History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 | Page 7

in Egypt, has been
excavating below the remains of the Achremenian period, among the ruins of the ancient
Elamite capital. Here he has found numberless historical inscriptions, besides a text in

hieroglyphics which may cast light on the origin of the cuneiform characters. But the
most interesting of his discoveries are two Babylonian monuments that were carried off
by Elamite conquerors from the cities of Babylonia. One of them is a long inscription of
about 1200 lines belonging to Manistusu, one of the early Babylonian kings, whose name
has been met with at Niffer; the other is a monument of Naram-Sin, the Son of Sargon of
Akkad, which it seems was brought as booty to Susa by Simti-silkhak, the grandfather,
perhaps, of Eriaku or Arioch.
In Armenia, also, equally important inscriptions have been found by Belck and Lehmann.
More than two hundred new ones have been added to the list of Vannic texts. It has been
discovered from them that the kingdom of Biainas or Van was founded by Ispuinis and
Menuas, who rebuilt Yan itself and the other cities which they had previously sacked and
destroyed. The older name of the country was Kumussu, and it may be that the language
spoken in it was allied to that of the Hittites, since a tablet in hieroglyphics of the Hittite
type has been unearthed at Toprak Kaleh. One of the newly-found inscriptions of
Sarduris III. shows that the name of the Assyrian god, hitherto read Ramman or Rimmon,
was really pronounced Hadad. It describes a war of the Vannic king against Assur-nirari,
son of Hadad-nirari (A-da-di-ni-ra-ri) of Assyria, thus revealing not only the true form of
the Assyrian name, but also the parentage of the last king of the older Assyrian dynasty.
From another inscription, belonging to Rusas II., the son of Argistis, we learn that
campaigns were carried on against the Hittites and the Moschi in the latter years of
Sennacherib's reign, and therefore only just before the irruption of the Kimmerians into
the northern regions of Western Asia.
The two German explorers have also discovered the site and even the ruins of Muzazir,
called Ardinis by the people of Van. They lie on the hill of Shkenna, near Topsanâ, on the
road between Kelishin and Sidek. In the immediate neighbourhood the travellers
succeeded in deciphering a monument of Rusas I., partly in Vannic, partly in Assyrian,
from which it appears that the Vannic king did not, after all, commit suicide when the
news of the fall of Muzazir was brought to him, as is stated by Sargon, but that, on the
contrary, he "marched against the mountains of Assyria" and restored the fallen city itself.
Urzana, the King of Muzazir, had fled to him for shelter, and after the departure of the
Assyrian army he was sent back by Rusas to his ancestral domains. The whole of the
district in which Muzazir was situated was termed Lulu, and was regarded as the southern
province of Ararat. In it was Mount Nizir, on whose summit the ark of the Chaldsean
Noah rested, and which is therefore rightly described in the Book of Genesis as one of
"the mountains of Ararat." It was probably the Rowandiz of to-day.
The discoveries made by Drs. Belck and Lehmann, however, have not been confined to
Vannic texts. At the sources of the Tigris Dr. Lehmann has found two Assyrian
inscriptions of the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser IL, one dated in his fifteenth and the other
in his thirty-first year, and relating to his campaigns against Aram of Ararat. He has
further found that the two inscriptions previously known to exist at the same spot, and
believed to belong to Tiglath-Ninip and Assur-nazir-pal, are really those of Shalmaneser
II., and refer to the war of his seventh year.
But it is from Egypt that the most revolutionary revelations have come. At Abydos and

Kom el-Ahmar, opposite El-Kab, monuments have been disinterred of the kings of the
first and second dynasties, if not of even earlier princes; while at Negada, north of Thebes,
M. de Morgan has found a tomb which seems to have been that of Menés himself. A new
world of art has been opened out before us; even the hieroglyphic system of writing is as
yet immature and strange. But the art is already advanced in many respects; hard stone
was cut into vases and bowls, and even into statuary of considerable artistic excellence;
glazed porcelain was already made, and bronze, or rather copper, was fashioned into
weapons and tools. The writing material, as in Babylonia, was often clay, over which
seal-cylinders of a Babylonian pattern were rolled. Equally Babylonian are the strange
and composite animals engraved on some of the objects of this early age, as well as the
structure of the tombs, which