le nation must have invented the system," OPPERT, _Journal
Asiatique_, 1875, p. 474. M. Oppert has given an interesting account of the
mode of decipherment in the _Introduction_ and in _Chapter 1._ of the first
volume of his _Expedition scientifique de Mesopotamie_.

[52] A reproduction of this stone will be found farther on. The detail in
question is engraved in LAYARD'S _Nineveh and its Remains_, vol. ii. p.
181.

[53] The latest cuneiform inscription we possess dates from the time of
Domitian. It has been published by M. OPPERT, _Melanges d'Archeologie
egyptienne et assyrienne_, vol. i. p. 23 (Vieweg, 1873, 4to.). Some very
long ones, from the time of the Seleucidae and the early Arsacidae, have been
discovered.

[54] Hence the name _pictography_ which some scholars apply to this
primitive form of writing. The term is clear enough, but unluckily it is
ill composed: it is a hybrid of Greek and Latin, which is sufficient to
prevent its acceptance by us.

[55] See the _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology_, twelfth
session, 1881-2.

[56] See MICHEL BREAL, _Le Dechiffrement des Inscriptions cypriotes_
(_Journal des Savants_, August and September, 1877). In the last page of
his article, M. Breal, while fully admitting the objections, asserts that
it is "difficult to avoid recognizing the general resemblance (difficile de
meconnaitre la ressemblance generale)." He refers us to the paper of Herr
DEECKE, entitled _Der Ursprung der Kyprischen Sylbenschrift, eine
palaeographische Untersuchung_, Strasbourg, 1877. Another hypothesis has
been lately started, and an attempt made to affiliate the Cypriot syllabary
to the as yet little understood hieroglyphic system of the Hittites. See a
paper by Professor A. H. SAYCE, _A Forgotten Empire in Asia Minor_, in No.
608 of _Fraser's Magazine_.

Sec. 5.--_The History of Chaldaea and Assyria._

We cannot here attempt even to epitomize the history of those great empires
that succeeded one another in Mesopotamia down to the period of the Persian
conquest. Until quite lately their history was hardly more than a tissue of
tales and legends behind which it was difficult to catch a glimpse of the
few seriously attested facts, of the few people who were more than shadows,
and of the dynasties whose sequence could be established. The foreground
was taken up by fabulous creatures like Ninus and Semiramis, compounded by
the lively imagination of the Greeks of features taken f