building he found two small chambers, opening into each other, which
he called the "chamber of records," or "the house of the rolls." He
gave them this name because "to the height of a foot or more from the
floor they were entirely filled" with inscribed baked clay tablets
and fragments of tablets. Some tablets were complete, but by far the
larger number of them had been broken up into many fragments, probably
by the falling in of the roof and upper parts of the walls of the
buildings when the city was pillaged and set on fire by the Medes and
Babylonians. The tablets that were kept in these chambers numbered
many thousands. Besides those that were found in them by Layard,
large numbers have been dug out all along the corridor which passed
the chambers and led to the river, and a considerable number were
kicked on to the river front by the feet of the terrified fugitives
from the palace when it was set on fire. The tablets found by Layard
were of different sizes; the largest were rectangular, flat on one
side and convex on the other, and measured about 9 ins. by 6 1/2 ins.,
and the smallest were about an inch square. The importance of this
"find" was not sufficiently recognized at the time, for the tablets,
which were thought to be decorated pottery, were thrown into baskets
and sent down the river loose on rafts to Basrah, whence they were
despatched to England on a British man o' war. During their transport
from Nineveh to England they suffered more damage from want of packing
than they had suffered from the wrath of the Medes. Among the complete
tablets that were found in the two chambers several had colophons
inscribed or scratched upon them, and when these were deciphered by
Rawlinson, Hincks and Oppert a few years later, it became evident that
they had formed part of the library of the Temple of Nebo at Nineveh.


Nebo and His Library at Nineveh.