Assyrian History.

territory of some hundred miles square about the Upper Tigris , it reached the Mediterranean on one side and the Persian Gulf on the other . Passing rapidly over a score of Kings , whose names and deeds are more or less known , and who reigned in a known order B . C . 1850—1300 , the

lecturer came to Shalmaneser I ., who built or rebuilt the great citv Calah ( now Nimrond ) , mentioned in Genesis . Seven more reigns brought him to Tiglath-Pileres I . ( BO . 1120—1100 ) , whose splendid achievements in war and peace were discussed iu much detail . At his death he left Assyria the foremost monarchy in the world .

In his second lecture BIr . George Smith came to the heart of the matter , the relations of Assyria to the Hebrew monarchy . Soon after the death of Ti glath-Pileser I . ( B . C . 1100 ) his empire began to wane . One of his successors ,

Assur-nabuipdir , was badly beaten by a Syrian king , who snatched from the grasp of the Assyrians all the country about the Upper Euphrates , and they were soon forced back to their original territory on the Tigris . Zobah now became the foremost Assyrian

power , until David humbled it , aud won the hegemony in those regions for himself and his son Solomon . But already before Solomon ' s death Rezon deprived him of Damascus , which he made the seat of a powerful Syrian kingdom , and after the revolt of the ten tribes from Rehoboam all chance of the recovery of a Hebrew

domination in Western Asia vanished . About the middle of the tenth century K . C . Assur-Dan II . ascended the Assyrian tin-one , and at his death B c . 913 , his son , Vulnirari II ., found the empire reorganised and the way again open for an aggressive

policy . With this reign begin the continuous lists of annual officers , called limmu , who were analogous to the name giving archons of Athens , and to our own Lord Maym-s . Casts of the ori ginal clay lists , now in the British Museum , were pointed

out on the table , on which lay other interesting antiques , including the noble Taylor cylinder , which gives an account of Sennacherib's campaign against TTezekiah , and that unique Assyrian scimitar , probably the oldest dated sword in the world , of

which an account was given in the report of the April meeting of the Society of Biblicial Archeology in the " Standard "

of the 8 th inst . After a sketch of several intermediate reigns , the learned lecturer came to that of Shalmaneser 1 L , who , at the decisive battle of Karkar , B . C 854 , defeated a formidable league of Syrian kings , third amongst whom figures" A habu King of Sirlai" whom most Assyrian

, scholars identify with Ahab , King of Israel . BIr . George Smith was formerly of the same opinion , but reflection has led him seriously to doubt this identifiation , not on ! } ' on chronological grounds , but also because the Assyrian inscriptions nowhere

else speak of the Israelite kingdom under that name . In later wars of Shalmaneser II . King Jehu of Israel and Hazael of Syria were mentioned . Tiglath-Pileser IV . ( B . C . 745—727 ) , who headed a new dynasty , was spoken of in the Bible both under

that name and probably , as shown by I'rofessor Schracler , of Jena , under his Babylonian name of Pul . His annals in the arrow-headed writing showed that Bf enahem of Israel was his tributary as well as Pekah and Hoshea , and established synchronisms between him and Azariah and Ahaz of Judah and Rezin of Damascus . Next came Shalmaneser IV . ( B . C .

727—722 ) . who began , and Sargon ( B . C . 722—705 ) , who finished the famous siege of Samaria , and thus put an end to the kingdom of the Ten Tribes . The second lecture concluded with a copious discussion of Sennacherib ' s invasion of Palestine aud the siege of Jerusalem ( B . C . 701 ) , iu which he

boasts that he shut up Hezekiah " like a bird in a cage , " but of course says nothing of the crushing disaster which soon afterwards overwhelmed his arm }' , of which , however , Herodotos has left us an account substantially iu accordance with the Bible .

In his third and last lecture Mr . George Smith furnished an interesting sketch of the reigns of Esarhaddon ( B . C . 681—668 ) , Assurbanipal ( B . C . 668 ' —62 G ) , and his obscure successors clown to the fall of the Assyrian Empire , a score of ¦ years after

Assurbauipal's death . In exact accordance with the Scripture history of the murder of Sennacherib by his two sons , Adranimelech and Sharazer , the annals of Esarhaddon speak of his war of vengeance against his two brotherson whose defeat

, he ascended the throne . The lecturer recapitulated also his campaigns against Phoenicia and Arabia , into whose deserts he penetrated 1 , 000 miles as well as against