id progress. His earliest discovery was the date of the payment of
tribute by Jehu, King of Israel, to the Assyrian Emperor Shalmaneser.
Sir Henry availed himself of the young investigator's assistance in
producing the third volume of _The Cuneiform Inscriptions_.

In 1867 Smith received an appointment in the Assyriology Department of
the British Museum, and a few years later became famous throughout
Christendom as the translator of fragments of the Babylonian Deluge
Legend from tablets sent to London by Rassam. Sir Edwin Arnold, the
poet and Orientalist, was at the time editor of the _Daily Telegraph_,
and performed a memorable service to modern scholarship by dispatching
Smith, on behalf of his paper, to Nineveh to search for other
fragments of the Ancient Babylonian epic. Rassam had obtained the
tablets from the great library of the cultured Emperor Ashur-bani-pal,
"the great and noble Asnapper" of the Bible,[5] who took delight, as
he himself recorded, in

The wisdom of Ea,[6] the art of song, the treasures of science.

This royal patron of learning included in his library collection,
copies and translations of tablets from Babylonia. Some of these were
then over 2000 years old. The Babylonian literary relics were, indeed,
of as great antiquity to Ashur-bani-pal as that monarch's relics are
to us.

The Emperor invoked Nebo, god of wisdom and learning, to bless his
"books", praying:

Forever, O Nebo, King of all heaven and earth,
Look gladly upon this Library
Of Ashur-bani-pal, his (thy) shepherd, reverencer of thy
divinity.[7]

Mr. George Smith's expedition to Nineveh in 1873 was exceedingly
fruitful of results. More tablets were discovered and translated. In
the following year he returned to the ancient Assyrian city on behalf
of the British Museum, and added further by his scholarly achievements
to his own reputation and the world's knowledge of antiquity. His last
expedition was made early in 1876; on his homeward journey he was
stricken down with fever, and on 19th August he died at Aleppo in his
thirty-sixth year. So was a brilliant career brought to an untimely
end.

Rassam was engaged to continue Smith's great work, and between 1877
and 1882 made many notable discoveries in Assyria and Babylonia,
including the bronze doors of a Shalmaneser temple, the sun temple at
Sippar; the palace of the Biblical Nebuchadrezzar, which was famous
for its "hanging gardens"; a cylinder of Nab