| Temple of Jupiter Ammon. |
A few years later Edward Rüppell devoted seven or eight years to the exploration of Nubia, Sennaar, Kordofan, and Abyssinia in 1824, he ascended the White Nile for more than sixty leagues above its mouth.
Lastly, in 1836 to 1838, Joseph Russegger, superintendent of the Austrian mines, visited the lower portion of the course of the Bahr-el-Abiad. This official journey was followed by the important and successful surveys afterwards made by order of Mehemet Ali in the same regions.
CHAPTER III.
THE ORIENTAL SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT AND AMERICAN DISCOVERIES.
The decipherment of cuneiform inscriptions, and the study of Assyrian remains up to 1840—Ancient Iran and the Avesta—The survey of India and the study of Hindustani—The exploration and measurement of the Himalaya mountains—The Arabian Peninsula—Syria and Palestine—Central Asia and Alexander von Humboldt—Pike at the sources of the Mississippi, Arkansas, and Red River—Major Long's two expeditions—General Cass—Schoolcraft at the sources of the Mississippi—The exploration of New Mexico—Archæological expeditions in Central America—Scientific expeditions in Brazil—Spix and Martin—Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied—D'Orbigny and American man.
Although the discoveries which we are now to relate are not strictly speaking geographical, they nevertheless throw such a new light on several early civilizations, and have done so much to extend the domain of history and ideas, that we are compelled to dedicate a few words to them.
The reading of cuneiform inscriptions, and the decipherment of hieroglyphics are events so important in their results, they reveal to us so vast a number of facts hitherto unknown, or distorted in the more or less marvellous narratives of the ancient historians Diodorus, Ctesias, and Herodotus, that it is impossible to pass over scientific discoveries of such value in silence.