tabernacle, which seems to have been again 15 feet high, and must have nearly covered the top of the seventh story. This temple was sacred to Nebo, the Babylonian Mercury, the inventor of the alphabet, "the writer," "the prophet," "the author of the oracle." Assurbanipal is never weary of telling us, at the end of the documents which his scribes had copied from Babylonian originals, that Nebo and Tasmit had given him broad ears, and endowed him with seeing eyes, so that he had written and bound together and published the store of tablets, a work which none of the kings who had gone before him had undertaken, even the secrets of Nebo!
From receptacles at the corners of the stages above described, Sir H. Rawlinson obtained inscribed cylinders, stating that the building was the Temple of the Seven Planets, which had been partially built by a former king of Babylon, and having fallen into decay, was restored and completed by Nebuchadnezzar. It was at Birs Nimroud that Mr Hormuzd Rassam found a leaf of metal with some writing on it, which proved to be a dedication by Nebuchadnezzar to the god Nebo for his restoration to health. If this relates to Nebuchadnezzar's recovery from his madness, it is an interesting confirmation of the story in the Book of Daniel.
"The secrets of Nebo" referred to by Assurbanipal, were astronomical records and other writings stored up in Nebo's temple. The religion of the Babylonians was based on a study of the heavenly bodies, and was so intimately connected with astronomy that it was necessary for the priests to be astronomers. There were observatories at the principal temples; observations of the heavens were regularly made, and naturally the records were preserved in the temple chambers, and became the nucleus of large libraries. It was the good fortune of Mr Rassam to discover one of the most important of these libraries, at
