Rawlinson: “Then I went on to the country of Comukha, which was disobedient, and withheld the tribute and offerings due to Ashur, my lord. I conquered the whole country of Comukha. I plundered their movables, their wealth, and their valuables. Their cities I burned with fire, I destroyed and ruined.”
Talbot: “I then advanced against Kumikhi, a land of the unbelievers, who had refused to pay taxes and tribute unto Ashur, my lord. The land of Kumikhi
throughout all its extent I ravaged. Their women, etc., I carried off. Their cities I burned with fire, destroyed, and overthrew.”
Oppert: “In those days I went to the people of Dummukh, the enemy who owed tribute and gifts to the god Ashur, my lord. I subdued the people of Dummukh; for its punishment(?). I took away their captives, their herds, and their treasures; their cities I burnt in fire; I destroyed, I undermined them.”
Hincks: “At that time I went to a disaffected part of Qummukh, which had withheld the tribute by weight and tale belonging to Assur, my lord. I subdued the land of Qummukh as far as it extended. I brought out their women, their slaves, and their cattle; their towns I burned with fire, threw down, and dug up.”
Such a wonderful agreement of those four translators in deciphering the text of this inscription was proof that the key had been found, and that ere long this vast cuneiform literature would emerge from the tomb in which it had lain buried for over two thousand five hundred years. The experiment was felt to have been eminently successful.
We need not follow the further labors of those and other Orientalists in this new field of research, as volume after volume appeared in French, in German, and in English, giving translations of texts, and rewriting the ancient history of those Eastern lands. For years it seemed that this would be the chief literary result of those discoveries. The lines of monarchs were established, gaps were filled up, broken links were restored, contested dates were settled. Much light was thrown on manners and customs, and on the religious systems of the peoples, their wars and conquests, and on the duration, successions, and vicissitudes of the various dynasties which ruled over
them. A by no means small library might be formed of the works on these subjects published within the last quarter of a century.
As it became known that Orientalists were gradually obtaining the power of deciphering these Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions, and as the extent of the field thus opened to fresh researches was gradually developed, hopes that seemed extravagant were indulged as to the results soon to be reached, and not wholly without reason. These ancient Assyrians seemed to have been possessed with an extraordinary passion for recording anything and everything in their mysterious characters. Monarch after monarch had taken pride in putting up pompous inscriptions to perpetuate the memory of his victories and of the glorious events of his reign. From such monuments might we not obtain some record of their successive dynasties, and learn something of the history of their empires and kingdoms? Those grand bass-reliefs of marble or alabaster, representing deities, monarchs, sacred bulls, or other mysterious figures; every representation of a battle-scene, of a triumphal procession, of the building of a city, of the sailing of boats, or of what else you please, had each its own cuneiform lettering, now about to tell us its long-hidden meaning. Everywhere seals, cylinders, signets, or other small objects of value, whether of agate, of chalcedony, or of other hard and precious stone, or of terra-cotta, had its group of emblematic figures, often with an inscription in minutest characters, nicely cut with a lapidary’s skill. The very bricks used in building those huge walls, hundreds of feet long and ten or fifteen feet thick, bore nearly every one of them, in cuneiform characters, some name;
perhaps that of the monarch who built the palace, or of the architect who planned and directed the work, perhaps that of the workman who made the brick itself and laid it in the wall.