Although ten years have barely elapsed since the first discovery of ruins on the site of the great city of Nineveh, a mass of information, scarcely to be overrated for its importance and interest, has already been added to our previous knowledge of the early history and comparative geography of the East. When in 1849 I published the narrative of my first researches in Assyria, the numerous inscriptions recovered from the remains of the buried palaces were still almost a sealed book; for although an interpretation of some had been hazarded, it was rather upon mere conjecture than upon any well-established philological basis. I then, however, expressed my belief, that ere long their contents would be known with almost certainty, and that they would be found to furnish a history, previously almost unknown, of one of the earliest and most powerful empires of the ancient world. Since that time the labors of English scholars, and especially of Col. Rawlinson and Dr. Hincks, and of M. de Saulcy, and other eminent investigators on the Continent, have nearly led to the fulfilment of those anticipations; and my present work would be incomplete were I not to give a general sketch of the results of their investigations, as well as of my own researches.

I will not detain the reader by any account of the various processes adopted in deciphering, and of the steps gradually made in the investigation; nor will I recapitulate the curious corroborative evidence which has led in many instances to the verification of the interpretations.