Louisiana capitolian. (Baton Rouge, La.) 1879-1881, 1881-10-29
journal CITY Perish.
BATON SATURDAY. OCTOBER liz

the temple. In the wall Of this cham
bera door was found leading into q
smaller room, which, from it's 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 records
Of the builder Of the great temple Of the
Assyrian war god placed in 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 tenn
pie whose ruins have been discovered.
The first three lines of the largest Of the
foundation records bring our specula-
tive thoughts to 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 us the ruins and records of a city
whose traditions 60 back to the days
before the Flood, when pious Xisuthrus,
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-seyen centuries after they
were buried, the records Of the pious re-
storers OF this ancient temple. Such q
discovery as this almost makes us ill.,
clined, to dig on in hopes of finding the
most ancient recordsburied 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 Babylopian history the city Of "Sip-
para Of the Sun" was a prominent centre
of social and religious life. The exca-
vations, therefore, at Ahu Hubba have
restored to US the ruins Of the great
temple of the sun-god, ''the House of
Light" in the Chaldean Heliopolis.
The monuments reveal to us the fact
that there was a second city Of Sippara,
whose ruins are probably marked by
the mounds of Deyr, and which was
dedicated to the goddess Anat or Anu
nit, and ohe 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 hound 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 great 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 corri-
doris, and the inscribed bricks and tab
lets recovered point to these edifces as
being the remains or the great Temple of
Nergal and his consort Lac, which was
restored by the great temple builder Ne
uchadnezzar 70 the biblical scholar
the discoveries of these cities, Sephar-
Vain and Cutha, is great gain; for from
them were brought the men of Sephar-
Vain and the men Of Cutha, who were
placed in Samaria by the Assyrian con-
queror, Sangon & Kings, xvii. 24-31. }
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 congre-
CATION who gather round the high priest
Nakub in the synagogue atNablus. The
traveller who visits these lost remnants
Of the seed OF Israel may carry his
thoughts far back beyond the days of the
Captivity, into the azure of the past, to
the days when the ancestors of these men
made the courts OF .Bib-Parr 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.