"For very many centuries, the hoary monuments of Egypt--its temples, its
obelisks, and its tombs--have presented to the eye of the beholder
strange forms of sculpture and of language; the import of which none
could tell. The wild valleys of Sinai, too, exhibited upon their rocky
sides the unknown writings of a former people; whose name and existence
none could trace. Among the ruined halls of Persepolis, and on the
rock-hewn tablets of the surrounding regions, long inscriptions in
forgotten characters seemed to enrol the deeds and conquests of mighty
sovereigns; but none could read the record. Thanks to the skill and
persevering zeal of scholars of the 19th century, the key of these
locked up treasures has been found; and the records have mostly been
read. The monuments of Egypt, her paintings and her hieroglyphics, mute
for so many ages, have at length spoken out; and now our knowledge of
this ancient people is scarcely less accurate and extensive than our
acquaintance with the classic lands of Greece and Rome. The unknown
characters upon the rocks of Sinai have been deciphered, but the meagre
contents still leave us in darkness as to their origin and purpose. The
cuneiform or arrow-headed inscriptions of the Persian monuments and
tablets, have yielded up their mysteries, unfolding historical data of
high importance; thus illustrating and confirming the few and sometimes
isolated facts preserved to us in the Scriptures and other ancient
writings. Of all the works, in which the progress and results of these
discoveries have been made known, not one has been reproduced or made
generally accessible in this country. The scholar who would become
acquainted with them, and make them his own, must still have recourse to
the Old World.
"The work of Mr. Layard brings before us still another step of progress.
Here we have not to do, with the hoary ruins that have borne the brunt
of centuries in the presence of the world, but with a resurrection of
the monuments themselves. It is the disentombing of temple-palaces from
the sepulchre of ages; the recovery of the metropolis of a powerful
nation from the long night of oblivion. Nineveh, the great city 'of
three days' journey,' that was 'laid waste, and there was none to bemoan
her,' whose greatness sank when that of Rome had just begun to rise, now
stands forth again to testify to her own splendor, and to the
civilization, and power, and magnificence of the Assyrian Empire. This
may be said, thus far, to be the crowning historical discovery of the
nineteenth century. But the century as yet, is only half elapsed.
"Nineveh was destroyed in the year 606 before Christ; less than 150
years after Rome was founded. Her latest monuments, therefore, date back
not less than five-and-twenty centuries; while the foundation of her
earliest is lost in an unknown antiquity. When the ten thousand Greeks
marched over this plain in their celebrated retreat, (404 B.C.) they
found in one part, a ruined city called Larissa; and in connection with
it, Xenophon, their leader and historian, describes what is now the
pyramid of Nimroud. But he heard not the name of Nineveh; it was already
forgotten in its site; though it appears again in the later Greek and
Roman writers. Even at that time, the widely extended walls and ramparts
of Nineveh had perished, and mounds, covering magnificent palaces, alone
remained at the extremities of the ancient city, or in its vicinity,
much as at the present day.
"Of the site of Nineveh, there is scarcely a further mention, beyond the
brief notices by Benjamin of Tudela and Abulfeda, until Niebuhr saw it
and described its mounds nearly a century ago. In 1820, Mr. Rich visited
the spot; he obtained a few square sun-dried bricks with inscriptions,
and some other slight remains; and we can all remember the profound
impression made upon the public mind, even by these cursory memorials of
Nineveh and Babylon."