Louisiana capitolian. (Baton Rouge, La.) 1879-1881, 1881-10-25

Der . door was found leading into i
smaller room, which, from Its construc
ton and position, Mr.. Rassam consid
cred to be the record chamber Of the ed
ifice. In his explorations at Ballawat
Mr.. Rassam found the memorial record,
Of the builder Of the great temple Of the
Assyrian war god placed in a stone cist
and buried near the altar. The scarcity
Of stone in Babylonia caused the build.
ers Of the temples at Abu Hubba to In.
close the records in 'cist made Of ter.
racotta, and to bury this beneath The
floor Of the chamber. The shaft sunk
by the excavators employed by Mr..
Rassam brought these precious records
to light, and from them we are able to
ascertain the name of the city and TEN.
pie whose ruins have been discovered.
The first three lines Of the largest Of the
foundation records bring our specula.
tive thoughts to o focus, and center our
minds on the traditions of one of the
most ancient cities of Chaldea: "To the
Sun-god, the great lord, dwelling in
Bit-Parra, which is within the city OF
Sippara." Here, then, we have restored
to rs the ruins and records of q CITY
whose traditions 90 back to the DAYS
before the Flood, when pious Xisutllrus,
by order of his god, "buried in the city
Of Sippara Of the Sun the history Of
the beginning, progress, and end Of all
things" antediluvian. And now we re-
cover, twenty.seven centuries after they
were buried, the records Of the pious re-
storers Of this ancient temple. Such a
discovery as this almost makes us in
clined to dig on in hopes of finding the
most ancient records buried there by the
Chaldean Noah.
There are many points of history
raised BY this inscription, but it will
suffice to say that from the earliest days
of BabylopiMa history the city Of "Sip-
para Of the SUM- was o prominent centre
of social and religious life The exca-
vations, therefore, at Abu Hubba have
restored to us the ruins of tho great
temple Of the sun-god, 'the House Of
Light" in the Chaldean Heliopolis.
The monuments reveal to us the fact
that thep was o second city of Sippara,
whose ruins are probably marked by
the mounds Of Deyr, and which was
dedicated to the goddess Abat or Ann
nit, and the two cities OF sippara may
be identified with the cities of Sephar-
vain, mentioned by the Hebrew writer
of the Second Book of Kings. This
discovery is greatly enhanced by the
further discoveries made by Mr.. Ras-
man in another grave mound in Chaldea.
The excavations which the explorer
made in the mounds of Hubl Ibraheem,
some ten miles east of Babylon, have
restored records which prove that be-
meath these ruins were the remains of
the temples and places Of the city of Gu
tina, one of the greet theological centres
OF Babylonia. In the southern of the
larger of the two mounds at .Huql Ibra-
heem, Mr.. Rassam found extensive re-.
mains Of buildings, chambers and CORR
doris, and the inscribed bricks and tab
let's recovered point to these edifices as
being the remains or the great Temple of
Nergal and his consort Lag, which was
restored by the great temple builder Ne.
uchadnezzar. To the biblical scholar
the discoveries of these cities, Sephar-
Vain and Cutha, is q great gain, for from
them were brought the men of Sephar-
VAIN and the men Of Cutba, who were
placed in Samaria by the Assyrian con-
queror, Sangon q Kings, xvii. M-31. }
The descendants of these worshipers of
Adrammelech and Anammelech and Ner
gal, the god of Cutha, are now to be
found in the small white-robed conpre-
CATION who gather round the high priest
Nakub in the synagogue at Nablus. The
traveller who visits these lost remnants
of the seed of Israel may carry his
far back beyond the days of the
into the azure Of the past, to
the days when the ancestors of these men
made the courts of Bib PARA echo with
hymns Of praise to the Sun, the "lord of
light and golden rays" The above is
the record Of an explorers short cam
paign amid the buried cities of Chaldea.
and its results are such as lead us to hope
for richer discoveries in the future from
the land where centre all the traditions
of the history and religion of Western
Asia.
Learn this by Heart.
Ny nerves will regain their vigor. Ny