No other reason seemed assignable; and it appeared that, to obtain such tablets, we must wait until the mounds of Babylon shall be as carefully and as thoroughly excavated as those of Ninive. When will that be done? In the meantime let us be patient and make the most we can of what we have.
Things were in this condition in 1872. In that year Mr. George Smith, of the British Museum, a
young and ardent Assyriologist, who has indeed proved himself worthy to continue the labors of Rawlinson, Hincks, Oppert, Lenormant, Talbot, and the other distinguished Oriental scholars of Europe, was occupied in the task of examining one by one the thousands of cuneiform terra-cotta fragments collected in the Assyrian department of that institution. He intended to divide them into classes, according to the subjects on which they seemed to treat, in order that each class might afterwards be more thoroughly studied by itself.
Taking up one day a fragment, of medium size, the middle lines of which were entire and could be plainly made out, he read as follows:
“To the country of Nizir went the ship;
The mountains of Nizir stopped the ship, and to pass over it was not able;
The first day and the second day, the mountains of Nizir, the same;
The third day and the fourth day, the mountains of Nizir, the same;
The fifth and the sixth, the mountains of Nizir, the same.
On the seventh day, in the course of it,