11. An eminent French scholar and assyriologist, Joachim Ménant, has the following picturesque lines in his charming little book "La Bibliothèque du Palais de Ninive": "When we reflect that these records have been traced on a substance which neither fire nor water could destroy, we can easily comprehend how those who wrote them thus thirty or forty centuries ago, believed the monuments of their history to be safe for all future times,—much safer than the frail sheets which printing scatters with such prodigious fertility.... Of all the nations who have bequeathed to us written records of their past life, we may assert that none has left monuments more imperishable than Assyria and Chaldea. Their number is already considerable; it is daily increased by new discoveries. It is not possible to foresee what the future has in store for us in this respect; but we can even now make a valuation of the entire material which we possess.... The number of the tablets from the Nineveh Library alone passes ten thousand.... If we compare these texts with those left us by other nations, we can easily become convinced that the history of the Assyro-Chaldean civilization will soon be one of the best known of antiquity. It has a powerful attraction for us, for we know that the life of the Jewish people is mixed up with the history of Nineveh and Babylon...."
46.—CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION. (ARCHAIC CHARACTERS.)
(Perrot and Chipiez.)
12. It will be seen from this that throughout the following pages we shall continually have to refer to the contents of Asshurbanipal's royal library. We must therefore dispense in this place with any details concerning the books, more than a general survey of the subjects they treated. Of these, religion and science were the chief. Under "science" we must understand principally mathematics and astronomy, two branches in which the old Chaldeans reached great perfection and left us many of our own most fundamental notions and practices, as we shall see later on. Among the scientific works must also be counted those on astrology, i.e., on the influence which the heavenly bodies were supposed to exert on the fate of men, according to their positions and combinations, for astrology was considered a real science, not only by the Chaldeans, but by much later nations too; also hand-books of geography, really only lists of the seas, mountains and rivers, nations and cities then known, lastly lists of plants and animals with a very rude and defective attempt at some sort of classification. History is but scantily represented; it appears to have been mostly confined to the great wall inscriptions and some other objects, of which more hereafter. But—what we should least expect—grammars, dictionaries, school reading-books, occupy a prominent place. The reason is that, when this library was founded, the language in which the venerable books of ancient sages were written not only was not spoken any longer, but had for centuries been forgotten by all but the priests and those who made scholarship their chief pursuit, so that it had to be taught in the same way that the so-called "dead languages," Latin and Greek, are taught at our colleges. This was the more necessary as the prayers had to be recited in the old language called the Accadian, that being considered more holy—just as, in Catholic countries, the common people are even now made to learn and say their prayers in Latin, though they understand not a word of the language. The ancient Accadian texts were mostly copied with a modern Assyrian translation, either interlinear or facing it, which has been of immense service to those who now decipher the tablets.
47.—INSCRIBED CLAY TABLET.
(Smith's "Assyria.")
13. So much for what may be called the classical and reference department of the library. Important as it is, it is scarcely more so than the documentary department or Archive proper, where documents and deeds of all kinds, both public and private, were deposited for safe keeping. Here by the side of treatises, royal decrees and despatches, lists of tribute, reports from generals and governors, also those daily sent in by the superintendents of the royal observatories,—we find innumerable private documents: deeds of sale duly signed, witnessed and sealed, for land, houses, slaves—any kind of property,—of money lent, of mortgages, with the rate of interest, contracts of all sorts. The most remarkable of private documents is one which has been called the "will of King Sennacherib," by which he entrusts some valuable personal property to the priests of the temple of Nebo, to be kept for his favorite son,—whether to be delivered after his (the king's) death or at another time is not stated.
