The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1898-02-25
AN. ANCIENT CITY.
How Business Records We're Kept in
NipPur Five Centuries Is. C.

How Business Records were Kept in
Nippur Five Centuries Is. G.
A Constantinople correspondent of the
Boston Transcript furnishes an interest
ing account of recent discoveries regard
ing the manner in which business records
were kept, i'll one of the most ancient
cities in the world five centuries before
the Christian era; While the American
expedition in 1893 were working at Nip
pur, they came upon room nineteen or
twenty feet below the surface. A gang
OF Workmen were ordered to clear away
the rubbish that covered the floor, and
upon beginning their task noticed numer-
GUS clay tablets. The room was carefully
searched and cleaned, and 73O tablets
were collected by Mr.. Haynes, the head
OF the working party. Many of them
were broken and more or less damaged,
but considerable number were intact
and in an excellent state of preservation.
Their examination leads to the conclusion
that the room had been used for storing
the buslness-papers | had almost writ
ten-tablets, however. is the correct
name, of wealthy firm of merchants.
Inc tablets themselves are of dried clay,
OF various sizes, many of them of the
SIZE and shape: of an ordinary fiat
tablet of soap. with rounded edges.
Any one can see that they
are covered with writing in cuneiform char
a;ctefs, which are usually sharply cut and
have in many instances remained as clear
ana distinct as OH the day they were III.
scrlbed The firm to which they be-
longed was Murashu Sons of Nippur. who
lived at the time of Artaxerxes l. (4G4 to
"a b. g. and Darius II. (423 to 4OJ 3.
~, IN whose rcigns the documents are
dated. The tablets have been written by
many different hands, and extend over Il
HI Of
other points which they set at rest is the
conclusion which Assyriologists had ar
rived at upon other grounds, that Darius
lived after and not before Artaxerxes.
mere are proper names of special in
terest to the general reader occurring in
these tablets. For example, Semiramis.
which we take from the Greek, appears
as Shameramu, and Prof. Hilprecht in his
Forthcoming book OH the tablets gives
many others. :.
babylonla was at an early date IL country
OF many languages. There is, however.
no period in it's history in which the for
elgn element in it's population is SO, con
splcuous as during the centuries following
the fall OF Babylon in 5S;3 B. G. Prof.
of Babylonia at the time of Artaxerxes
the First appears to have been about as
{ thoroughly mixed as that of the states of
New York and Pennsylvania. at the pres
ent time, and as the emigrapts: from al
most every state in Europe bring the To-
cal and personal names of their native
lands TO the different settlements of the
new world, so Modes and: Persians, Ara
means and Sabeans, Judeans and E,om-
ties. and other people, transplanted those
OF their former abodes to ancient Baby
lon. Thus the names Ashkelon and Hesh-
bon, familiar to readers of the Bible fig
ure in these newly found tablets. Indeed.
the number of Jewish names known
from the Old Testament is unusu-
of Ezra and Nehemiah. Prof. Hill
precht considers it certain that a
considerable number of the Jewish exiles
carried away by ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS were
settled in and around Nippur, and, judg-
ing from the many inscribed Hebrew
vases excavated in the upper strata of
the ruins, continued to live there as long
as the city existed; Perhaps the most
important result of the examina ton of
the tablets which are now being dealt
with is to confirm the historical accuracy
of the statements Of Ezra and Nehemiah.
1t is known that certain names in all
peoples are only used i'll the same form
at certain limited periods. Now the
names and the forms of the names used
in these tablets are those employed by
the authors of the two Biblical books
mentioned.
The translations of the legal docu-
ments of Murashu Sons are very in
teresting. In regard to these documents
perhaps the most conspicuous feature is
the publicity that was given and proba bly,
required to give them validity. Here,
for example, is a guaranty for twenty
years that an emerald is SO we'll set that
Bel-shunu, sons of Bel, and Hatin, son
of Bazuza. spoke unto Bel-nadinshumu,
son of Murashu, as follows: AS concerns
the gold ring set with an emerald, we
guarantee that for twenty years the en-
erald will not fall out of the ring. If it
should fall out before the expiry of
twenty years Bel-ahiddina land the two
others) shall pay to Bel-nadinshumu an
indemnity of ten mana of silver Then
follow the names of seven witnesses and
Of an official who is described as the
"scribe of the concordance of proper
names The document is concluded
with the "Thumnail-mark of Bel
ahiddina, Bel.shunu and Hatin, instead
of their seal" This must serve as a
specimen. In the forthcoming book many
legal documents of especial interest to the
leases of various kinds and contracts for
the sale Of sun-dried bricks and other
merchandise, for the loan of seed corn
and eXen for blowing. and n variety of
other documents of ordinary business life,
which bring home to the reader very Wv
idly that he is in presence of actual facts.
that human life and human operations
were very much alike, and yet in other
respects widely different from what they
are now; above all, that the inha bitants
Of this recently-unearthed city had great
capacity for business and had made
greater progress in the development of
what are often considered as modern
commercial usages. than has yet been be-
lieved.
Gar and His Jewish Subjects.
The famous ''cure' town, Yalta, in the