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

DURING 19 CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 527
in forming entire sentences, in translating from the Sumerian
into the Semitic dialect of Babylonia and vice versa. His
preparations look pretty much like those of the modern
student who excerpts all the words unknown to him from
Caesar's "Gallic Wars" or Xenophon's Anabasis for his
work in the class room.
Special attention was paid to counting and calculating, as
will be illustrated below by a few examples. Even instruction
in drawing, and surveying lessons were offered. There
are a few tablets which contain exercises in drawing horizontal
and inclined parallel lines, zigzag lines, lines arranged
in squares, lozenge forms, latticework and other geometrical
figures.
The course in art led gradually up to free-hand drawing
from nature, and probably included also lessons in clay modelling
and in glyptics and sculpture (seal cylinders, bas-reliefs
and statues). Several fragments of unbaked tablets
exhibited portions of animals and trees more or less skilfully
incised in clay. One bird was executed very poorly.
A lioness, two harnessed horses and a chariot— the latter
two pieces doubtless from the upper strata — showed decided
talents on the part of those who drew them. Ground plans
of fields, gardens, canals, houses, etc., were found more commonly.
As according to my knowledge the horse appears in
Babylonia first
shortly before the middle of the second millennium,
without hesitation we can fix
the date of the drawing
of those harnessed horses as being about a thousand years
later than the school exercises previously treated. That art
in general was greatly esteemed and cultivated by the priests
of Nippur may be inferred from the considerable number
of clay figurines, terra-cotta reliefs and even fragments of
sculpture (the head of a negro, etc.)
of the temple library.
discovered in the ruins
Apart from several new mythological
representations of the earlier time which need a fuller discussion
in another place, I refer briefly to two fine identical