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

DURING 19 CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 21
others with a crescent in relief. He even employed two
laborers for three hours in clearing a large stone which the
Arabs supposed to be an idol, apparently the large lion of
the Qasr 1
recently set up again by the German expedition.
Imperfect as the report of Beauchamp must appear in
the light of our present knowledge, at the time when it was
written it conveyed to the public for the first time a tolerably
clear idea of the exact position and enormous size of
the ruins of Babylon and of the great possibilities connected
with their future excavation. It was particularly in England
that people began to realize the importance of these cylinders
and bricks covered with cuneiform writing " resembling
the inscriptions of Persepolis mentioned by Chardin."
East India Company of London became the first
public exponent
of this rapidly growing interest in
The
Great Britain, by
ordering their Resident at Basra to obtain several specimens
of these remarkable bricks and to send them carefully packed
to London. At the beginning of the nineteenth century a
small case of Babylonian antiquities arrived, the first of a
long series to follow years later. Insignificant as it was, it
soon played an important role in helping to determine the
character of the third
system of writing used in the Persian
inscriptions.
There were other travellers at the close of the eighteenth
century, who, like Edw. Ives 2 and the French physician
G. A. Olivier, 3 also visited the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon,
occasionally even contributing a few details to our
previous knowledge. But they did not alter the general
conception derived from the work of their predecessors,
especially Niebuhr and Beauchamp. The first period of
1
Also the opinion of Rich, " Collected Memoirs," pp. 36, 64, seq.
2
Comp. "Journal from Persia to England," London, 1773, vol. ii., pp.
321, seq. (Nineveh), etc.
8
Comp. Voyage dans V Empire Othoman, /' Egypte et la Perse, 6 vols.,
Paris, 1801-07, especially vol. ii.