The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1896-11-22

canals that carried the water away
and the bitumen, foot thick, that kept
it from getting through and wearing
away the lower end Of the wall and the
foundations
The temple proper had been built,
they found, by King Ur-Gur, who flour
ished $500 B. G. over that part Of Ken
g1-"the land of canals and bulrushes''
later called Babylonia, for a younger
but greater city than Nippur.
sARGON'S EXISTENCE PROVED.
The Pennsylvanians dug away until
they had reached Ur-Gur's founda ton.
and he had made it well. 1t was or
baked brick, like the walls, and eight
feet thick. Directly under it was Sar
CONS platform-two courses Of I'M
mense baked bricks of a size and shape
like nothing ever before found in Baby
Ion1a or anywhere else in the world a
foot and a half square and four inches
thick. Each had a convex top, being
shaped like a loaf Of bread half risen
frcm the pan. In addition to King Sar-
CONS name in cunelform figures. the
brick bore the deliberate imprint of the
thumb OF the slave who made it.
Inc scientists We're dumbfOunded
Sargon, archaeologists had taught, was
a myth. for there had never been any
thing found in the East to corroborate
the Biblical mention of his name. Mar
ansin, they said, by the most liberal
count, was the oldest in the line of
known monarohs. History could trace
the succession no further.
But here in hard brick were the
works Of both Sargon and Of Naramsin.
the son Of Sargon. The truth of the
list OF kings was settled beyond ques-
ton, and, by it, the date Of the build
Ing Of the platform, for the scientists
knew from their unbroken line of kings
that if Sargon lived at all 1t was thirty-
eight hundred years before Christ.
They had reached the latest remains
that they could have expected, but thew
went still lower
Under the two courses of great bricks
laid by Sargon they found strata about
thirty feet thick, containing vases and
inscribed fragments that had gradu-
OF inhabitants AS they went further
down, proving with each spadeful the
history of a kingdom and a people that
had for thousands Of years been wrap
ped in impenertable darkness. thew
found broken pieces Of the tablets or
vases on which temple records had
been kept.
The cuneiform inscriptions grew
more primitive at every foot
Hilprecht, who knew that at one time
the cuneiform writing had had it's
origin in pictures, felt sure that before.
the bottom of the vein was reached
the pictures would be found The pits,
two of them, side by side, and having
total area of about one hundred
square yards. We're sunk until they
were thirty feet below the platform
Which formed such an important mile
post In computing the passage of ages
Inc broken clay came to an end and
all traces of human life disappeared.
The excavators were now cutting
into the virgin clay of Babylonia, and
carrying out earth that since the Gre
alton of the world had lain undisturbed
by man. They had not yet unearthed
writings in which the pictures were
whole, nor even the form in which
round objects were pictured in curved
lines, stage that must have preceded
the time when the straight strokes
were used for all characters
They found that the present, deser,
level was not the one that had existed
in the early days Of Nippur There
was an older desert thirty feet or so
below the present line, and on this
plain Nippur had been founded
But they found that the oldect of
these fragments. those taken from the
bottom Of the pit were scratched with
cuneiform characters, dating 5000 years
before Christ. Professor Hilprecht has
no hesitation in stating this, and adds
that 1t is based on a very conservative
calculation. Sargon lived $500 B. c.,
and high above his platform of bricks
the gradual action of the busy life Of
Nippur, the industry Of the inhabi-
tants, the accidents Of building
changes, and the annual sand storms
had heaped forty feet of dirt and de-
bris before the opening Of the Chris
tan era. Four thousand years, the
Professor counts, was required to pile
those forty feet of earth. On that COM
putation he. thinks it fair to suppose
that the thirty feet of gradual deposit
found under the platform was 5000
years in piling itself from the original
soil. Nippur was not always as busy
and as great as she was in Sargon's
day and in the days Of his successors
Her beginning may have been small,
and the process of the deposit thus
much slower than it was in later years.
CONFIRMED BY EXPERTS.
SO Hilprecht satisfied himself with
stating that the lower layers Of the
strata were thrown there two thousand
years before Sargon, and nearly six
thousand years before Christ. It may