was composed of bricks on the exterior and of earth within. The
dwellings of the city have disappeared leaving no traces, but we have
recovered many palaces constructed by various kings of Assyria.
Nineveh remained the residence of the kings down to the time that the
Assyrian empire was destroyed by the Medes and Chaldeans.

=Inscriptions on the Bricks.=--In these inscriptions every character
is formed of a combination of signs shaped like an arrow or wedge, and
this is the reason that this style of writing is termed cuneiform
(Latin _cuneus_ and _forma_). To trace these signs the writer used a
stylus with a triangular point; he pressed it into a tablet of soft
clay which was afterwards baked to harden it and to make the
impression permanent. In the palace of Assurbanipal a complete library
of brick tablets has been found in which brick serves the purpose of
paper.

=Cuneiform Writing.=--For many years the cuneiform writing has
occupied the labors of many scholars impatient to decipher it. It has
been exceedingly difficult to read, for, in the first place, it served
as the writing medium of five different languages--Assyrian, Susian,
Mede, Chaldean, and Armenian, without counting the Old Persian--and
there was no knowledge of these five languages. Then, too, it is very
complicated, for several reasons:

1. It is composed at the same time of symbolic signs, each of
which represents a word (sun, god, fish), and of syllabic signs,
each of which represents a syllable.

2. There are nearly two hundred syllabic signs, much alike and
easy to confuse.