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The resurrection of the Assyrian world and the discovery of Sargon are synchronous. Prior to 1843, when Botta made his first excavations, it was no exaggeration to say that "a case scarcely three feet square enclosed all that remained, not only of the great city, Nineveh, but of Babylon itself". When that scholar left his consulate at Baghdad to excavate in the huge shapeless mound of Khorsabad, a new world came into being. A new people and a new language, new customs and a new art, surprised the world; and Sargon, thus far known only by a single reference in the Bible, suddenly took his place by the side of Cyrus or Croesus as one of the great monarchs of the ancient Orient.