without number, partly
contemporaneous with the Old Testament, partly older by many centuries.
These rich treasures have been brought to light by the {111}
perseverance and painstaking toil of archaeologists, whose discoveries
have shed light on human history during a period of more than four
thousand years before the opening of the Christian era.

The historical movements recorded in the Old Testament, in which the
Hebrews had a vital interest, were confined chiefly to the territory
between the four seas of western Asia: the Mediterranean Sea, the Black
Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Persian Gulf. In the East the territory
might be extended to include Persia; in the West, to include Asia
Minor; and in the South or Southwest, to include Egypt, in North
Africa. All these districts, which may be designated Bible lands, have
been more or less thoroughly explored, and in most of them excavations
have been carried on. The countries in which the most valuable finds,
so far as Bible study is concerned, have been made are Palestine,
Babylonia-Assyria, Egypt, Northern Syria, Phoenicia, Moab, and Asia
Minor.

Even before excavations were undertaken travelers had visited these
different countries and had reported their observations, but the
information thus gained was more or less vague, and in many cases of no
practical scientific value.[1] They saw many strange mounds and ruins,
and noticed and occasionally picked up fragments of inscriptions and
monuments; but no one could {112} decipher the inscriptions; hence the
finds were preserved simply as mementoes and relics of an unknown age,
from which nothing could be learned concerning the history and
civilization of the people that once occupied these lands. The mounds
and heaps of ruins which contained the real treasures were left
undisturbed until the nineteenth century.

The pioneer in the work of excavation in the territory of Babylonia and
Assyria was Claudius James Rich, who, while resident of the British
East India Company in Bagdad, in 1811, visited and studied the ruins of
Babylon, and a little later made similar investigations in the mounds
marking the site of the ancient city of Nineveh. In the gullies cut by
centuries of rain he gathered numerous little clay tablets, covered on
every side with the same wedge-shaped characters as those seen on the
fragments found by earlier travelers. These he saved carefully, and in
time presented them to the British Museum.