But, notwithstanding this remarkable confirmation of the correctness of the method of decipherment employed by Assyriologists, there still remained a certain number of skeptics even among the most noted scholars of the age--men like Gutschmid in Germany and Renan and Gobineau in France--who refused to admit the conclusiveness of the demonstration which had silenced most other objectors. Even after the French Institute on July 15, 1863, had awarded to Oppert the coveted quinquennial prize of twenty thousand francs for “that work or discovery which is best calculated to honor or serve the country,” skepticism still persisted among certain Orientalists.[373] Indeed, it was not until the appearance in 1872 of the masterly _Die Assyrisch--Babylonischen-Keilinschriften_ of Eberhard Schrader that general confidence in the prevailing system of cuneiform decipherment was firmly established and that all opposition to its methods was finally abandoned. Seventy years had elapsed from the reading by Grotefend of his epochal paper before the Göttingen Academy to the publication of Schrader’s great work on the cuneiform writing and language. From the time of Schrader, who has been called the father of early Assyriology, to the splendid achievements of his illustrious countryman, Friedrich Delitzsch, who is known as the father of contemporary Assyriology, progress in the new science has been as rapid as the activity of its countless votaries has been enthusiastic. This is evidenced by the large number of cuneiform monuments which are now found in the museums of Europe and America and by the ever-increasing number of scholars who are devoting all their time to the study of Assyrian science, religion, and literature. It is estimated that there are now, in the divers museums of the world, more than a half million inscribed tablets. Besides the immense number of tablets found in the great library of Asurbanipal, Rassam discovered in Abu-Habba, formerly Hillah, no fewer than seventy thousand. In 1894 M. Ernest de Sarzec took from a single chamber in the ruined city of Telloh, in the alluvial plain of Babylonia, fully thirty thousand tablets, while a few years later Haynes and Hilprecht to the north of Telloh, in the ruins of Nippur, discovered more than forty thousand tablets, which have proved to be of inestimable value to the student of the history, religion, and social conditions of the inhabitants of ancient Sumer and Akkad. Still other stores of tablets were unearthed by Banks at Bismya and De Morgan at Susa. Among the precious monuments brought to light by the distinguished French explorer of Susa was the important code of Hammurabi--the oldest compilation of laws in the world--the code by which Babylonia was governed at a period which antedated the Christian era by fully two thousand years.