lves to more than one interpretation, while the
tombs of Egypt are known to us in every detail of structure and
arrangement. In more than one instance they have come down to us with their
equipment of epitaphs and inscribed prayers, of pictures carved and painted
on the walls and all the luxury of their sepulchral furniture, exactly in
fact as they were left when their doors were shut upon their silent tenants
so many centuries ago.[419]

We are far indeed from being able to say this of Assyria and Chaldaea. In
those countries it is the palace, the habitation of the sovereign, that has
survived in the best condition, and from it we may imagine what the houses
of private people were like; but we know hardly anything of their tombs.
Chaldaean tombs have been discovered in these latter years, but they are
anonymous and mute. We do not possess a single funerary inscription dating
from the days when the two nations who divided Mesopotamia between them
were still their own masters. The arrangements of the nameless tombs in
lower Chaldaea are extremely simple and their furnishing very poor, if we
compare them with the sepulchres in the Egyptian cemeteries. As for
Assyrian burying-places, none have yet been discovered. Tombs have
certainly been found at Nimroud, at Kouyundjik, at Khorsabad, and in all
the mounds in the neighbourhood of Mossoul, but never among or below the
Assyrian remains. They are always in the mass of earth and various _debris_
that has accumulated over the ruins of the Assyrian palaces, which is
enough to show that they date from a time posterior to the fall of the
Mesopotamian Empires. Any doubts that may have lingered on this point have
been removed by the character of the objects found, which are never older
than the Seleucidae or the Parthians, and sometimes date even from the Roman
epoch.[420]

What then did the Assyrians do with their dead? No one has attacked this
question more vigorously than Sir Henry Layard. In his attempt to answer it
he explored the whole district of Mossoul, but without result; he pointed
out the interest of the inquiry to all his collaborators, he talked about
it to the more intelligent among his workmen, and promised a reward to
whoever should first show him an Assyrian grave. He found nothing, however,
and neither Loftus, Place, nor Rassam have been more successful. Neither
texts nor monuments help us to fill up the gap. The excavations of M. de
Sarzec have indeed brought to