Our next specimen, also from Layard's Nineveh, of a pictorial scene accompanied by short arrow-headed inscription, illustrates anew the principle of device and legend, as the fundamental rule in all primitive monuments: the writing here, equally as in the preceding example, proving, on decypherment, to be simply and strictly an explanation of the picture. The subject, as understood by Dr. Layard in the title given to his 77th Plate, is "A king seated on his throne, within the walls of a captured city, including 3 houses, and 7 tents." On examining the tablet, however, I could discover, in the supposed city, no traces of war or capture, but very clear marks, on the contrary, of a wholly different subject. The circular area, enclosed within a turreted wall, was subdivided into two compartments. The upper half represented a king seated on his throne, before the gate of his palace, and employed in the administration of justice: in Scripture language, it is "the king sitting in the gate." The lower half represented an eastern bazaar, or market-place, with its shops and goods, its sellers and buyers. I observed a butcher's shop, with its owner occupied in cutting up the head of a calf, or some such animal; the carcass being suspended above: furniture shops, with chairs, sofas, and earthenware vessels; the owners employed in arranging the articles, or in chaffering with customers, both within and without the wall. In one instance, the buyer and seller appear seated opposite to each other, bargaining with their hands, as they do in Turkey at the present day. The whole scene, in a word, was one of peace and commerce. I could no longer doubt the nature of the scene represented: it was the market-place of Nineveh, including within its circuit (like the Agora of the Greeks, and the Forum of the Romans) the court of justice, and adjoining the palace of the Great King. The scene of the tablet is the market-place with its regal and judicial adjuncts: but its inscription, as might be anticipated, proved, on decypherment, to belong exclusively to the upper compartment, or court of justice, over which it stands. Read from right to left, in the direction of the principal figure, the first word, daba, Justitiâ implevit provinciam, at once told of what we saw before us. The next « ^^ ¿ė, tsabā, Protendit manum ad imprecandum alicui, corresponds with and explains the action of the king. The third, dabah, Palam, manifestè, publice, tells that the court represented underneath is one of public justice. The fourth word, cabash, Aries, and Princeps, ac dux familiæ ita uti aries est gregis, carries, tavit manum, and خصي here, its own explanation. The last three words, viz., idi, Manus, kab, ampukhasis, Eunuchus, convey senses fearfully commented on by the scene beneath; where stand two eunuchs, behind the executioner, with their hands cut off. It was not until I had decyphered the word, that I perceived, what I had mistaken for abrasions, the mutilated arms of these unhappy victims. A third pictorial example (Pl. 73), represents two caparisoned horses, with a groom leading out the foremost. An inscription in two lines stands over the picture; and in front, to the left, appears the fragmental figure of the Assyrian king, seated under a raised canopy, with an attendant behind. I tried the inscription by the Lexicon, when it appeared that its subject was a horse-race; that the racers in the tablet were about to be led forth; and that the raised canopy was, not improbably, the royal stand, placed so as to command a view of the race-course. The subjoined glyphograph represents the scene described; its accompanying glossary, gives my analysis and rendering of the inscription, as decyphered by my previously. formed alphabet. The reader will form his own judgment of the tablet, as a further example of the principle of legend and device. |