whole, as all critics are bound to say, is being confirmed in its statements.
Besides Ahab and Omri, Jehu and Hezekiah, the cuneiform tablets mention Menahem, Pekah, and Hoshea, kings of Israel; and Azariah, Ahaz, and Manasseh, kings of Judah. Ahaz is called Jehoahaz, his name, like so many more, being compounded with the name of Jehovah; and it would seem that on account of his perversion to foreign worship the Bible writers would not use the Lord's name in such association. Further, the kings of Assyria and Babylon spoken of in the Bible come before us again in the cuneiform texts, with many particulars of their warlike expeditions,—Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Shalmaneser, Tiglath-Pileser, Nebuchadnezzar, &c. Tiglath-Pileser, we find, was not the first of that name, for there had been a monarch so designated as early as 1300 B.C. In fact the real name of the later king was Pul or Pulu, and it is doubtful whether he was the rightful heir; but when he ascended the throne (in B.C. 745) he took the name of the earlier conqueror, a circumstance which led the Bible writer to suppose there were two kings. [S. A. Strong, in "Records of the Past." New Series. Vol. v.]
The other palace found at Kouyunjik belonged, as stated before, to Assurbanipal. He was the Sardanapalus of Greek writers and was a great conqueror. His date is about 640 B.C. Mr Rassam, the native co-worker with Mr Layard, was fortunate enough to discover Assurbanipal's library—the library of the Assyrian kings. The "books" of the Assyrians differed very much from our own. They used to take a tablet of clay, to write upon it with an iron stylus, bake it into terra cotta, and then place the record on the library shelf. These clay tablets were more durable than leaves of paper or rolls of parchment, and the Assyrian records, covered up more than two thousand years ago, are in many cases so well preserved that scholars can read them.
As progress was made in deciphering the inscriptions, it
