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THE CONSTANT OF NINEVEH 25
from the Sumerian legend and invented the story of Noah and
his Ark, embelhshing it with a fev^ minor details.
Unfortunately there was a chapter missing from the story
Gilgamesh. One clay tablet was not to be found in the
storerooms of the British Museum. Most likely, it had been pulverized
to dust long ago, but Smith had a great urge to
of
go to
Nineveh and was trying to persuade everyone that the missing
cuneiform page still had to be in the ruins of Kuyunjik. All that
had to be done was to find it.
Smith convinced some important people who were curious to
read the final chapter of the Gilgamesh saga, and the necessary
funds were collected. Smith arrived in Mosul in 1873. It took him
only a few days digging at Kuyunjik to find the missing tablet.
The benevolent intervention of the gods was demonstrated once
more.
Smith continued to search and found about 3,000 more clay
tablets at a lower level of the burned-down palace. All were marvelously
well preserved, and Smith understood that the heavy
wooden floors of the palace, when the conflagration took place,
had fired the soft clay like as if it was a kiln, thus keeping it from
disintegrating over thousands of years.
His mission splendidly accomplished. Smith returned to
London,
translated and published the missing chapter of his continuing
story of the hero Gilgamesh, and discovered several
other
interesting stories in the new tablets that he brought home.
One inscription of one hundred fifty-two Unes told about the
six-year war conducted by Sennacherib—how he won against
Hezekiah, the king of Judah, how he destroyed forty-six
of his
cities and gave the ruins to his allies, the kings of Gaza, Hebron,
and Ascalon, and also how King Hezekiah saved his life by paying
a ransom of three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents
of gold, the equivalent in our present-day weight system of
18,000 pounds of silver and 1,800 pounds of gold. This document
is
the only one that directly authenticates the same events told
by the Bible.
Smith also discovered that King Assurbanipal, known in history
only, as one of the most cruel tyrants, was in reality a sort of
a genius of his time, who had learned and assimilated all the