But as the work of excavation is still almost in its infancy, so is also that of decipherment and coördination of the myriads of inscriptions now in the museums of the world. For, notwithstanding the wonderful achievements of Assyriologists during the last three-quarters of a century, many generations must yet elapse before the vast amount of material which has been already collected and to which additions are being constantly made, can be properly interpreted and made available for students who are not professional Orientalists. As yet there is in Assyrian neither a complete grammar nor a complete dictionary, and, on account of the immense number of ideograms yet undeciphered and the astonishing number of polyphonous signs in the Assyrian language--signs which have each several distinct syllabic values--it is certain that many decades will elapse before the countless difficulties can be overcome. Considering, however, the complexity of the problem which confronted Orientalists at the beginnings of their researches, it is, indeed, a wonder that their achievements during the last two generations have been so fruitful and of so far-reaching importance. For in a few decades they have changed completely our conception of the ancient peoples of Assyria and Babylonia and shown that their civilization “stands before us in all its ramifications as one of the great forces in the ancient history of mankind, the direct or indirect influence of which is to be seen in many a phase of our modern culture.”[376] They have proved that the Assyrian language was not only the speech of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia but that it was also long used as the language of diplomacy by the Hittites and the Egyptians and by the peoples of Syria and Palestine. More than this, it was a kind of _lingua franca_ from the Euxine to the valley of the Nile and from Cyprus to the plateau of Susiana. This fact is most strikingly proved by the priceless collections of cuneiform inscriptions which, only a few years ago, were found in Tel-el-Armana, Egypt, and in Boghaz-Keui, Asia Minor. These finds are indications that there are other, probably many other, similar discoveries to reward the patient and well-directed excavations of the explorer in the ruin-spread lands of the Near East.