Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

170 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
removed to Europe. On July I, 1854, Oppert arrived at
Paris alone with his notes and plans and a few antiquities,
waiting for the bulk of the results of his expedition, which
had been ordered to be sent home by a French boat from
Basra. But unfortunately they never reached their destination.
It was about a year later when Oppert, while in
London, learned the first news of the disaster trom Sir
Henry Layard. All the collections excavated and purchased,
including even the valuable marble vase of Naram-Sin (about
3750 b. a), the first and for a long while the only monument
of the ancient Sargonides discovered, went down in
the muddy waters of the Tigris, a few miles
above its junction
with the Euphrates, on May 23, 1855.
It was a long series of difficulties and adverse circumstances
which the French expedition had to encounter from
the beginning to the end. Owing to the very limited means
at their disposal, Fresnel and Oppert had not been able to
do much more than to scratch the surface of the vast mounds,
without contributing anything of importance to our knowledge
of the ancient topography of Nebuchadrezzar's metropolis.
" The great city of Babylon " was practically still
unexplored when the French expedition quitted the ruins.
But notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary,
scientific results were by no means lacking. In a general
way first communicated by Fresnel in the Journal Asiatique?
they were methodically and neatly set forth by Oppert,
the real soul of the whole undertaking, in a work of two
volumes, 2 illustrated by a number of sketches from the
1
Comp. Fresnel's two letters to J.
Mohl, published in the Journal Asiatique,
Series v., vol. i. (1853), pp. 485-548, dated Hilla, December, 1852,
and continued in vol. ii.
(1853), pp. 5-78; and vol. vi. (1856), pp.
525-548, dated Hilla, end of June, 1853.
2
Authorized by ministerial order in 1856, it appeared under the title
Expedition Scientifique en M'esopotamie, two volumes, Paris, vol. ii. (published
first), 1859: '* Decipherment of the Cuneiform Inscriptions" (part