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

512 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
names and words known from the Qoyunjuk collection, which
Ashurbanapal's scribes doubtless had copied at Nippur,
proved sufficiently that occasional additions were made to the
tablets of the earlier library in the long interval of fifteen
or sixteen hundred years which elapsed between the reign
of Hammurabi and that of the last great Assyrian monarch.
The fact that by far more ancient documents were unearthed
than tablets written in the neo-Babylonian script was in entire
accord with what we know of the two great periods to be
distinguished in the history of Nippur.
In the earlier days, when the sanctuary of Bel formed the
great religious centre of the country, the library
and school
of the city naturally flourished and received greater attention
than in the centuries following the government of
Hammurabi, when Marduk of Babylon and his cult were
extolled at the expense of the venerable temple of " the
father of the gods" on the banks of the Chebar. While
Bel of Nippur decreased, " the Bel of Babylon " 1
increased
in power and influence upon the religious life of the united
country. Even the brief renaissance of the older cult under
the Cassite sway did not change very essentially those new
conditions which had been the natural result of great
historical events in the valleys of the Euphrates and the
Tigris. It was but an artificial and short-lived revival of a
fast disappearing worship, ceasing again when the national
uprising under the native house of Pashe in the twelfth
century led to the overthrow of that
foreign dynasty which
had been its strongest advocate and principal supporter.
When, in 1899, the excavations were resumed in "Tablet
Hill," two large sections were excavated in the eastern
and western parts of the mound respectively.
Both yielded
large quantities of exclusively ancient tablets at practically
the same low level, and only single tablets or small nests of
old-Babylonian and neo-Babylonian documents mixed in
1
Comp. p. 459, note 3, above.