Note 166 — Chapter III · THE FIRST COLLECTION AND ITS APPENDICES.

This was also the opinion of Ewald (History, iii. 281). It might now be urged in its favour that Assurbanipal’s library contained bilingual lists of animals, vegetables, and minerals. But remember that the Assyrians were incomparably more civilised than the Israelites, and had both a lexicographical and a scientific interest in making these lists, and above all that Solomon is not stated to have written, but only to have spoken.