istorical events of the period in which they were inscribed.
Information on all these points has been acquired as the result of
excavation, and is based on the discoveries in the ruins of early cities
which have remained buried beneath the soil for some thousands of years.
But for the history of Assyria and of the other nations in the north
there is still another source of information to which reference must now
be made.

The kings of Assyria were not content with recording their achievements
on the walls of their buildings, on stelae set up in their palaces and
temples, on their tablets of annals preserved in their archive-chambers,
and on their cylinders and foundation-memorials concealed within the
actual structure of the buildings themselves. They have also left
records graven in the living rock, and these have never been buried,
but have been exposed to wind and weather from the moment they
were engraved. Records of irrigation works and military operations
successfully undertaken by Assyrian kings remain to this day on the
face of the mountains to the north and east of Assyria. The kings of
one great mountain race that had its capital at Van borrowed from the
Assyrians this method of recording their achievements, and, adopting the
Assyrian character, have left numerous rock-inscriptions in their own
language in the mountains of Armenia and Kurdistan. In some instances
the action of rain and frost has nearly if not quite obliterated the
record, and a few have been defaced by the hand of man. But as the
majority are engraved in panels cut on the sheer face of the rock, and
are inaccessible except by means of ropes and tackle, they have escaped
mutilation. The photograph reproduced will serve to show the means that
must be adopted for reaching such rock-inscriptions in order to examine
or copy them.

[Illustration: 413.jpg WORK IN PROGRESS ON ONE OF THE ROCK-INSCRIPTIONS
OF SENNACHERIB]

In The Gorge Of The River Gomel, Near Bavian.

The inscription shown in the photograph is one of those cut by
Sennacherib in the gorge near Bavian, through which the river Gomel
flows, and can be reached only by climbing down ropes fixed to the top
of the cliff. The choice of such positions by the kings who caused the
inscriptions to be engraved was dictated by the desire to render it
difficult to destroy them, but it has also had the effect of delaying to
some extent their copying and decipherment by modern workers.

[Illu