LAMENT OF THE DEAD WIFE.

(100 B.C.)

WHEN the Greek dynasty of the Ptolemies was established in Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great, every effort was made to conciliate the native population by showing respect for their religious prejudices. Great prominence was given to the worship of Osiris. But a natural change had taken place in the character of the ancient Egyptian belief in the immortality of the soul, and this modification is exemplified in the following Lament of the Dead Wife of Pasherenptah. It betrays a sombre feeling as to life beyond the tomb, which is more in consonance with the Greek than with the cheerier faith of the old inhabitants of the Nile Valley.

BROTHER and spouse of mine,

Spare not to drink the wine

In cups of gladness:

Love women while you may,

Make life a holiday,

Drive every care away,

And earthly sadness.

Amenti over all

Flings darkness like a pall

Sombre as sorrow;

In this cold realm of sleep

Each his own place must keep,

Tranced in a slumber deep

That knows no morrow.

Alas, what bitter pain,

Never to see again

Sister or brother;

Never the heart shall glow

For wife and child, nor know
In this dim world below
Father or mother.

You, underneath the sun,
Where living waters run,
Drink, but I drink not;
For you sweet waters flow
I may not taste, nor know

Whence I came, whither go :See not, and think not.

Cool flow the streams, but IParched are my lips and dry, Waking or sleeping:

Cool breezes whispering Peace Amidst the fragrant trees Never shall bring surcease Unto my weeping. Death Absolute is god Throughout this dread abodeNone dare offend him: All loathe him, yet obey, His law may none gainsay; All bow, but not to prayPrayer cannot bend him. Death no respecter is Of persons or degrees

Of time or season:

Deaf are his ears, and dumb
His lips, his heart is numb:
He smiteth all who come

Nor gives a reason.

PWARDS of four thousand
years ago, the region known

as Babylonia, the richest part of Mesopotamia,
or "land between the rivers" Tigris and
Euphrates, was occupied chiefly by two tribes

or nations-the Akkadians and the Sumerians. The former held the north, the latter the south. They belonged to the Turanian family of mankind. These Turanians were so denominated by the ancient Persians or Iranians, as inhabiting Turan, "the land of darkness," and were of the same stock as those known in later ages as Huns and Mongolians. Their language was agglutinative, and its nearest representatives at the present day are the Hungarian and Turkish. In the latter name is still preserved the root of the ancient designation.

When Semitic invaders established themselves in Babylonia, they united chiefly with the Sumerians. There are .nentioned in early records the Elamites, who lived towards the East, and the Kaldi or Chaldeans, who had their habitat in a district of Babylonia proper. We also hear of a wild tribe from the north-east, which, 1500 years before Christ, attacked Babylonia and dominated it for six centuries; this tribe was known as the Kassites or Cosseans. All these peoples, except the Chaldeans, were non-Semitic, and probably were Turanian.

Babylonia was one of the first centres at which men reached a high state of civilization. This is proved not only by the agreement of the earliest historians whose works have survived, but also by the astonishing architectural remains

which have but recently been brought to light by the excavations of Botta, Layard and their successors. Furthermore, it is found by scholars and scientists who followed in the track of these explorers, that the aborigines of Mesopotamia not only understood and had calculated the movements of the heavenly bodies, and had constructed a calendar, and acquired a familiarity with the laws of nature which enabled them to perform what seemed deeds of magic-not only were they thus accomplished; but they had invented an alphabet, which eventually became the foundation of the literature of their Babylonian and Assyrian conquerors, who were of Semitic race, and in character and achievements the Romans of ancient Asia.

This alphabet, which, from its wedge-shaped characters, has been called cuneiform, seems to have been based on original hieroglyphs; but it was gradually modified, until it presented "alphabetic, syllabic, and ideographic combinations of an arrow-head-like figure," such as we find to-day stamped on the burnt bricks dug up in the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. The Babylonians and Assyrians, while employing the alphabet, ignored the language of their instructors; they forced an agglutinative garb upon an inflected speech.

Mesopotamian chronology begins, for us, with the name of the great King Sargon I., who had his abode in the city of Akkad, or Agade, 3800 years before our era. But fifteen hundred years elapsed before our next sure date, that of the subjugation of Babylonia by the Elamites; at which time Babylon was already a great city, and the capital of the country. It was over fifty years after this that Nineveh was founded by Asshur, 2245 B.C. Assyria had been settled by

Babylonian emigrants 250 years before.

The curtain next rises upon the invasion of the Cosseans (already referred to), about 1500 B.C.; and after an interval of 200 years, Babylon was taken by the Assyrian monarch Tukulti-Adar. The war between the Babylonians and Assyrians continued down to 690 B.C., when the city was captured and its walls razed to the ground by Sennacherib. The two peoples then resumed their original unity, and the city was restored and fortified by Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar, and became the world-wonder which histories describe.

Meanwhile, under Sardanapalus (668-608) the Golden Age of Assyrian literature had arrived. Sardanapalus, or Assurbanipal, was a patron of literature and learning, and he assembled in his library at Nineveh the selected treasures of Babylonian and Assyrian scholarship. They were arranged with the same attention to system that prevails in modern libraries. The collection comprised records of government and legal documents; but a large part consisted of religious, magical, and poetical works translated from the Akkadian, with the original text side by side with the Assyrian rendering. Akkadian had at this time ceased to be a spoken language. Numerous vocabularies of the two tongues have also been found in the ruins of the once mighty city. All the above were in the form of stamped clay cylinders or tablets; writings on papyrus had also existed, but none were preserved.

This library of Sardanapalus is the most important of which we have any certain record in Babylonia. The collection ascribed to Sargon I. is manifestly apocryphal. Sargon II., who reigned from 722 to 705 B. C., was a usurper and a warrior, though attentive to the welfare of his subjects. There are references to collections of books from the remotest ages downward; and doubtless collections must have existed; but we cannot now assign any certain date or place to them. But this is the less to be regretted, since Sardanapalus undoubtedly skimmed the cream of all previous libraries for his own grand institution.

The manner in which the cuneiform inscriptions were deciphered is worth a word in conclusion. In 1802 the German scholar, Grotefend, while studying the inscriptions brought by the traveler, Niebuhr, from Persepolis, noticed that they began with three words, one of which varied, the others remaining the same. The varying word, he surmised, might be the name of a king; and out of the possible names of kings he fixed upon that of Darius, which gave him six letters. He next interpreted the name of Xerxes, which increased the number of letters at his command, and then he boldly conjectured that the accompanying phrase was "King of Kings." This ingenious guess was the first ray of light