Ancient Babylonia / by C.H.W. Johns.

  • Johns, C. H. W. (Claude Hermann Walter), 1857-1920.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Ancient Babylonia / by C.H.W. Johns. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ORIGINAL SOURCES frequent references to it, and after the Fall of Jerusalem the home of the exiles naturally became of absorbing interest. Since the decipherment of the Babylonian column of the trilingual inscription of Darius the Great on the rocks at Behistun, by Sir H. C. Rawlinson, Hincks, and Oppert, the native sources have become overwhelmingly more important than any others. Of formal or professed history little has been recovered, for before Berosus, no Babylonian, so far as we know, set out to write a history of Babylonia. Of materials for history, Babylonia has already yielded to the excavator such an amount as to be almost unmanageable. This snort sketch can only be regarded as an attempt to summarise, without argument or discussion, the results now generally admitted as probable. The Babylonian monarchs were intensely proud of the buildings which their piety led them to dedicate to the worship of their gods. They in- variably left foundation records ensconced in niches, or coffers, built into cavities in the brick- work, at the corners, or in the floors of temples or their annexes. These records have proved invalu- able for identifying the buildings and the ancient sites on which they stood. Scarcely less valuable are the bricks of which temples and palaces were built. For they were usually stamped or inscribed