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Updated: June 23, 2025
It is no doubt true, as M. Oppert observes, that the royal palace at Nineveh was at this time in a ruinous state; but it could not have been more difficult or more expensive to repair it than to construct a new palace, a new mound, and a new town, on a fresh site. Previously to the construction of the Khorsabad palace, Sargon resided at Caleb.
A man called Oppert, a North German Jew, and believed by everybody to be an adventurer under the guise of a trader, was in command of the 'fleet' which was composed of a steamer, if I remember right, of about 700 tons, called the China, and a smaller tender of little over 50 tons, called the Greta. Oppert flew the flag of his own country, and in due course gave the order to start."
"This plan was successfully carried out, and during the night, under the command of Oppert, and escorted by the marauders, who were armed to the teeth, they proceeded to the point where l'Abbé Feron advised a landing.
The leaden one was too heavy to be carried off at once, and it was despatched to Bassorah on the rafts with the bulk of the collection, whose fate it shared." The other four tablets are in the Louvre. Their text is almost identical. M. Oppert gives a translation of it.
M. Oppert tells us that during the summer of 1854, "M. Place disinterred from the foundations of Khorsabad a stone case in which were five inscriptions on five different materials, gold, silver, antimony, copper and lead. Of these five tablets he brought away four.
OPPERT, Expédition scientifique, vol. i. pp. 354 et seq. Mechanical Resources. The Chaldæans and Assyrians were never called upon to transport such enormous masses as some of the Egyptian monoliths, such as the obelisks and the two great colossi at Thebes.
The characters were white on a blue ground. M. Oppert brought together some fifteen of these monumental texts, but he did not find a single fragment upon which there was more than one letter. The inscriptions were meant to be legible at a considerable distance, for the letters were from two to three inches high.
These contained the name of the founder, together with prayers to the gods and imprecations on all who should menace the stability of the building. This custom dated from the very beginning of Chaldæan civilization, as is proved by a curious text translated by M. Oppert. It was discovered at Sippara and dates from the time of Nabounid, one of the last kings of Babylon.
It is well illustrated, and written with admirable clearness. At the very commencement of his investigations M. OPPERT had called attention to the curious forms presented by certain characters in the oldest inscriptions. See Expédition scientifique de Mésopotamie, vol. ii. pp. 62, 3, notably the paragraph entitled Origine Hiéroglyphique de l'Écriture anarienne.
Rich also bears witness to the abundance of these remains in his Journey to the Ruins of Babylon. See also OPPERT, Expédition scientifique, vol. i. p. 143. Upon one wall, he said, there was a cow with the sun and moon above it. His story must, at least, have been founded on truth. No motive occurs oftener in the Chaldæan monuments than a bull and the twin stars of the day and night.
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