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

210 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
examination. The quick results of his labors have been
treated above. To extricate more of the precious fragments
from the royal library, it became necessary to remove all
the debris thrown in the excavated halls, or without system
heaped upon some unexplored part of the ruin. The large
untouched by Layard and Rassam in the
pillars of earth' left
centres of the different rooms (comp. p.
115) and every enclosing
wall likely to contain relics of the past were torn
down. The number of tablets obtained in the end were not
as great as Smith had expected. Instead of the 20,000 fragments
calculated by him to remain buried in the unexcavated
portions of the palace of Sennacherib, scarcely 2000
were gathered by Rassam from the two buildings after five
years' labors. 1
prism in
But an important and nearly perfect decagon
terra-cotta inscribed with the annals of Ashurbanapal
2 was found in a solid brick wall of the north palace,
and no less than four fine barrel-cylinders of Sennacherib, 3
covered with identical records, were taken from the southwest
palace in rapid succession.
The results from the trenches of Nimrud were rather
meagre. .-In resuming the exploration of the two temples
discovered by Layard near the northwest edge of the elevated
ruin, Rassam unearthed a marble altar, and several inscribed
marble seats still standing in their original positions ; he
gathered a few bas-reliefs, a number of carved stones, and
clav tablets, and filled more than half a dozen baskets with
fragments of enamelled tiles. «, But here as well as in other
1
All the tablets and fragments so far obtained by the British Museum from
the roval library of Nineveh were made accessible to scientific research through
C. Bezold's fine " Catalogue of the Cuneiform Tablets in the Kouyunjik Collection
of the British Museum," 5 vols., London, 1889-99.
2
Two fragmentary and crumbling copies of this important monument had
been discovered by Rassam in the same palace as early as 1854. Comp.
p. 136, above.
3
One of them is preserved in the Imperial Ottoman Museum at Constantinople.