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

DURING l'JTii CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 197
pediments thrown in his way, he conducted his labors with
characteristic determination, gradually increasing the number
of his workmen to almost six hundred. The peculiar
task of his mission requiring, as it did within the short
period of two months, the examination of as wide an area
as possible and the removal of an enormous amount of rubbish
thrown upon the surface of the mound by the former
excavators, explains sufficiently why he employed such a
large body of men over which it
was impossible to exercise
a proper control. About the middle of March his firman
ceased. A few days previously he closed his researches.
But a new embarrassment appeared. The local authorities
refused to let him go, unless he delivered half of all the
antiquities found as the share of the Ottoman Museum.
Telegraphic communications were opened with the British
ambassador at Constantinople, which subsequently led to
a satisfactory arrangement with the Porte. Leaving only
halt of the duplicates in
the hands of the Turkish officials,
Smith could finally depart from Mosul on the 4th of
April, 1874.
In examining the fruit of our explorer's two visits
to the
East, we are forcibly reminded of a word of Rawlinson.
The immediate results of his excavations were " not such as
to secure popular applause, or even to satisfy the utilitarian
party " ; they had to be studied at first to prove that they
constituted a verv decided gain for science. Under peculiar
difficulties Smith had worked only three months altogether
in the rich mines of antiquities at Oovunjuk. But in this
limited space of time he had obtained over 3000 inscriptions
from the royal library of Nineveh, including mythological,
astronomical, chronological, and grammatical texts,
prayers, hymns, and litanies, syllabaries, and bilingual tablets
of the utmost importance. Moreover, the majority of the
fragments rescued formed parts of inscriptions, the other
portions of which were already in the British
Museum, thus