RASSAM, HORSIUZD, born at Mosul, the modern town on the Tigris, opposite to which, and principally beneath the mounds of Kouyunjik and Nabbi Yunns, the ruins of ancient Nineveh have been unearthed. lie began his connection with Sir Henry Layard's explorations in Assyria and Babylonia with his own important discovery, in the northern corner of the Konyunjik mound, of the palace of Assurbanipal, the warlike Sardanapalus of Greek tradition. He secured for the British fine bas-reliefs, exhibiting with great spirit and truth the king's hunting and warlike expeditions, which are now in tho British Museum, also the more precious contents of the royal record chamber and library, including Assurbanipal's Annals and the famous Deluge Tablets. In 1876, on the death of Mr. George Smith, Mr. Rassam was chosen to continue that eminent Assyriologist's explorations at Mosul, and he engaged several hundred workmen to dig for inscriptions and other antiquities in the ruins of the palaces of Assurbanipal and Sennaeherib, and other dis coveries attended his renewed excavations at Nimrud, the Calah of Genesis. Ho heard of a mound called Bahtwat, about 15 miles to the east of Mosul and 9 from Nimrud, in which some bronze plates with Assyrian figures and cuneiform inscriptions on them had been found by an Arab while digging a grave there. A sample had even been sent to him in England. Eager to secure the remainder of the monument, and aware that great difficulty would be encountered, he used every effort to obtain the requisite permission.
The tablets were inscribed by the great con queror's royal father, Assurnazirpal, and a transla tion of thein was made by Mr. Ernest A. Budge. E The tablets aro dated in the reigns of Samas sum-nkin and Kandalantt, the Chinladanus of the Greeks, who were contemporary with the t latter half of the reign of Assurbanipal or Sar t danapalus of Assyria, about n.e. 646. The tablets r are from Abu-habba, the sito of tho ancient •• Sippara, the Sepharvaim of the Old Testament, which is mentioned by Sennacherib in his letter , to Hezekiah as a city whose king had been unable to resist the Assyrians. Sipparn, or Pantibiblon, 0 as the Greeks called it, is mentioned by Berosus has having furnished five out of tho ten Chaldrean btkings of the time before the flood, and as the b(place where Xisuthrus, or Noah, buried the record.s ntif the antediluvian world at tho time of the byleluge, and from which his posterity afterwards eqecovered them. The Hebrew term Sephtu'Vaim, which ix the verbal equivalent of the € two Fipparas, is applied to twin citiee, one of which was aituated on each Nide of the river. The Sippara frotn which these tablets were procured is the Sippam of Tsipar sha Shaman, or Sippara of the sun god, as being the place where pre-eminently the sun was a chief object of worship. Thu other Sippara, or Sippara of Anunit, which is supposed in ancient times to name the Sepharvairn of Scripture history, is up to the present unknown to modern investigation.