When we have completed our examination of Assyrian sculpture, so rich in some respects, so poor in others, we shall understand the rapidity with which silence and oblivion overtook so much glory and power; we shall understand how some two centuries after the victory of Nabopolassar and the final triumph of Babylon and her allies, Xenophon and his Greeks could mount the Tigris and gaze upon the still formidable walls of the deserted cities of Mespila and Larissa without even hearing the name of Nineveh pronounced. Eager for knowledge as they were, they passed over the ground without suspecting that the dust thrown up by their feet had once been a city famous and feared over all Asia, and that the capital of an empire hardly less great than that of the Artaxerxes whom they had faced at Cunaxa, had once covered the ground where they stood. NOTES: [117] DIODORUS, ii. 29. [118] Fr. LENORMANT, _Manuel de l'Histoire ancienne de l'Orient_, vol. ii. p. 252. [119] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana_, p. 309. The Greeks gave the appropriate name of klimakes to those stepped roads that lead from the valley and the sea coast to the high plains of Persia. [120] HERODOTUS, i. 200. A similar article of food is in extensive use at the present day in the western islands of Scotland, and upon other distant coasts where the soil is poor.--ED. [121] Upon the subject of this cylinder, in which George Smith wished to recognize a representation of Adam and Eve tempted by the serpent, see M. JOACHIM MENANT'S paper entitled, _La Bible et les Cylindres Chaldeens_ (Paris, 1880, Maisonneuve, 8vo). M. Menant makes short work of this forced interpretation and of several similar delusions which were beginning to win some acceptance. [122] Upon the sacred functions of the king, see LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. ii. p. 474. [123] 2 Kings xix. 37. [124] LAYARD, _The Monuments of Nineveh_ (folio, 1849), plates 43-50. [125] LAYARD, _A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh_ (folio, 1853), plates 26 and 27. The scribes in question seem to be writing upon rolls of leather. [126] Throughout this work the words "right" and "left" refer to the right and left of the cuts, _not_ of the reader. By this system alone can confusion be avoided in describing statues and compositions with figures.--ED. [Illustration] CHAPTER II. THE PRINCIPLES AND GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ASSYRO-CHALDAEAN ARCHITECTURE. Sec. 1.--_Materials._