A Handy-Book of the British Museum; For Every-Day Readers (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAPTER III. THE ASSYRIAN DEPARTMENT. 1. THE KINGS OI' ASSYRIA. Assyria proper, one of the first peopled provinces of contra! Asia, was bounded by the Tigris, the frontier of Mesopotamia, on the west, and was divided by a chain of mountains from Media, on the east; to the south lay Babylon or Chaldaea; to the north Armenia. These provinces were at first independent states, but Assyria gradually gained ascendency over those immediately adjacent; and at one time they were all comprehended in the Assyrian empire; and not only these, but others even more remote, were under its sway. The antiquities which have been derived, therefore, from the countries now under Turkish rule, called Kurdestan (Assyria), Algezira (Mesopotamia), and Irak (Chalda.a), and from Persia (Media), are included under the general title of " Assyrian remains." This description is usually strictly accurate, as the great majority of the antiquities in possession of the Museum belong to the period of Assyrian ascendency, and were found near the Assyrian capital. Few remains have as yet been discovered at any distance from the following places: l. textit{Nimroud, supposed to be the Calah mentioned in Genesis x. 11, on the banks of the Tigris, about twenty miles below the modern Mosul. 2. textit{Kltorsabad, a site about ten miles to the north-east of Mosul. 13. textit{Konyunjik, still indicated by local tradition as the site of Nineveh, nearly opposite Mosul, on the Tigris. Many inscriptions have been already deciphered on these remains, and now furnish us with much valuable material towards Assyrian history. Some of the leading facts they relate are subjoined. We need hardly remind the reader that they should be read in connection with those references to Babylon, Nineveh, and Media, which occur so frequently in Jewish history and ...