Show Books Made of Clay Far away beyond the t plains of Mesopotamia on the banks of the river Tigris lie the ruins of the ancient city of Nineveh Not long since huge mounds of earth and stone marked the place where the palaces and walla of the proud capital of the great Assyrian Empire stood The spdae first of the Frenchman then of the Englishman has cleared all of the earth away and laid bare all that remains re-mains of the old streets and palaces where the Princes of Assyria walked and lived Toe gods they worshiped ani the books they read have all been revealed to the sight of ft wondering world The most curious of all the curious things preserved in this wun derlal manner are the clay books Nineveb The chief library of Nineveh Nine-veh was contained in the palace of Konyunjik The clay books which it COntaino Arc composed of otstS OflabletB covered with very small writing The tablets are oblong in shape and when several of them are used for one book the first line of the tablet following wag written at the end of the one preceding pre-ceding it Tho writing on the tablets Wftf Of course done when the clay was soft and then it vas baked to harden it Then each tablet or book was numbered and assigned to a place in the library with a corresponding correspond-ing numper so that the librarian could e3y find it just as our own librarians of today number the books we read Among these books are to be found collections of hymns I Qtta gpdsr disoriptions of anima If An birds tones and vegetables ai well as history travelpftc The Asayrians and Babyloniaaa were great students of astronomy The method of telling time by the fun and of marking it by an instrument called a sundial was invented by the latter nation None of our modern clocks and watches can be compared to the sundial for accuracy accur-acy Indeed we have to regulate our modern inventions by the ancient Babylonian system Printers Circular Circu-lar 17 4 |