=Ancient Accounts.=—­Until about forty years ago we knew almost nothing of the Assyrians—­only a legend recounted by the Greek Diodorus Siculus.  Ninus, according to the story, had founded Nineveh and conquered all Asia Minor; his wife, Semiramis, daughter of a goddess, had subjected Egypt, after which she was changed into the form of a dove.  Incapable kings had succeeded this royal pair for the space of 1,300 years; the last, Sardanapalus, besieged in his capital, was burnt with his wives.  This romance has not a word of truth in it.

=Modern Discoveries.=—­In 1843, Botta, the French consul at Mossoul, discovered under a hillock near the Tigris, at Khorsabad, the palace of an Assyrian king.  Here for the first time one could view the productions of Assyrian art; the winged bulls cut in stone, placed at the gate of the palace were found intact and removed to the Louvre Museum in Paris.  The excavations of Botta drew the attention of Europe, so that many expeditions were sent out, especially by the English; Place and Layard investigated other mounds and discovered other palaces.  These ruins had been well preserved, protected by the dryness of the climate and by a covering of earth.  They found walls adorned with bas-reliefs and paintings; statues and inscriptions were discovered in great number.  It was now possible to study on the ground the plan of the structures and to publish reproductions of the monuments and inscriptions.

The palace first discovered, that of Khorsabad, had been built by King Sargon at Nineveh, the site of the capital of the Assyrian kings.  The city was built on several eminences, and was encircled by a wall 25 to 30 miles[18] in length, in the form of a quadrilateral.  The wall was composed of bricks on the exterior and of earth within.  The dwellings of the city have disappeared leaving no traces, but we have recovered many palaces constructed by various kings of Assyria.  Nineveh remained the residence of the kings down to the time that the Assyrian empire was destroyed by the Medes and Chaldeans.

=Inscriptions on the Bricks.=—­In these inscriptions every character is formed of a combination of signs shaped like an arrow or wedge, and this is the reason that this style of writing is termed cuneiform (Latin cuneus and forma).  To trace these signs the writer used a stylus with a triangular point; he pressed it into a tablet of soft clay which was afterwards baked to harden it and to make the impression permanent.  In the palace of Assurbanipal a complete library of brick tablets has been found in which brick serves the purpose of paper.

=Cuneiform Writing.=—­For many years the cuneiform writing has occupied the labors of many scholars impatient to decipher it.  It has been exceedingly difficult to read, for, in the first place, it served as the writing medium of five different languages—­Assyrian, Susian, Mede, Chaldean, and Armenian, without counting the Old Persian—­and there was no knowledge of these five languages.  Then, too, it is very complicated, for several reasons: