-century that the wonderful story of early
Eastern civilization has been gradually pieced together by excavators
and linguists, who have thrust open the door of the past and probed the
hidden secrets of long ages. We now know more about "the land of
Babel" than did not only the Greeks and Romans, but even the Hebrew
writers who foretold its destruction. Glimpses are being afforded us of
its life and manners and customs for some thirty centuries before the
captives of Judah uttered lamentations on the banks of its reedy canals.
The sites of some of the ancient cities of Babylonia and Assyria were
identified by European officials and travellers in the East early in the
nineteenth century, and a few relics found their way to Europe. But
before Sir A.H. Layard set to work as an excavator in the "forties", "a
case scarcely three feet square", as he himself wrote, "enclosed all that
remained not only of the great city of Nineveh, but of Babylon
itself".[4]
Layard, the distinguished pioneer Assyriologist, was an Englishman of
Huguenot descent, who was born in Paris. Through his mother he
inherited a strain of Spanish blood. During his early boyhood he
resided in Italy, and his education, which began there, was continued in
schools in France, Switzerland, and England. He was a man of
scholarly habits and fearless and independent character, a charming
writer, and an accomplished fine-art critic; withal he was a great
traveller, a strenuous politician, and an able diplomatist. In 1845, while
sojourning in the East, he undertook the exploration of ancient
Assyrian cities. He first set to work at Kalkhi, the Biblical Calah. Three
years previously M.P.C. Botta, the French consul at Mosul, had begun
to investigate the Nineveh mounds; but these he abandoned for a
mound near Khorsabad which proved to be the site of the city erected
by "Sargon the Later", who is referred to by Isaiah. The relics
discovered by Botta and his successor, Victor Place, are preserved in
the Louvre.

At Kalkhi and Nineveh Layard uncovered the palaces of some of the
most famous Assyrian Emperors, including the Biblical Shalmaneser
and Esarhaddon, and obtained the colossi, bas reliefs, and other
treasures of antiquity which formed the nucleus of the British
Museum's unrivalled Assyrian collection. He also conducted diggings
at Babylon and Niffer (Nippur). His work was continued by his
assistant, Hormuzd Rassam, a native Christian of Mosul, near Nineveh.
Rassam studied for a time at Oxford.
The discoveries made by Layard and Botta stimulated others to follow
their example. In the "fifties" Mr. W.K. Loftus engaged in excavations
at Larsa and Erech, where important discoveries were made of ancient
buildings, ornaments, tablets, sarcophagus graves, and pot burials,
while Mr. J.E. Taylor operated at Ur, the seat of the moon cult and the
birthplace of Abraham, and at Eridu, which is generally regarded as the
cradle of early Babylonian (Sumerian) civilization.
In 1854 Sir Henry Rawlinson superintended diggings at Birs Nimrud
(Borsippa, near Babylon), and excavated relics of the Biblical
Nebuchadrezzar. This notable archaeologist began his career in the East
as an officer in the Bombay army. He distinguished himself as a
political agent and diplomatist. While resident at Baghdad, he devoted
his leisure time to cuneiform studies. One of his remarkable feats was
the copying of the famous trilingual rock inscription of Darius the
Great on a mountain cliff at Behistun, in Persian Kurdistan. This work
was carried out at great personal