AND ITS REMAINS: WITH AN ACCOUNT OF A VISIT TO THE CHALDEAN THE ANCIENT ASSYRIANS "She saw men pourtrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with Girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, IN TWO VOLUMES.-VOL. I. NEW-YORK: GEORGE P. PUTNAM, 155 BROADWAY. 1850. INTRODUCTORY NOTE, BY EDWARD ROBINSON, D. D., LL. D., AUTHOR OF "BIBLICAL RESEARCHES IN PALESTINE," ETC. To G. P. PUTnam, Esq.— My Dear Sir:-You request my opinion of Mr. LAYARD'S volumes, entitled "NINEVEH AND ITS REMAINS," which you are about to introduce to the American public. I concur entirely with you in regarding this as a work of very high interest and importance; and as destined to mark an epoch in the wonderful progress of knowledge at the present day. In this general progress the nineteenth century stands preeminent. In physical science, the brilliant discoveries of Davy and others have changed the whole face of chemistry. The steamengine, though in a measure earlier perfected, has first in our day been applied with its mighty energies to navigation, to locomotion on land, and (not least) to the printing-press. The flitting sunbeam has been grasped, and made to do man's bidding in place of the painter's pencil. And although Franklin tamed the lightning, yet not until yesterday has its instantaneous flash been made the vehicle of language; thus, in the transmission of thought, annihilating space and time. The last forty years likewise bear witness to the exploration of many lands of ancient renown; and our present exact and full acquaintance with the regions and monuments of Greece and Egypt, of Asia Minor and the Holy Land, is the result of the awakened activity, coupled with the enlarged facilities, of the nine teenth century. In all these discoveries and observations, it is not too much to say, that our country has borne at least her proportionate part. There is another aspect. For very many centuries the hoary monuments of Egypt-its temples, its obelisks, 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 writing of a former people; whose name and existence none could trace. Among the ruined halls and palaces of Persepolis, and on the rock-hewn tablets of the surrounding regions, long inscriptions in forgotten characters seemed to enroll the deeds and conquests of mighty sovereigns; but none could read the record. Thanks to the skill and persevering zeal of scholars of the nineteenth century, the keys of these locked up treasures have 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 leave us still 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 to do, not with 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. |