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A thick, black line upon a blue ground may have stood for the lance of a hunter. Upon one fragment a human eye, looking full to the front, might be recognized. We might be tempted to think that in these remains M. Oppert saw all that was left of the pictures which excited the admiration of Ctesias. Inscriptions in big letters obtained by the same process accompanied and explained the pictures.
From that time Marmet had no rest. At every meeting he was mocked unmercifully; and, finally, in spite of his softness, he got angry. Schmoll is without rancor. It is a virtue of his race. He does not bear ill-will to those whom he persecutes. One day, as he went up the stairway of the Institute with Renan and Oppert, he met Marmet, and extended his hand to him.
"They were all arrested and underwent a trial. So little evidence, however, was brought against them, and that little was of such a conflicting character, that they were all acquitted. Oppert, nevertheless, was imprisoned in his own country, and even brought out a book in which he described his piratical expedition."
This is not the place to enter upon a detailed illustration of the method adopted by ingenious scholars, notably Edward Hincks, Isidor Löwenstern, Henry Rawlinson, Jules Oppert, to whose united efforts the solution of the great problems involved is due; and it would also take too much space, since in order to make this method clear, it would be necessary to set forth the key discovered by Grotefend for reading the Old Persian inscriptions.
By the side of Nin-girsu and Nin-gish-zida appears Nin-shakh, who, as Oppert has shown, is like Nin-girsu the prototype of the well-known god of war, Ninib.
Both of these speak of a base a stade, or about 606 feet, square, which would give a circumference of no less than 2,424 feet not much less than half a mile. In any case the temple now represented by Babil must have been the larger of the two. M. Oppert mentions 180 metres, or about 600 feet, as one diameter of the present rather irregular mass.
This is the opinion of M. OPPERT. He was led to the conclusion that their writing was invented in a more northern climate than that of Chaldæa, by a close study of its characters. There is one sign representing a bear, an animal which does not exist in Chaldæa, while the lions which were to be found there in such numbers had to be denoted by paraphrase, they were called great dogs.
The Dutch painters were remarkable for this trait and for the patient attention which they gave to the details of their work, and for this reason Oppert has called the Assyrians the Dutchmen of antiquity. In Babylon, in the sixth century B.C., under the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, the art of tile-painting reached a high state of perfection.
This peculiarity is still more conspicuous in the engraved limestone pavement which was discovered in the same place, but the fragments are so mutilated as to be unfit for reproduction here. LAYARD, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, p. 506. OPPERT, Expédition scientifique de Mésopotamie, vol. ii. pp. 62, 3. LAYARD, Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii. p. 180.
"The 'abbé, who, among other things, was said to have been the promoter of the scheme, pointed out the mound, and, rejoicing with Oppert and Jenkins at having been so far successful, gave orders to the coolies to proceed at once to dig.
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