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 The account of Babylon given by Herodotus is not that of an eye-witness, and his historical notices are meagre and untrustworthy. He was controverted by Ctesias, who, however, has mistaken mythology for history, and Greek romance owed to him its Ninus and Semiramis, its Ninyas and Sardanapalus. The only ancient authority of value on Babylonian and Assyrian history is the Old Testament.

—The excavations of P. E. Botta and A. H. Layard at Nineveh opened up a new world, coinciding as they did with the successful decipherment of the cuneiform system of writing. Layard’s discovery of the library of Assur-bani-pal put the materials for reconstructing the ancient life and history of Assyria and Babylonia into the hands of scholars. He also was the first to excavate in Babylonia, where C. J. Rich had already done useful topographical work. Layard’s excavations in this latter country were continued by W. K. Loftus, who also opened trenches at Susa, as well as by J. Oppert on behalf of the French government. But it was only in the last quarter of the 19th century that anything like systematic exploration was attempted. After the death of George Smith at Aleppo in 1876, an expedition was sent by the British Museum (1877–1879), under the conduct of Hormuzd Rassam, to continue his work at Nineveh and its neighbourhood. Excavations in the mounds of Balawāt, called Imgur-Bel by the Assyrians, 15 m. east of Mosul, resulted in the discovery of a small temple dedicated to the god of dreams by Assur-nazir-pal III. (883 ), containing a stone coffer or ark in which were two inscribed tables of alabaster of rectangular shape, as well as of a palace which had been destroyed by the Babylonians but restored by Shalmaneser II. (858 ). From the latter came the bronze gates with hammered reliefs, which are now in the British Museum. The remains of a palace of Assur-nazir-pal III. at Nimrūd (Calah) were also excavated, and hundreds of enamelled tiles were disinterred. Two years later (1880–1881) Rassam was sent to Babylonia, where he discovered the site of the temple of the sun-god of Sippara at Abu-Habba, and so fixed the position of the two Sipparas or Sepharvaim. Abu-Habba lies south-west of Bagdad, midway between the Euphrates and Tigris, on the south side of a canal, which may once have represented the main stream of the Euphrates, Sippara of the goddess Anunit, now Dēr, being on its opposite bank.

Meanwhile (1877–1881) the French consul, de Sarzec, had been excavating at Tello, the ancient Lagash, and bringing to light monuments of the pre-Semitic age, which included the diorite statues of Gudea now in the Louvre, the stone of which, according to the inscriptions upon them, had been brought from Magan, the Sinaitic peninsula. The subsequent excavations of de Sarzec in Tello and its neighbourhood carried the history of the city back to at least 4000, and a collection of more than 30,000 tablets has been found, which were arranged on shelves in the time of Gudea (c. 2700 ). In 1886–1887 a German expedition under Dr Koldewey explored the cemetery of El Hibba (immediately to the south of Tello), and for the first time made us acquainted with the burial customs of ancient Babylonia. Another German expedition, on a large scale, was despatched by the Orientgesellschaft in 1899 with the object of exploring the ruins of Babylon; the palace of Nebuchadrezzar and the great processional road were laid bare, and Dr W. Andrae subsequently conducted excavations at Qalʽat Sherqat, the site of Assur. Even the Turkish government has not held aloof from the work of exploration, and the Museum at Constantinople is filled with the tablets discovered by Dr V. Scheil in 1897 on the site of Sippara. J. de Morgan’s exceptionally important work at Susa lies outside the limits of Babylonia; not so, however, the American excavations (1903–1904) under E. J. Banks at Bismya (Udab), and those of the university of Pennsylvania at Niffer (see ) first begun in 1889, where Mr J. H. Haynes has systematically and patiently uncovered the remains of the great temple of El-lil, removing layer after layer of débris and cutting sections in the ruins down to the virgin soil. Midway in the mound is a platform of large bricks stamped with the names of Sargon of Akkad and his son Naram-Sin (3800 ); as the débris above them is 34 ft. thick, the topmost stratum being not later than the Parthian era (H. V. Hilprecht, The Babylonian Expedition, i. 2, p. 23), it is calculated that the débris underneath the pavement, 30 ft. thick, must represent a period of about 3000 years, more especially as older constructions had to be levelled before the pavement was laid. In the deepest part of the excavations, however, inscribed clay tablets and fragments of stone vases are still found, though the cuneiform characters upon them are of a very archaic type, and sometimes even retain their primitive pictorial forms.

IV. Chronology. The later chronology of Assyria has long been fixed, thanks to the lists of limmi, or archons, who gave their names in succession to their years of office. Several copies of these lists from the library of Nineveh are in existence, the earliest of which goes back to 911, while the latest comes down to the middle of the reign of Assur-bani-pal. The beginning of a king’s reign is noted in the lists, and in some of them the chief events of the year are added to the name of its archon. Assyrian chronology is, therefore, certain from 911 to 666, and an eclipse of the sun which is stated to have been visible in the month Sivan, 763, is one that has been calculated to have taken place on the 15th of June of that year. The system of reckoning time by limmi was of Assyrian origin, and recent discoveries have made it clear that it went back to the first days of the monarchy. Even in the distant colony at Kara Euyuk near Kaisariyeh (Caesarea) in Cappadocia cuneiform tablets show that the Assyrian settlers used it in the 15th century In Babylonia a different system was adopted. Here the years were dated by the chief events that distinguished them, as was also the case in Egypt in the epoch of the Old Empire. What the event should be was determined by the government and notified to all its officials; one of these notices, sent to the Babylonian officials in Canaan in the reign of Samsu-iluna, the son of Khammurabi, has been found in the Lebanon. A careful register of the dates was kept, divided into reigns, from which dynastic lists were afterwards compiled, giving the duration of each king’s reign as well as that of the several dynasties. Two of these dynastic compilations have been discovered, unfortunately in an imperfect state. In addition to the chronological tables, works of a more ambitious and literary character were also attempted of the nature of chronicles. One of these is the so-called “Synchronous History of Assyria and Babylonia,” consisting of brief notices, written by an Assyrian, of the occasions on which the kings of the two countries had entered into relation, hostile or otherwise, with one another; a second is the Babylonian' Chronicle discovered by Dr Th. G. Pinches, which gave a synopsis of Babylonian history from a Babylonian point of view, and was compiled in the reign of Darius. It is interesting to note that its author says of the battle of Khalulē, which we know from the Assyrian inscriptions to have taken place in 691 or 690, that he does “not know the year” when it was fought: the records of Assyria had been already lost, even in Babylonia. The early existence of an accurate system of dating is not surprising; it was necessitated by the fact that Babylonia was a great trading community, in which it was not only needful that commercial and legal documents should be dated, but also that it should be possible to refer easily to the dates of former business transactions. The Babylonian and Assyrian kings had consequently no difficulty in