Lecture I. Introductory. 235
is much which has not yet been fully copied or examined. The
British Museum, moreover, is no longer the sole repository of
Babylonian literature. The Louvre, the Berlin Museum, and the
American University of Pennsylvania, are equally filled with the
clay tablets of the Babylonian scribes; while the collection in
the Museum of Constantinople far exceeds those which have
been formed elsewhere. Even private individuals have their
collections of larger or less extent; that of Lord Amherst of
Hackney, for example, would have made the fortune of one of
the great museums of the world but a few years ago.
It is evident that it will be long before more than a fraction
of this vast and ever-accumulating literature can be adequately
studied. And what adds to the difficulty is that it is still increasing
year by year. At present there are as many as three exploring
expeditions in Babylonia. M. de Sarzec's successor on behalf
of the French Government is still carrying on work at Tello,
the ancient Lagas, which was begun as far back as 1877; the
Americans are continuing their excavations at Nippur, where,
ever since 1888, they have been excavating for the first time [256]
on a thoroughly systematic and scientific plan; and now the
Germans have commenced work at Babylon itself, and have
already fixed the site of the temple of Bel-Merodach and of
that palace of Nebuchadrezzar in which Alexander the Great
died.^203 Even while I am writing, the news has come of the
discovery of a great library at Nippur, which seems to have been
buried under the ruins of the building in which it was kept as
far back as the Abrahamic age. The mounds in which it has
been found lie to the south-west of the great temple of Bel.
Already nearly 20,000 tablets have been rescued from it, and
it is calculated that at least 130,000 are yet to be disinterred.
The tablets lie in order upon the clay shelves on which they
were arranged in the days of Khammurabi, the Amraphel of
(^203) The palace is represented by the mound called El-Qasr, the temple by that
called Tell 'Amrân ibn 'Ali.