d the
bricks, we find small solid cones, or hollow cylinders of considerable
size, on which the kings related their exploits or recorded the history
of their wars or the dedication of their buildings. This method had a
few inconveniences, but many advantages. These clay books were heavy to
hold and clumsy to handle, while the characters did not stand out well
from the brown, yellow, and whitish background of the material; but, on
the other hand, a poem, baked and incorporated into the page itself,
ran less danger of destruction than if scribbled in ink on sheets of
papyrus. Fire could make no impression on it; it could withstand water
for a considerable length of time; even if broken, the pieces were still
of use: as long as it was not pulverized, the entire document could be
restored, with the exception, perhaps, of a few signs, or 'some
scraps of a sentence. The inscriptions which have been saved from the
foundations of the most ancient temples, several of which date back
forty or fifty centuries, are for the most part as clear and legible
as when they left the hands of the writer who engraved them or of the
workmen who baked them. It is owing to the material to which they were
committed that we possess the principal works of Chaldaean literature
which have come down to us--poems, annals, hymns, magical incantations;
how few fragments of these would ever have reached us had their authors
confided them to parchment or paper, after the manner of the Egyptian
scribes! The greatest danger that they ran was that of being left
forgotten in the corner of the chamber in which they had been kept,
or buried under the rubbish of a building after a fire or some violent
catastrophe; even then the _debris_ were the means of preserving them,
by falling over them and covering them up. Protected under the ruins,
they would lie there for centuries, till the fortunate explorer should
bring them to light and deliver them over to the patient study of the
learned.

The cuneiform character in itself is neither picturesque nor decorative.
It does not offer that delightful assemblage of birds and snakes, of men
and quadrupeds, of heads and limbs, of tools, weapons, stars, trees,
and boats, which succeed each other in perplexing order on the Egyptian
monuments, to give permanence to the glory of Pharaoh and the greatness
of his gods. Cuneiform writing is essentially composed of thin short
lines, placed in juxtaposition or crossing each other i