Literature and Civilization.—One of the most important results of the ex plorations has been the discovery in the palace of Asshur-banipal at Nineveh, of a large library consisting of many thousand tablets of baked clay inscribed with minute characters; large numbers of these are now stored in the British Museum. This library, in all probabil ity, owes its origin to the keen political insight of Esar-haddon, but was com pleted by his son Asshur-banipal, whose name most of the tablets bear. Its educational character is shown by the discovery of a number of syllabaries, dictionaries, and text-books for instruc tion in the ancient Akkadian and Sumi rian languages. There have been found also works on mathematics, tables of square and cube roots, as well as lists of plants, metals, and precious stones, animals, and birds; records of eclipses and other astral phenomena, brief lists of laws and various contract tables.
The geographical works are limited to lists of countries with their prod ucts, such as "Lebanon, cedar"; "Elam, horses"; "Cilicia, tin and silver"; and "Arabia, camels." The section most pro
lific in discoveries has been that of poetic and mythological literature. In 1872 the late George Smith, of the British Museum, discovered a series of poetic legends relating to the great Chaldean hero Gilgamesh (Gizdubar, or Izdubar), the 11th tablet of which contained a leg end of the deluge, very closely resem bling the Hebrew account.
Chronology.—The chronology of the Assyrian empire now rests upon a firm basis, being founded on several carefully prepared chronological inscriptions. The most important of these is the "Eponym Canon," a tablet containing a list of the archons, or eponyms of Nineveh, or Ca lah, giving an exact chronology from 913-659 B. c. As each of these officials was in office only one year, the year was named after them; and, as the date of the Bursagalu is fixed by a solar eclipse, the dates of all the officials can be ascer tained.