surmounted the upper platform.

All these tower-temples have crumbled into vast mounds, with only here and
there a projecting mass of masonry to distinguish them from natural hills,
for which they were at first mistaken.

CUNEIFORM WRITING.--We have already mentioned the fact that the Accadians,
when they entered the Euphrates valley, were in possession of a system of
writing. This was a simple pictorial, or hieroglyphical system, which they
gradually developed into the cuneiform.

In the cuneiform system, the characters, instead of being formed of
unbroken lines, are composed of wedge-like marks; hence the name (from
_cuneus_, a wedge). This form, according to the scholar Sayce, arose
when the Accadians, having entered the low country, substituted tablets of
clay for the papyrus or other similar material which they had formerly
used. The characters were impressed upon the soft tablet by means of a
triangular writing-instrument, which gave them their peculiar wedge-shaped
form.

The cuneiform mode of writing, improved and simplified by the Assyrians
and the Persians, was in use about two thousand years, being employed by
the nations in and near the Euphrates basin, down to the time of the
conquest of the East by the Macedonians.

BOOKS AND LIBRARIES.--The books of the Chaldaeans were in general clay
tablets, varying in length from one inch to twelve inches, and being about
one inch thick. Those holding records of special importance, after having
been once written over and baked, were covered with a thin coating of
clay, and then the matter was written in duplicate and the tablets again