The capital of Assyria was Nineveh, one of the most famous of cities. It was remarkable for extent, wealth, and architectural grandeur. Diodorus Siculus says its walls were sixty miles around and one hundred feet high. Three chariots could be driven abreast around the summit of its walls, which were defended by fifteen hundred bastions, each of them two hundred feet in height. These dimensions may be exaggerated, but the Hebrew scriptures and recent excavations at the ancient site leave no doubt as to the splendor of the Assyrian palaces and the greatness of the city of Nineveh in population, wealth, and power. In historical times it was destroyed by the Medes, under King Cyaxares, and by the Babylonians, under Nebuchadnezzar, about B.C. 607. We are indebted to the monuments, tablets, and "books" recently discovered for the history of Assyria and other ancient oriental nations. Layard unearthed the greater portion, on the site of ancient Nineveh, of the Assyrian "books" (for so are named the tablets of clay, sometimes enamelled, at others only sun-dried or burnt). The writing on these "books" is the cuneiform, and was done by impressing the "style" on the clay while in a waxlike condition. Many of the tablets were broken when Layard and Rawlinson gave them over to the British Museum. The reconstruction of these tablets was undertaken by George Smith, an English Assyriologist of the British Museum, who displayed great skill and earnest application in the deciphering of the cuneiform text. In each reign the history of the king and his acts was written by a poet or historian detailed to that office. The "books" were collected and kept in great libraries, the largest of these being made by Sardanapalus. The greater part of the expeditions of Shalmaneser IV, succeeding each other year after year, were directed, like those of his father, sometimes to the north, into Armenia and Pontus; sometimes to the east, into Media, never completely subdued; sometimes to the south, into Chaldaea, where revolts were of constant occurrence; and finally westward, toward Syria and the region of Amanus. In this direction he advanced farther than his predecessors, and came into contact with some personages mentioned in Bible history. The part of his annals relating to the campaigns that brought him into collision with the kings of Damascus and Israel possesses peculiar interest for us, much greater than that attaching to the narrative of any other wars.