Hardly less interesting has been the discovery of the inscription of Siloam, which reveals to us the very characters used by the Jews in the time of Isaiah, perhaps even in the time of Solomon himself. The discovery has cast a flood of light on the early topography of Jerusalem, and has made it clear as the daylight that the Jews of the royal period were not the rude and barbarous people it has been the fashion of an unbelieving criticism to assume, but a cultured and literary population. Books must have been as plentiful among them as they were in Phœnicia or Assyria; nor must we forget the results of the excavations undertaken last year in the land of Goshen. Pithom, the treasure-city built by the Israelites, has been disinterred, and the date of the Exodus has been fixed. M. Naville has even found there bricks made without straw. But the old records of Egypt and Assyria have a further interest than a merely historical one. They tell us what were the religious doctrines and aspirations of those who composed them, and what was their conception of their duty towards God and man. We have only to compare the hymns and psalms and prayers of these ancient peoples—seeking “the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him”—with the fuller lights revealed in the pages of the Old Testament, to discover how wide was the chasm that lay between the two. The one was seeking what the other had already found. The Hebrew prophet was the forerunner and herald of the Gospel, and the light shed by the Gospel had been reflected back upon him. He saw already “the Sun of Righteousness” rising in the east; the psalmist of Shinar or the devout worshipper of Asshur were like unto those “upon whom no day has dawned.” CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. _How the Cuneiform Inscriptions were deciphered.—Grotefend’s guess.—Lassen and Rawlinson’s studies.—Discoveries of Botta, Layard, George Smith, and Rassam.—Certainty of our present knowledge._ The decipherment of the cuneiform or wedge-shaped inscriptions of Assyria has been one of the most marvellous achievements of the present century. It has often been asked how Assyrian scholars have been enabled to read an Assyrian text with almost as much certainty as a page of the Old Testament, although both the language and the characters in which it is written were utterly unknown but a few years ago. A brief history of the origin and progress of the decipherment will best answer the question.