M. Botta's Letters on the Discoveries at Nineveh

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Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1850 - Civilization, Assyro-Babylonian - 74 pages

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Page i - Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?
Page xi - They also were the inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies and their order. And that their inventions might not be lost before they were sufficiently known, upon Adam's prediction that the world was to be destroyed at one time by the force of fire, and at another time by the violence and quantity of water...
Page i - And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days
Page xi - And that their inventions might not be lost before they were sufficiently known, upon Adam's prediction that the world was to be destroyed at one time by the force of fire, and at another time by the violence and quantity of water, they made two pillars ;§ the one of brick, the other of stone : they inscribed their discoveries on them both, that in case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain, and exhibit those discoveries to mankind ; and also inform...
Page 12 - Anklets — one-fourth of the real size. uncommon than they formerly were. They are of course very heavy, and, knocking together as the wearer walks, make a ringing noise ; hence it is said in a song, " The ringing of thine anklets has deprived me of my reason.
Page vi - Dr. GROTEFEND, who professes to be rather the decipherer than the translator of the cuneiform inscriptions, and who engages merely to open the way to those whose attention has been much devoted to the study of the ancient languages of Persia, has however succeeded in translating some of the inscriptions on the ruins of Persepolis, and one from those of Pasargadoe.
Page x - The most common mode of keeping records in Assyria and Babylonia was on prepared bricks, tiles, or cylinders of clay, baked after the inscription was impressed.
Page vi - Grotefend observes, that there are three varieties of those inscriptions, distinguished from each other by the greater complication of the characters formed by the radical signs of a wedge (or arrow) and an angle.
Page 26 - ... respect from that encumbering the passages. I must yet remark that, as well as copper plugs, numerous pieces of thick stucco are found in the earth, of a beautiful azure blue colour, similar to that which adorns the bas-reliefs. Besides, as there is also a great quantity of charcoal to be seen, I suppose the wooden roof was destroyed by fire, and thus the gypsum partitions became calcined and converted into plaster.
Page viii - Notwithstanding the extreme difficult} of rendering the inscriptions of Nimroud and Khorsabad available for the illustration of history, owing to the practice which the Assyrians followed of distinguishing their proper names by the sense, rather than by the sound ; so that the form of a name could bo varied ad libitum, by the employment of synonyms, expressed either symbolically or phonetically. Yet some important results have already followed to the historian from the researches of Major Rawlinson....

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