had
laid its hands also on the Old Testament, and had determined that the
sacred histories themselves were but a collection of myths and fables. But
suddenly, as with the wand of a magician, the ancient eastern world has
been reawakened to life by the spade of the explorer and the patient skill
of the decipherer, and we now find ourselves in the presence of monuments
which bear the names or recount the deeds of the heroes of Scripture. One
by one these "stones crying out" have been examined or more perfectly
explained, while others of equal importance are being continually added to
them.

What striking confirmations of the Bible narrative have been afforded by
the latest discoveries will be seen from the following pages. In many
cases confirmation has been accompanied by illustration. Unexpected light
has been thrown upon facts and statements hitherto obscure, or a wholly
new explanation has been given of some event recorded by the inspired
writer. What can be more startling than the discovery of the great Hittite
Empire, the very existence of which had been forgotten, and which yet once
contended on equal terms with Egypt on the one side and Assyria on the
other? The allusions to the Hittites in the Old Testament, which had been
doubted by a sceptical criticism, have been shown to be fully in
accordance with the facts, and their true place in history has been
pointed out.

But the account of the Hittite Empire is not the only discovery of the
last four or five years about which this book has to speak. Inscriptions
of Sargon have cleared up the difficulties attending the tenth and
eleventh chapters of Isaiah's prophecies, and have proved that no "ideal"
campaign of an "ideal" Assyrian king is described in them. The campaign,
on the contrary, was a very real one, and when Isaiah delivered his
prophecy the Assyrian monarch was marching down upon Jerusalem from the
north, and was about to be "the rod" of God's anger upon its sins. Ten
years before the overthrow of Sennacherib's army his father, Sargon, had
captured Jerusalem, but a "remnant" escaped the horrors of the siege, and
returned in penitence "unto the mighty God."

Perhaps the most remarkable of recent discoveries is that which relates to
Cyrus and his conquest of Babylonia. The history of the conquest as told
by Cyrus himself is now in our hands, and it has obliged us to modify many
of the views, really derived from Greek authors, which we had read into
the wo