ature above described must be understood to include
the Assyrian. Civilization was first established in Babylonia, and there
apparently were produced the great epic poems and the legends. But
Assyria, when she succeeded to the headship of the Mesopotamian valley,
in the twelfth century B.C., adopted the literature of her southern
sister. A great part of the old poetry has been found in the library of
Assurbanipal, at Nineveh (seventh century B.C.), where a host of scribes
occupied themselves with the study of the ancient literature. They
seem to have had almost all the apparatus of modern critical work.
Tablets were edited, sometimes with revisions. There are bilingual
tablets, presenting in parallel columns the older texts (called
Sumerian-Accadian) and the modern version. There are numerous
grammatical and lexicographical lists. The records were accessible, and
often consulted. Assurbanipal, in bringing back a statue of the goddess
Nana from the Elamite region, says that it was carried off by the
Elamites 1635 years before; and Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon
(circa B.C. 550), a man devoted to temple restoration, refers to an
inscription of King Naram-Sin, of Agane, who, he says, reigned 3200
years before. In recent discoveries made at Nippur, by the American
Babylonian Expedition, some Assyriologists find evidence of the
existence of a Babylonian civilization many centuries before B.C. 4000
(the dates B.C. 5000 and B.C. 6000 have been mentioned); the material is
now undergoing examination, and it is too early to make definite
statements of date. See Peters in American Journal of Archaeology for
January-March, 1895, and July-September, 1895; and Hilprecht, 'The
Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania,' Vol. i.,
Part 2, 1896.

The Assyrian and Babylonian historical inscriptions, covering as they do
the whole period of Jewish history down to the capture of Babylon by
Cyrus, are of very great value for the illustration of the Old
Testament. They have a literary interest also. Many of them are written
in semi-rhythmical style, a form which was favored by the inscriptional
mode of writing. The sentences are composed of short parallel clauses,
and the nature of the material induced a division into paragraphs which
resemble strophes. They are characterized also by precision and
pithiness of statement, and are probably as trust-worthy as official
records ever are.

[Illustration: Signature]