Later The next 20 years (1854-73) were a period of cessation of excava tions of any note. An occasional traveler or explorer found a few specimens of antiquities and did a little desultory work. This 20 years, however, saw the publication• of many notable works by Botta, Layard, Place, Oppert and Rawlinson on the results of the active work of excavating and of the decipherment of inscrip tions previously gathered out of the mounds. The second period of excavations began in 1873, when George Smith, of the British Museum, who had found some fragments of tablets describing a deluge, was sent by the London Daily Telegraph to the site of ancient Nineveh to find other fragments of the same kind. Smith's phenomenal success in finding Assurbanipal's 30,000-tablet-library gave new life to archaeological research, and was the im mediate cause of his being sent on three ex peditions, on the last of which he succumbed to a fever at Aleppo 19 Aug. 1875. Smith's genius had presented to the world such representations of the important discoveries made by himself and others that the contagion spread, and other centres of scholarship turned their eyes toward the mounds of Babylonia and Assyria. Rassam was again called into requisition, and in 1877-78 gathered rich spoils on the site of old Nineveh, at Nimrud, and at Balawat, where he found the remains of the bronze doors of Shalmaneser III (858-823 ac.). In 1878-79 and 1880-81 he also found valuable relics on Babylonian ground.
From 1877 to the present day the French government has conducted excavations inter mittently at Telloh, in lower Babylonia ; for more than 23 years under the superintendence of E. de Sarzec, and since that date under Com mandant G. Cros. This mound has yielded a rich store of antiquities,' consisting of many thousands of tablets, of several beautiful diorite statues, of friezes, of palace plans, and of cylinders, many of which are deposited and mounted in the superb collection in the Louvre in Paris. These represent the remains of the old Sumerian civilization of the 3d and 4th millenium B.C. The accompanying illustration presents two views of a part of the mound Telloh, where such notable discoveries have been made. The same government inaugurated and carried on excavations at Susa under M. and Mme. Dieulafoy (1884-86) ; and latterly under M. J. de Morgan, and has thus opened up new volumes on the history of ancient Elam and its relations to adjoining countries.
A few broad-minded gentlemen, under the leadership of E. W. Clark, of Philadelphia, provided the means for the organization and prosecution of an expedition to Babylonia under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. This expedition was duly organized and equipped and prosecuted work under the direc tion of John P. Peters, during 1888-90 at the mound Niffer, about 30 miles southeast of Babylon. Since that time the same institution has carried on work intermittently on this site, under supervision of H. V. Hilprecht, and, for the most part, under the directorship of John Henry Haynes, and has brought to light thou sands of inscriptions and other antiquities. These have made the University of Pennsyl vania the richest Babylonian-Assyrian museum in America in antiquities of both the Sumerian and Semitic population of early Babylonia.
Beginning with the year 1897 German archge ologists under the leadership of Robert Kolde wey have carried on extensive excavations on the site of old Babylon and the old city of Ashur. The full results of their activity are
being published in beautifully illustrated vol umes and series of texts.
In 1903 the Oriental Exploration Fund of the University of Chicago was organized, and an expedition sent out under the direction of Robert Francis Harper, and under the field di rectorship of Edgar James Banks, to excavate on the old site Bismya, in lower Babylonia. The first season's work justified the hope that this might prove to be a fruitful mound, belonging to a high antiquity. The old city proved to be the ancient Adab, and the many antiquities un covered, including a famous statue, now in the Imperial Ottoman Museum at Constantinople, to belong to the 3d millenium B.C.
Outside of Babylonia proper, some notable discoveries of cuneiform inscriptions have been made by explorers. A stele of Sargon II was found in the Island of Cyprus in 1845. There were found at Tel-el-Amarna, in Egypt, in 1887, more than 300 cuneiform tablets, which proved to be correspondence between the kings of Egypt and their Asiatic underlords and rulers in the 15th century s.c. Even Palestine has pro duced a couple of tablets in its excavated cities. Luschan found at Zinjirli, Asia Minor, among a host of Hittite antiquities, a statue and in scription of Esarhaddon (680-668 a.c.). And the Germans under the leadership of Hugo Winckler brought to light at Boghaz-Keui a splendid collection of cuneiform tablets, in Sumerian, Babylonian and the Hittite languages (first reported in 19061.
Decipherment of Inscriptions.— The neat little wedge-shaped characters, put together in so many combinations to form individual signs, very early attracted the genius of the linguist. As early as 1801, Grotef end, a German, discov ered the significance of some of the old Persian cuneiform characters; and other scholars, fol lowing in his wake, likewise made some advance in identification of those old characters. But the long and sure step ahead was not made until Henry C. Rawlinson, the Englishman, took up the problem. As an officer in the Persian army about 1835, he had unusual facilities for examining ancient ruins in that country. He observed at Behistun, in the Zagros Mountains, a rock stretching up almost 1,700 feet above the plain, and at about 350 feet above its base a large space carefully smoothed off. Upon this space was inscribed a mass of writing, dis tributed in several columns of varying lengths. After years of toil at intervals, he succeeded in copying the entire set. In a study of them he found that they contained three languages. The first, the Old Persian, through his knowledge of modern Persian and other related tongues, after years of study, he was able to decipher, and sent his translation to London, where, in 1847, it was published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Rawlinson's success was epochal, for it broke the seal into the hidden treasures of the cuneiform languages of Babylonia. His decipherment of one of the trilingual inscriptions opened the door into the next, the Susian or Elamite. These two being deciphered, scholars were soon able to penetrate the mysteries of the third language, the Baby lonian-Assyrian.