effective means which she brought to bear in consolidating her conquests consisted in the transportation of the principal inhabitants from the subjugated districts to Assyria, and the settlement of Assyrians in the newly acquired provinces. ... The most important result of the action of Assyria upon the world was perhaps that she limited or broke up the petty sovereignties and the local religions of Western Asia. . . . It was

an event which convulsed the world when this power, in the full current of its life and progress, suddenly ceased to exist. Since the 10th century every event of importance had originated in Assyria; in the middle of the 7th she suddenly collapsed. . . . Of the manner in which the ruin of Nineveh was brought about we have nowhere any authentic record. . . . Apart from their miraculous accessories, the one circumstance in which... [most of the accounts given] agree, is that Assyria was overthrown by the combination of the Medes and Babylonians. Everything else that is said on the subject verges on the fabulous; and even the fact of the alliance is doubtful, since Herodotus, who lived nearest to the period we are treating of, knows nothing of it, and ascribes the conquest simply to the Medes."-L. von Ranke, Universal history: Oldest historical group of nations, ch. 3.-See also BABYLONIA: Map; PHOENICIANS: B. C. 850-538.

Fall of the empire. The story, briefly told, of the alliance by which the Assyrian monarchy is said to have been overthrown, is as follows: About 626 or 625 B. C., a new revolt broke out in Babylonia, and the Assyrian king sent a general named Nabu-pal-usur or Nabopolassar to quell it. Nabu-pal-usur succeeded in his undertaking, and seems to have been rewarded by being made governor of Babylon. But his ambition aimed higher, and he mounted the ancient Babylonian throne, casting off his allegiance to Assyria and joining her enemies. "He was wise enough to see that Assyria could not be completely crushed by one nation, and he therefore made a league with Pharaoh Necho, of Egypt, and asked the Median king, Cyaxares, to give his daughter, Amytes, to Nebuchadnezzar, his son, to wife. Thus a league was made, and about B. C. 609 the kings marched against Assyria. They suffered various defeats, but eventually the Assyrian army was defeated, and Shalman, the brother of the king of Assyria, slain. The united kings then besieged Nineveh. During the siege the river Tigris rose and carried away the greater part of the city wall. The Assyrian king [Sardanapalus of legend] gathered together his wives and property in the palace, and setting fire to it, all perished in the flames. The enemies went into the city and utterly destroyed all they could lay their hands upon. With the fall of Nineveh, Assyria as a power practically ceased to exist."E. A. W. Budge, Babylonian life and history, ch. 5-See also AKKAD; BABYLONIA; CHALDEA; and SUMER.

Art and archæological remains. "The architecture of the Assyrians is the brickwork of Babylonia, faced heavily with sculptured stone, the doorways guarded by monstrous human-headed bulls; everywhere are scenes and long cuneiform inscriptions glorifying Asshur and the king. Their art, Babylonian at bottom, gains in technical skill, but forfeits originality to the sombre realism of the national temper. Only in its last days does it borrow, perhaps from the far west, a grace, and joy in the natural beauty of landscape, horses, hounds, and hunted lions, which strike us as almost modern."-J. L. Myres, Dawn of history, p. 128.—See ARCHITECTURE: Oriental:

new

Mesopotamian; and TEMPLES: Stage of culture represented by temple architecture.-"M. Botta, who was appointed French consul at Mosul in 1842, was the first to commence excavations on the sites of the buried cities of Assyria, and to him is due the honour of the first discovery of her long lost palaces. M. Botta commenced his labours at Kouyunjik, the large mound opposite Mosul, but he found here very little to compensate for his labours. New at the time to excavations, he does not appear to have worked in the best manner; M. Botta at Kouyunjik contented himself with sinking pits in the mound, and on these proving unproductive abandoning them. While M. Botta was excavating at Kouyunjik, his attention was called to the mounds of Khorsabad by a native of the village on that site; and he sent a party of workmen to the spot to commence excavation. In a few days his perseverance was rewarded by the discovery of some sculptures, after which, abandoning the work at Kouyunjik, he transferred his establishment to Khorsabad and thoroughly explored that site. . . . The palace which M. Botta had discovered is one

of the most perfect Assyrian buildings yet explored, and forms an excellent example of Assyrian architecture. Besides the palace on the mound of Khorsabad, M. Botta also opened the remains of a temple, and a grand porch decorated by six winged bulls. . . . The operations of M. Botta were brought to a close in 1845, and a splendid collection of sculptures and other antiquities, the fruits of his labours, arrived in Paris in 1846 and was deposited in the Louvre. Afterwards the French Government appointed M. Place consul at Mosul, and he continued some of the excavations of his predecessor. . . . Mr. Layard, whose attention was early turned in this direction, visited the country in 1840, and afterwards tooks a great interest in the excavations of M. Botta. At length, in 1845, Layard was enabled through the assistance of Sir Stratford Canning to commence excavations in Assyria himself. On the 8th of November he started from Mosul, and descended the Tigris to Nimroud. . . . Mr. Layard has described in his works with great minuteness his successive excavations, and the remarkable and interesting discoveries he made. . . . After making these discoveries in Assyria, Mr. Layard visited Babylonia, and opened trenches in several of the mounds there. On the return of Mr. Layard to England, excavations were continued in the Euphrates valley under the superintendence of Colonel (now Sir Henry) Rawlinson. Under his directions, Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, Mr. Loftus, and Mr. Taylor excavated various sites and made numerous discoveries, the British Museum receiving the best of the monuments. The materials collected in the national museums of France and England, and the numerous inscriptions published, attracted the attention of the learned, and very soon considerable light was thrown on the history, language, manners, and customs of ancient Assyria and Babylonia."-G. Smith, Assyrian discoveries, ch. 1.- -"One of the most important results of Sir A. H. Layard's explorations at Nineveh was the discovery of the ruined library of the ancient city, now buried under the mounds of Kouyunjik. The broken clay tablets belonging to this library not only furnished the student with an immense mass of literary matter, but also with direct aids towards a knowledge of the Assyrian syllabary and language. Among the literature represented in the library of Kouyunjik were lists of characters, with their various phonetic and ideographic meanings, tables of synonyms, and catalogues of the names of plants

ingly, consists of interlinear or parallel translations from Accadian into Assyrian, as well as of reading books, dictionaries, and grammars, in which the Accadian original is placed by the side of its Assyrian equivalent. . . . The bilingual texts have not only enabled scholars to recover the long-forgotten Accadian language; they have also been of the greatest possible assistance to them in their reconstruction of the Assyrian dictionary itself. The three expeditions conducted by Mr. George Smith [1873-1876], as well as the

Ethics. See ETHICS: Babylonia and Assyria. Monetary system. See MONEY AND BANKING: Ancient Egypt and Babylonia.

ASSYRIA, Eponym canon of.-"Just as there were archons at Athens and consuls at Rome who were elected annually, so among the Assyrians there was a custom of electing one man to be over the year, whom they called 'limu,' or 'eponym.'. . . Babylonia and Assy rian documents were more generally dated by the lames of these eponyms than by that of the reigr ing King....