Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

The first to engage in a serious examination of the ruins within the limits of ancient Assyria was Mr. Rich, many years the political Resident of the East India Company at Baghdad, -a man, whom enterprise, industry, extensive and varied learning, and rare influence over the inhabitants of the country, acquired as much by character as position, eminently qualified for such a task. The remains near Hillah, being in the immediate vicinity of Baghdad, first attracted his attention; and he commenced his labors by carefully examining their position, and by opening trenches into the various mounds. It is un

necessary to enter into a detailed account of his discoveries. They were of considerable interest, consisting chiefly of fragments of inscriptions, bricks, engraved stones, and a coffin of wood; but the careful account which he drew up of the site of the ruins was of greater value, and has formed the ground-work of all subsequent inquiries into the topography of Babylon.

In the year 1820 Mr. Rich, having been induced to visit Kurdistan for the benefit of his health, returned to Baghdad by way of Mosul. Remaining some days in this city, his curiosity was naturally excited by the great mounds on the opposite bank of the river, and he entered upon an examination of them. He learnt from the inhabitants of Mosul that, some time previous to his visit, a sculpture, representing various forms of men and animals, had been dug up in a mound forming part of the great enclosure. This strange object had been the cause of general wonder, and the whole population had issued from the walls to gaze upon it. The ulema having at length pronounced that these figures were the idols of the infidels, the Mohammedans, like obedient disciples, so

completely destroyed them, that Mr. Rich was unable to obtain even a fragment.

His first step was to visit the village containing the tomb of Jonah. In the houses he met with a few stones bearing inscriptions, which had probably been discovered in digging the foundations; and under the mosque containing the tomb he was shown three very narrow and apparently ancient passages, one within the other, with several doors or apertures.

He next examined the largest mound of the group, called Kouyunjik by the Turks, and Armousheeah by the Arabs; the circumference of which he ascertained to be 7690 feet. Amongst the rubbish he found a few fragments of pottery, bricks with cuneiform characters, and some remains of building in the ravines. On a subsequent occasion he made a general survey of the ruins, which is published in the collection of his journals, edited by his widow.

With the exception of a small stone chair, and a few remains of inscriptions, Mr. Rich obtained no other Assyrian relics from the site of Nineveh ; and he left Mosul, little suspecting that in the mounds were buried the palaces of the Assyrian Kings. As he floated down the Tigris to Baghdad, he visited Nimroud, and was struck by its evident antiquity. The tales of the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages connected the ruins with Nimrod's own city, and better authenticated traditions with those of Al Athur, or Ashur, from which the whole country anciently received its name. He collected a few bricks bearing cuneiform characters, and proceeded with his journey.

The fragments obtained by Mr. Rich were subsequently placed in the British Museum, and formed the principal,

and indeed almost only, collection of Assyrian antiquities in Europe. A case scarcely three feet square enclosed all that remained, not only of the great city, Nineveh, but of Babylon itself!

Other museums in Europe contained a few cylinders and gems, which came from Assyria and Babylonia; but they were not classified, nor could it be determined to what exact epoch they belonged. Of Assyrian art nothing was known. The architecture of Nineveh and Babylon was a matter of speculation, and the poet or painter restored their palaces and temples, as best suited his theme or his subject. A description of the temple of Belus by Herodotus, led to an imaginary representation of the tower of Babel. Its spiral ascent, its galleries gradually decreasing in circumference and supported by innumerable columns, are familiar to us from the illustrations, adorning almost the opening page of that Book, which is associated with our earliest recollections.

Such was our acquaintance four years ago with Nineveh -its history, its site, and its arts. The reader will judge from the following pages, how far recent discoveries are likely to extend our knowledge.

As inscriptions in the cuneiform character will be so frequently mentioned in the following pages, a few words on the nature of this very ancient mode of writing may not be unacceptable to the reader. The epithets of cuneiform, cuneatic, arrow-headed, and wedge-shaped — têteà-clou in French, and keilförmig in German-have been assigned to it according as the fancy of the describer saw in its component parts a resemblance to a wedge, the barb of an arrow, or a nail. The term "cuneiform" is now most generally used in England, and probably best expresses the peculiar form of the character,

each letter being composed of several distinct wedges combined together. The following may be given as an example:

[blocks in formation]

This inscription contains the name of an Assyrian king and his title of king of Assyria. It is not improbable that these letters were originally formed by mere lines, for which the wedge was afterwards substituted as an embellishment; and that the character itself may once have resembled the picture writing of Egypt, though all traces of its ideographic properties have been lost. The Assyrians, like the Egyptians, possessed at a later period a cursive writing, resembling the rounded character of the Phoenicians, Palmyrenes, Babylonians, and Jews, which was probably used for written documents, whilst the cuneiform was reserved for monumental purposes. There is this great difference between the two forms of writing, which appears to point to a distinct origin,—the cuneiform runs always from left to right, the cursive from right to left.

The cuneiform under various modifications, the letters being differently formed in different countries, prevailed over the greater part of western Asia to the time of the overthrow of the Persian empire by Alexander the Great. It is to this circumstance that we mainly owe the progress which has been made in decyphering the Assyrian inscriptions, and the hope that we shall ultimately be able to ascertain, with some degree of certainty, their contents. The Persian kings ruled over all the nations using this peculiar form of writing. These nations consisted of three principal races, the Babylonian (including

the Assyrian) speaking a language allied to the Hebrew and Arabic, the Persian, and the Tatar, the last two using dialects nearly approaching those still found amongst their descendants. When recording their victories, as was their custom, on rocks and pillars, these monarchs used the three languages spoken by their subjects. Such was the origin of what are called the trilingual inscriptions of Persia, which afford the principal clue to the Assyrian writing. The tablets containing these inscriptions are divided into three columns, each column being occupied by a version of the same inscription in one of the three national languages, and each language being written in the modification of the cuneiform character peculiar to it. Fortunately, the contents of the Persian inscriptions have long been accurately ascertained, and the alphabet and grammar reduced to a system. Owing, however, to the very large number of distinct characters in the Assyrian inscriptions, there being nearly 400 different signs, whilst in the Persian there are but thirty-nine or forty, and the great apparent laxity in the use of letters and the grammar, the process of decyphering is one of considerable difficulty, notwithstanding the aid which a version of the same inscription in a known tongue naturally supplies.

The most important trilingual inscriptions hitherto discovered are those on the palaces of Darius and Xerxes at Persepolis, over the tomb of Darius, and in the rock tablets of Behistun. The latter are by far the most extensive and valuable. They contain a history of the principal events of the reign of Darius, and giving a long list of countries and tribes subdued by that monarch, and the names of conquered kings and rebels, afford the best materials for decyphering the Assyrian character, proper names being the real clue to the value of letters.

« ZurückWeiter »