exceptions are the chapters on the History and Chronology of Chaldaea and
Assyria. So much fresh light has been thrown on these two subjects by
additional discoveries, made partly by Sir Henry Rawlinson, partly by his
assistant, Mr. George Smith, through the laborious study of fragmentary
inscriptions now in the British Museum, that many pages of the two
chapters in question required to be written afresh, and the Chronological
Schemes required, in the one case a complete, and in the other a partial,
revision. In making this revision, both of the Chronology and the
History, the author has received the most valuable assistance both from
the published papers and from the private communications of Mr.
Smith--an assistance for which he desires to make in this place the
warmest and most hearty acknowledgment. He is also beholden to a recent
Eastern traveller, Mr. A. D. Berrington, for some valuable notes on the
physical geography and productions of Mesopotamia, which have been
embodied in the accounts given of those subjects. A few corrections
have likewise been made of errors pointed out by anonymous critics.
Substantially, however, the work continues such as it was on its first
appearance, the author having found that time only deepened his
conviction of the reality of cuneiform decipherment, and of the
authenticity of the history obtained by means of it.

OXFORD, November, 1870.



PREFACE TO THE SIXTH MONARCHY.

The following work is intended, in part, as a continuation of the ancient
History of the East, already treated by the Author at some length in his
"Five Great Monarchies"; but it is also, and more expressly, intended as