When the Louvre opened its first Assyrian gallery in 1847, the European public discovered a forgotten civilization flourishing in the 1st millennium BC. The empire was previously known only through the Bible, with its monuments, language, and the kings’ names long disappeared. Thus, in the early 1840s, the discoveries of material remains of their culture at Khorsabad and Nineveh in northern Mesopotamia caused a great sensation. Within a decade, the cuneiform inscriptions were deciphered. The history of the decipherment of the Assyrian language was a truly European feat, involving rival as well as courteous collaboration. Its Semitic character caused a controversy, which continued in 1877 when Sumerian, a non-Semitic language, was uncovered in southern Mesopotamia.