Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1899-01-07
EARLIEST LETTERS KNOWN.
Correspondence Discovered Dating
Back to Abraham's Time.
From the Scotsman.

From the Scotsman.
During the last few years the Babylonian
collection of the British Museum has been
enriched by the important addition of sew
eral thousands of tablets obtained chiefly
by DR.. Bulge during his expeditions to the
east on behalf of the trustees. Among the
principal objects are a large number of
small tablets. many of them of the en-
velope or duplicate class, which were found
at Teil-sifr. in South Babylonia, represent
ing the ancient City of Larsa Ghe Ellasar
of Genesis, xiv. The majority of these
were contracts or legal documents, but
among them are many letters, both private
and official. This collection, having just
been carefully arranged, is found to con-
tain one of the most important series of in
scriptions which has ever been rescued
from oriental ruins. 1t is a group of fifty
letters, written by khammurabi, King Of
Babylon, who reisned about 300 B. g, and
who is generally identified with the Am
raphel of Genesis, xiv. We have already
been made acquainted with the existence of
a system of letter writing in among
the kings of the east at an early period, as
illustrated by the famous Tel-eI-Amarna
tablets
These, we know, present the diplomatic
and private correspondence between the
kings of Syria. Mitanni, or northern Meso-
potamia, and Babylon, and may be dated
about 1870 B. c. The valuable series of
tablets which has just been secured for our
national museum belong to a period ! 900
years earlier, and are certainly the oldest
known letters in the world. The position of
those Babylonian letters in oriental liter
AZURE is of extreme Importance. They re-
veal the exist nnce of a regular system of
correspondence between rulers and their
SubordlnateS, and that writing not only
used to record events in royal annals, but
for ordinary purposes. They are. besides
manifestly the models for all after time, as
in the case of the diplomatic correspon-
dence in the Te-el-Amarna tablets We
can now see how overshadowing was the
influence of Babylonia over all western
Asia. During the thousand years which
elapsed between the time of khammurabi
and the date of these later letters discover
ed some years ago Babylonia became the
educational center of the oriental world.
The great library at Borsippa was the
school and university. not only of Chaldea
but of Syria, north Mesopotamia and Asia
Minor. Fragments of the deluge and crea-
ton tablets, dated from period more than
1000 years before Moses, have been dis
covered in Babylonia. 1t is therefore clear
that if the scribes of Canaan were taught
to write and use the cuneiform SCRIPT
through these influences, there must have
Deen some among them who were acquai1t-
ed with the traditions stored in the ChaI-
dean libraries. The present find is indeed
a great one; but one can only regard it as
prelude to still more important discover
les which will probably put a new aspect
on the VeXed question of Hebrew origins
10 possess letters contemporary with the
time OF Abraham is certainly an astonish-
ing result of oriental exploration, and one
which far exceeds the widest dreams of
those who first revealed 20 us the buried
cltleS OF ASSyrla and BabylOnia