k as the
third millennium before Christ. They seem to have been transcribed in the
shape in which we at present have them in the reign of Assurbanipal, who
was a great patron of letters, and in whose reign libraries were formed in
the principal cities. The Assyrian renaissance of the seventeenth century
B.C. witnessed great activity among scribes and book collectors: modern
scholars are deeply indebted to this golden age of letters in Babylonia
for many precious and imperishable monuments. It is, however, only within
recent years that these works of hoar antiquity have passed from the
secluded cell of the specialist and have come within reach of the general
reader, or even of the student of literature. For many centuries the
cuneiform writing was literally a dead letter to the learned world. The
clue to the understanding of this alphabet was originally discovered in
1850 by Colonel Rawlinson, and described by him in a paper read before the
Royal Society. Hence the knowledge of Assyrian literature is, so far as
Europe is concerned, scarcely more than half a century old.

Among the most valuable of historic records to be found among the
monuments of any nation are inscriptions, set up on public buildings, in
palaces, and in temples. The Greek and Latin inscriptions discovered at
various points on the shores of the Mediterranean have been of priceless
value in determining certain questions of philology, as well as in
throwing new light on the events of history. Many secrets of language have
been revealed, many perplexities of history disentangled, by the words
engraven on stone or metal, which the scholar discovers amid the dust of
ruined temples, or on the _cippus_ of a tomb. The form of one Greek
letter, perhaps even its existence, would never have been guessed but for
its discovery in an inscription. If inscriptions are of the highest
critical importance and historic interest, in languages which are
represented by a voluminous and familiar literature, how much more
precious must they be when they record what happened in the remotest dawn
of history, surviving among the ruins of a vast empire whose people have
vanished from the face of the earth?

Hence the cuneiform inscriptions are of the utmost interest and value, and
present the greatest possible attractions to the curious and intelligent
reader. They record the deeds and conquests of mighty kings, the Napoleons
and Hannibals of primeval time. They throw a vivid ligh