This kingdom seems to have lasted about seven centuries without any noticeable interruption, and then to have been overthrown by an invasion from the west about the year 1518 B.C. Can this mean the Egyptian conquest under the kings of the great 18th dynasty? The depression of the Chaldeans enabled the Assyrians to raise their heads and found the great kingdom afterwards known as that of Nineveh, about the year 1273. For six centuries and a half they were the great people of Asia, and during the latter half of that period built all those palaces which have so recently been disinterred. They were struck down in their turn by the kings of Babylonia, who established the second Chaldean kingdom about the year 625, but only to give place to the Persians under Cyrus in the year 538, after little more than a century of duration. As in the Valley of the Nile, the first kingdom was established near the mouths of the Euphrates, and flourished there for centuries before it was superseded by the kingdom of Nineveh, in the same manner as Thebes had succeeded to the earlier seat of power in the neighbourhood of Memphis. Owing to the fortunate employment of sculptured alabaster slabs to line the walls of the palaces during the great period of Assyrian prosperity, we are enabled to restore the plan of the royal palaces of that period with perfect certainty, and in consequence of the still more fortunate introduction of stone masonry during the Persian period—after they had come into contact with the Greeks—we can understand the construction of these buildings, and restore the form of many parts which, being originally of wood, have perished. The Plains of Shinar possessed no natural building material of a durable nature, and even wood or fuel of any kind seems to have been so scarce that the architects were content too frequently to resort to the use of bricks only dried in the sun. The consequence is that the buildings of the early Chaldeans are now generally shapeless masses, the plans of which it is often extremely difficult to follow, and in no instance has any edifice been discovered so complete that we can feel quite sure we really know all about it. Fortunately, however, the temples at Wurka and Mugheyr become intelligible by comparison with the Birs Nimroud and the so-called tomb of Cyrus, and the palaces of Nineveh and Khorsabad from the corresponding ones at Susa and Persepolis. Consequently, if we attempt to study the architecture of Chaldea, of Assyria, or of Persia, as separate styles, we find them so fragmentary, owing to the imperfection of the materials in which they were carried out, that it is difficult to understand their forms. But taken as the successive developments of one great style, the whole becomes easily intelligible; and had the southern excavations been conducted with a little more care, there is perhaps no feature that would have been capable of satisfactory explanation. Even