The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-06-17
MYSTERIOUS NIPPUR.
Excavations Where Depth of Ten
Feet Marks Centuries.

Ainslee's Magazine.
"Calneh, or ancient Kippur, where exca-
vations by the University of Pennsylvania
are now being made, lies at the bottom OF
a great sand dune in Mesopotamia-that
is, ancient Babylonia, and to-day-May,
1900-a party of archaeologists Is delVlng
through the debris of 1000 years for the
records that were made contemporaneouS
to old-time reckoning of the deluge From
the marshy plain surrounding Calnen the
sand dune looks little like the key 10 the
beginning of history. Standing amid
clump of Arab mud nuts where the horses
are still of native strain, and the men sun
use matchocks inlafd with ArabeSqueS,
one might figure mighty whirlwind of the
desert staggering across the wastes picking
up sand until IL could carry no more and
collapsing, finally, on the site of the an
cient city But I'm that huge mound are
tunnels leading in and down, and deep
riffs and pits and projecting walls OF an
Gent cities and platforms of baked clay,
and stone stairways up which to-day hum
dreds of Arab porters are carrying baskets
of sand. From the summit of the pile one
can look afar off 10 the sun just gleam-
ing above the horizon of the twentieth
century, and then walk slowly down to-
ward the beginnings of civilization. Walk
as slowly as you may, and at the hrst
dozen steps of descent you have passed the
level of the Christian era. The baked clay
to the right OF you was placed there by
Ashurbanapal, king more than 600 years
before Christ. few steps farther and
at your feet are the markings OF kadash-
man-Turgu, 400 Il. c. Down again, farther,
and you are walking on a platform laid in
the time of Ur-Gur, centuries before Abra-
ham, the founder of the Jewish nation,
was born. Down, still farther down, only
few feet, and you are standing on the
temple platform laid by Sargon L and
Marin Sin, $500 B. C.-Sargon, whose ex-
istence even Biblical scholars have said
was mythical-Sargon, whose name, never
theless, is stamped in every brick. Finally,
through a hole broken in this platform.
you may look down past thirty feet of
debris TO the site of ancient Nippur or
Calneh and see the fragments of arches,
sacrificial urns and affairs built at least
400 b. c. The Septuagint, written $50 B.
c., places the creation of the world at
about $500; and with this in mind, 1t is
difficult in the nineteenth century to gaze
upon these evidences Of mans handiwork
and realize that the workmen lived more
than 1000 years ago. And yet this is by
no means the strangest feature, for the
records of these workmen show that they
lived not within comparatively few gem
erations of the beginning of the world,
but that they were part of a civilization
as highly developed as that of the Greeks;
that men carried on the business of life
I'm a manner and with ambitions and de-
sires not very different from those of our
time, and that. most remarkable of all, this
state of affairs had then been going on
for many thousands of years. Evidence
of all this is found stamped on the tablets
and vases which being unearthed to-
day from the ruins of Calneh. 1t is a
wonderful story, which probably has more
important bearing the beginning and
end of human life than anything else re-
Gently discovered.