The Sun.
London, England, 1850-01-22 00:00:00

Apologising for the length of this intrusion on your
space, I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,
RICHARD GYPSON, Aeronaut.
Jan. 15, 1850.

MEETING OF THE ROYAL
ASIATIC SOCIETY.

On Saturday an unusually numerous meeting of
the members of the Royal Asiatic Society was held
at their rooms, in New Burlington-street, for the
purpose of receiving a promised communication re-
lating to the inscriptions recently discovered at
Nineveh and its neighbourhood from Major R twlin-
son, who has recently returned from exploring these
interesting ruins. The Earl of Ellesmere presided on
the occasion ; and among the members present were
Sir R. H. Inglis, M.P., Sir George Staunton,
Sir G. T. Colebrooke, M.P., &c.
The SECRETARY read a communication from the
private secretary of his Royal Highness Prince
Albert, in answer to a request addressed to his Royal
Highness that be would take the chair on this occa-
sion, stating that his Royal Highness deeply regretted
that various important engagements would prevent
,his being present to hear the communication respect-
jug these inscriptions, in the deciphering of which be
took the deepest interest.
The CHAIRMAN then called upon Major Rmtlinson
for the communication he had promised the society,
and at the same time took occasion to congratulate
the society on the safe arrival of their gallant associate
from his arduous labours in another and an ungenial
climate. .

Major Rawnresoet began by assuming that every
one present was acquainted with the valuable work
of Major Layard on this subject, and therefore he
would not attempt to describe the remains which had
been discovered in Assyria, but would refer for such
information to Mr. Layard'a book. The greater
number of the inscriptions, he remarked, were
generally supposed to have been found at Nineveh
but the correct modern name of the place was
Nirnrud. And though it was in all probability one
iof the group of the cities to which Jonah was sent,
;yet it had no claim to be considered Nineveh itself—
its ancient name, as denoted on the inscriptions, was
Khala, or Sale, and was probably the Cslneh men-
timed in the 10th chapter of Genesis. The real and
;principal Nineveh he cenjectured to have stood on
;the site now occupied by that huge mound, on the
;opposite eide of the Tigris from Mosul, on the top
jef which was the pretended tomb of the prophet
!Jonah. That mound was held so sacred by the Turks
that they would not allow Europeans to excava!e it,
but he did not believe Major Layard would leave
;the country without bringing away some of the in-
scriptions it contained. There were two other towns
!in the neighbourhood whose modern names were Khor-
saber and Konyinjuk ; and these two towns he believed
were the two chief cities of the kingdom of Nineveh.
The early history of that country was buried in the
deepest obscurity. Even if they should be able to de-
cipher all the inscription:, still these would give little
:insight into the chronology cf the period unless they
;could lay hold of some event which touched upon the
:history of other countries. They had already oh-
,tained some valuable notices of the reigns of six
monarchs in succession, but any one mu,t see that
th tt was but a short way towards a connected history
of the nine centuries to which the Assyrian E np:re
extended. Of the six monarchs he had mentioned,
there was little to mark the era of their reigns ; but,
:after being engaged in the examination of the
,question fir many years, the conviction had been
forced upon him that the date of the build-
ing of the north-west palace of Khale or
Ntritrud, on which palace the inscriptions re-
lating to these monarchs had been found, was nearly
,coeval with the extinction of the 18:h dynasty of
',Egypt, and the first establishmeut of the Jews in
Palestine. Toe earliest cuneiform descriptions which
he had been able to decipher, related to a king whose
name he read as Sardanapalus, not the voluptuary
with whose name they were so familiar, but a monarch
much anterior, the builder of the north-;vest palace ;
but it did not, therefore, follow that he was the fir.it
king or the builder of the city, for several other names
of monarchs are incidentally mentioned, and his
even father and grandfather are always spoken of
as. kings. lie might mention here that a great
difficulty was thrown in the way of identifying a
monarch referred to iu different inscriptions, or in dif-
ferent parts of the same inscription, from the fact that
the names were not marked by any definite phonetic
sound, but rather by the sense, so that synonymes
were employed• to any extent. The inscription to
which he had referred began, "This is the Palace of
Serdanapalus, the humble worshipper of Assarach."
There could be no doubt that this Aesarach was the
Nisroch mentioned in Scripture, in whose temple
Sennacherib was slain. He was most probably the
deified father of the tribe, the A.,sur of the Bible.
Tnis Assarach was styled in all the inscriptions as
the King, the Fathz:r, and the ruler of the gods, thus
answering to the Greek god Chronos, or Saturn, in
their Aesyrio-Hellenic mythology. The inscription
then went on to record the extent of the dominions of
King S'ardanapalus, from which it appeared that
Pkoenicia was not at that time subject to his sway ;
but another inscription stated, that after passing
the Great Desert he received tribute from the

Kings of Tyre and Sidon and Accaia on
the sea coast. There was another inscription
giving an account of various wars, but in so
mutilated a condition that it was impossible to make
out a connected narrative. lie therefore passed on
to another inscription, giving an account of the reign
of Tumrnurn Bahr, the son of SArdanapulus. This
inscription was complete, and it gave an account of
an active and restless Monarch, who during a period

of more than thirty years carried on his wars and
conquests on every side, quelling rebellious, plunder-
ing cities—leading princes into captivity, and slaugh-
tering thousands in battle. These expeditions were
invariably headed by the King himself, till towards
the thirtieth year of his reign, when, sated with glory
and probably worn out with action, he remained at
home and sent his armies to rob, plunder, and slay
under the command of his lieutenant. The whole
of this long and deeply interesting inscription, which
gave much curious information respecting the
early tribes then inhabiting these countries, as
read by Major Rawlinson, supplied a continuous and
singularly coherent narrative, in which there were
only two checks of any consequence—one was where
the events of the third and fourth years of the Mo-
narch's reign were hopelessly mixed up together, and
which Major Rawlinson said he could only account
for by supposing that the workmen employed to make
the inscription had inadv€rtently left out a line; and
the other was where towards the end of his reign the
events of a campaign begun by the lieutenant were
ascribed to the King, and which is probably to be
ascribed to the vanity of the Mon arch or the flattery of
the scribe. It was further mentioned that the events
of one of the early campaigns, productive of more
than ordinary treasure, were commemorated in
more detail in an inscription on a colossal bull which
had been found among the ruins, and which Major Raw-
linson also read. Above the inscription were several
epigraphs illustrative of the tribute received from
different countries. He could not attempt to decipher
all the articles apparently enumerated, but among
them were gold and silver, horses and camels, which
were termed "beasts of the desert, with double backs."
There were also mutilated inscriptions relating to the
son and grandson of this Monarch; but after them it
appeared that from domestic troubles and foreign con-
quests there was an interruption to this dynasty • and
when events could be again deciphered through the in-
scriptions, there appeared to be such a great change in
the manners and customs of the people, that Mr. Layard

, .
had thought a new race had come to inhabit the
land. He (Major Rawlinson) was not of that opinion,
though he was satisfied a great change must have oc-
curred among the people. There had been an inter-
regnum, and possibly another branch of the family
came afterwards to the throne, but the later inscriptions
all asserted the then reigning monarchs to be of the fa-
mily of Sardanapalus. One curious fact apparent from
the later inscriptions was, that a strong Celtic element
had been infused into the west of Asia, for the Cymri
were referred to in almost every inscription.- He
could not venture, however, to go into the inscriptions
at that meeting, hut, if the society wished it, he
should be happy to continue the reading of them at
another meeting of the society.—(Loud applause.)
The gallant officer concluded by reading a note he
had recently received from Major Layard, giving an
account of some further interesting discoveries he had
made at Nimrud.
In answer to a question, Major RAWLINSON said
that undoubtedly the language was of a boat fide
Semitic character, closely allied to the Hebrew and
Chalciee in the pronouns and prenominal affixes, but
otherwise more allied to the African language, and he
had a strong impression that what was called the
Semitic language would be found to have come from
Africa.
The Earl of ELLESMERE then conveyed to Major
Rawlinson the thanks of the meeting for his deeply
interesting communication, the gratification with
which they had all heard the extraordinarily perspi-
cuous result of his labours in the East, and expressed
a hope that he would • continue his expositions at a
future meeting of the society.
The meeting then separated.

DEATH OF A FISH FROM EATING ve-
nerable and voracious pike, who had probably been tEe
terror of all the smaller fry inhabiting the spacious late
at Stowe for a great many years, determined on Christ-
mm-day have a feast of fish, and carp beng moat to
his fancy; he a'tempted to swallow one .51b. weight. By
this act cf gluttony• he was actually choked, and was
f iund !hating the next day with the carp in his guile.
On. being put into the scale the two were fried to weigh
3.11 b. This is the larzest pike ever caught at Stowe,
though others have Ele.en found of 231 h. and 281 b. each.
The pike vas cla'aled by the R-v. John Ri3lesy, who
rents the water, and has been seat to Oxford to be
stuffed and preserved.—Oxford Journal,