Though this hope was not then realized, we find Mohl indefatigable in urging on his friends in Paris and elsewhere the necessity of collecting new materials. In his report of the year 1843, he calls attention to the first publication of Oriental cylinders by A. Cullimore, and to a similar collection then preparing under the auspices of M. Lajard, a French scholar, best known by his vast researches on the worship of Mithra, and not to be confounded with Austen Henry Layard, who will appear later on the stage. In the same year Mohl announces a more important fact. M. Botta, then French Consul at Mosul, had carried on excavations at Nineveh, encouraged to do so by M. Mohl. M. Maury, as President of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belleslettres, tells us: "C'est surtout d'après ses indications que Botta retrouvait les restes des palais des rois de Ninive." Botta's first attempts were rewarded by the wonderful discovery of Assyrian bas-reliefs and inscriptions. Mohl, on communicating M. Botta's letters to the Asiatic Society of Paris, says: "These are the only specimens of Assyrian sculpture which have hitherto come to light, and the excavations of M. Botta will add an entirely new chapter to the history of ancient art." The French Government, justly proud of the discoveries of its consul, lost no time in securing the treasures he had found. Mohl did all he could to persuade the French authorities to give Botta the aid he required in order to continue his explorations, and he impressed on the members of the Asiatic Society the duty of publishing as many of the newly-discovered inscriptions as their means would allow them. He felt, in fact, very sanguine at that time, that after the progress which Burnouf and Lassen had made in deciphering the first class of these inscriptions-namely, the Persian-the two other classes, the so-called Median and Babylonian, would soon have to surrender their secrets likewise. They were all written with the same wedgeshaped letters, and though it was easy to see that the number of independent signs, or groups of wedges, was far larger in the Median than in the Persian, and again far larger in the Babylonian than in the Median inscriptions, yet as there existed trilingual documents, and as it was known in particular that the great inscription of Behistun was repeated three times, on three different tablets, in three different alphabets, and in three different languages, it seemed but natural that after the Persian edict had been deciphered, the Median and Babylonian could offer no very formidable resistance. In this expectation M. Mohl and his friends, as we shall see, were sadly disappointed. Still, every year brought some new light, and in every one of his annual addresses M. Mohl reports progress with unflagging enthusiasm.

In 1844 he says:

"It was reserved for a member of your society, M. Botta, to lift a corner of that veil with which time had covered the history of Mesopotamia. Last year he wrote to you that he had found at Khorsabad, at about five leagues' distance from Nineveh, the ruins of a building covered with sculptures and

inscriptions. The excavations which he has carried on since, have only added to the importance of his discoveries. Everything at present seems to show, that these ruins are truly Assyrian; but much more abundant materials will soon be forthcoming. The French Government has sent M. Flandin to make drawings on the spot. M. Botta himself has bought the whole village beneath which the ruins are found, and the Louvre will soon possess a splendid museum of Assyrian antiquities."

But while thus telling the world of the wonders revealed from year to year in the Assyrian Herculaneum and Pompeii, Mohl never ceased to point out the duty incumbent on Oriental scholarship in Europe of deciphering the three cuneiform alphabets, and reading the three ancient languages in which the old Kings of Babylon, Nineveh, Media, and Persia had recorded their achievements for the benefit of future generations. He dwells again and again on the labours of Mr. Rawlinson, the fortunate Consul-General at Bagdad, who was in possession of the great trilingual Behistun Inscription, and therefore was supposed to hold in his hand the key that would unlock, not only the remaining secrets of the Persian but likewise the as yet only guessed at contents of the Median and Babylonian tablets. Yet that inscription was still withheld, and such was the impatience of the learned public in Europe for new materials and new light, that the small kingdom of Denmark sent Westergaard to Persia, to copy cuneiform inscriptions, and to study the ancient language of the Zend-avesta, which, as Burnouf had shown, supplied in reality the most advanced trench from which the language of the Persian mountain records of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes could be attacked. A large number of the Assyrian inscriptions copied by Flandin and Coste were published in 1844, at the expense of the French Government. Many hands were at work, if not to decipher these inscriptions, at least to draw up lists of all the letters, which, in the Assyrian and Babylonian alphabet, amounted to several hundreds instead of the thirty-three consonants and Vowels of the Persian; to find out, in various transcripts of the same inscription, what letters could be replaced by other letters, which signs were ideographic, which syllabic, which phonetic; in fact to carry out some kind of preliminary sifting, and to establish a certain order in what seemed at first a mere chaos of arrows and wedges. A real assault, it was felt, would be premature until the Behistun inscription became publici juris. It was known then that Colonel Rawlinson had copied as much as four hundred and fifty lines of Persian text, containing probably ten times as many words as all the other Persian inscriptions put together. Coste and Flandin had been on the spot, and had prepared careful drawings of the sculptures of Behistun, representing Darius with his captive kings before him, protected by Auramazda, the god of the Avesta, called Ahuramazda in Zend, and Ormazd in modern Persian. But, the most important part of the monument, the inscriptions, they had left uncopied.

The next year, 1845, brings us news of the unearthing of the first

complete palace. M. Botta had then two hundred workmen at his disposal, consisting chiefly of those unfortunate Nestorians who had escaped being massacred by the Kurds. Two thousand mètres of wall covered with inscriptions and bas-reliefs were laid open, one hundred and thirty bas-reliefs were copied by M. Flandin, two hundred inscriptions were carefully transcribed by M. Botta. The most striking specimens of the Assyrian sculptures had been shipped off on the Tigris, and had actually arrived at Bagdad, ready to be taken to Paris. There were only the two gigantic bulls, and two statues of men throttling lions in their arms still waiting to be packed with care. M. Botta was expected back at Paris, and his whole museum was to follow as soon as the shallow Tigris would allow it.

The best account of what had been achieved in recovering the antiquities of Mesopotamia up to the year 1845 may be found in "Lettres de M. Botta sur ses découvertes à Khorsabad près de Ninive, publiées par M. Mohl, Paris, 1845." We have only to add that Westergaard was then publishing his first essay on the Median inscriptions, and that Colonel Rawlinson's papers containing the Persian text of the Behistun inscriptions complete, about one-third of the Median, and one-tenth of the Babylonian tablets, were in the hands of Mr. Norris, the indefatigable secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society in London.

In 1846 Mr. Layard appears on the stage. Attracted by the fame of Botta's discoveries, he set to work digging at Nineveh with that pluck, that energy, and at the same time that discriminating judgment which he has since shown on other occasions. There was enough, and more than enough, to disinter for both France and England; yet there can be no doubt that England, leaving its representatives far greater freedom of action than France, obtained in the end far greater results, owing chiefly to the energy and undaunted perseverance of such men as Rawlinson, Layard, and Loftus. Cargoes of antiquities soon arrived in London. One was unfortunately wrecked on its way from Bombay. In France the Government seemed satisfied with the collection sent home by Botta, and spent large sums on publishing the description of his discoveries in so extravagant a style that again its very object was defeated. This is a point on which Mohl speaks out in almost every one of his reports. Doing full justice to the French Chambers, and their liberal grants for sending out learned expeditions and publishing their results, he shows that the sumptuous way in which these works are got up, and the enormous price at which they are sold, keep them altogether from those in whose hands alone they would be useful. He shows how much more sensible and practical the English system is of leaving the publication of such works to private enterprise, and he tells the Government that while Mr. Layard's works on Nineveh are read in thousands of copies, yielding at the same time a good profit both to author and publisher, M. Botta's "Monuments de Ninive," published at an enormous expense by Government (Paris, 1848),

was so dear that the two men who would have made the best use of it, Mr. Rawlinson and Mr. Layard, were unable to buy it. Here was indeed a reductio ad absurdum, but like other reductio's of the same kind, it seems only to have confirmed the Government in its perverse course.

In 1848 M. Mohl is able to announce that Rawlinson's paper on the Behistun inscription has been published at last in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1847. Though at that time there were no more discoveries to be made in deciphering the alphabet of the Persian cuneiform inscriptions, yet the publication and translation of so large a document marked a new epoch in the study of Persian antiquities. How well the alphabet was known at that time was best shown by the fact that Mr. Norris, then secretary of the Asiatic Society in London, was able to point out mistakes in the copies of the Behistun inscription sent home by Colonel Rawlinson, with the same certainty as a Latin scholar would correct clerical blunders in a Latin inscription. Mohl, though fully recognizing the principle that priority of publication constitutes priority of discovery, does the fullest justice to Rawlinson's industry and perseverance, and to the real genius with which he had performed his own peculiar task.

After Rawlinson's Memoir was published, the Persian cuneiform inscriptions were disposed of; their ancient texts could thenceforth be read with nearly the same certainty as an ancient Greek or Latin inscription. The question now was, what could be done for the Median and Assyrian inscriptions? Westergaard had proved that the language of the second class of the so-called Median inscriptions was Scythian or Turanian. With regard to the third class, the inscriptions found at Babylon and Nineveh, all scholars who were then at work on them, such as Grotefend, Löwenstern, Longperier, De Saulcy, Hincks, were agreed that they were written in a Semitic dialect. The inscriptions of Van only gave rise to doubts, and Hincks, in a paper "On the Inscriptions at Van," suspected that they were composed in an Aryan language. The difficulties, however, of reading either the Median or the Assyrian inscriptions, even after the Behistun texts had been published, were far greater than had been expected. First of all, the Median and Babylonian transcripts at Behistun were imperfect. Secondly, they were written in an alphabet that was not only, like the Egyptian, at the same time ideographic, syllabic, and phonetic, but, what was much worse, employed the same sign to express different powers, and different signs to express one and the same power. We enter in fact into the long controversy of the Polyphony and Homophony of the Babylonian alphabet, a problem which made several scholars give up the whole matter as hopeless, which roused a general scepticism among Oriental scholars, and still more among the public at large, and which even now, after twenty years of continued research, continues a constant stumblingblock to Assyrian and Babylonian scholarship.

Mohl was fully aware of all these difficulties, but he goes on year

after year announcing new triumphs, and exhorting to new victories. In 1849, the French Government withdrew its patronage from the field of excavation. M. Botta was removed from Mosul to Jerusalem. and the rich mine which he had opened was left to be worked by Mr. Layard. At home the chief advance made in deciphering was in the Median line. Colonel Rawlinson had succeeded in copying nearly the whole of the Median text at Behistun, and promised to send his copies home; M. de Sauley gave the results of his own independent studies, on the Median inscriptions, so far as they were then known, in several papers contributed to the Journal Asiatique.

In 1851, we receive the first account of Mr. Layard's splendid discoveries at Koyunjik, and somewhat later at Babylon. This Koyunjik proved the richest field of Assyrian discovery. There are within the precincts at Nineveh two artificial hillocks, the one called the Koyunjik, the other the Nabbi Yunes. It was the former which yielded its treasures to European excavators, while the latter, being supposed to contain the bones of the prophet Jonah, and protected by a mosque, was considered too sacred to be surrendered to them. The Pasha of Mosul, however, though forbidding the infidels to disturb the peace of the prophet Jonah, had no scruples in digging himself, and his labours were soon rewarded by two bulls, nineteen feet high, which were not exactly what he was looking for. (Rapport, 1856, p. 49.) At the same time Mr. Loftus was sent to the Lower Euphrates to explore the ruins of Warkah and Senkerah, while another expedition to Susah was in contemplation at the expense of the English Government.

At home the linguistic excavations were carried on quietly by Botta, De Sauley, Rawlinson, Norris, and especially by the Rev. E. Hincks, who at that time was the most advanced pioneer, and the first to lay the solid foundation for a grammatical study of the Assyrian language. His labours, scattered about in different journals, are now in danger of being almost forgotten; and it would be but a just tribute to his memory if the Irish Academy or some of his surviving friends and admirers were to publish a collected edition of his numerous though not voluminous contributions to the study of the cuneiform inscriptions.

In 1853, Mohl reports with great satisfaction that M. Place, the successor of M. Botta, as French consul at Mosul, has been directed to continue excavations. His labours at Khorsabad were soon rewarded by most valuable results. "He found new halls, subterranean vaults, long passages in enamelled bricks, Assyrian statues, the cellar of the castle, containing vessels still filled with dried-up liquors, bas-reliefs, inscriptions, articles in ivory and metal, and, quite recently, a depôt of iron and steel instruments, and a gate of the town or the palace in splendid preservation, covered in by a vault supported on both sides by bulls, and built in enamelled and ornamental bricks." In spite of these splendid discoveries, which, as M. Mohl said, would at last bring the Assyrian Museum at the Louvre up to the level of the British