The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-05-04
BANKING IN BABYLON.
Records of a Firm That Did Business
a Thousand Years Ago.
University Bulletin.

University Bulletin.
DR.. Albert T. Clay, assistant to Prof. Her
man V. Hilprecht, the leading authority on
Babylonian antiquities, has been at work
for several months in the museum of the
University of Pennsylvania deciphering and
copying the records of the banking firm
of Murashu Sons, which was the leading
business house of the city of Nippur, in
Babylonia; these records are to appear in
connection with Professor Hilprechts
series of publications.
OF the 100 of these Assyrian tablets,
which, in 1898, were discovered in a small
room in the ruins of Nippur, by one of the
Babylonian expeditions sent out by the
University OF Pennsylvania, about 500 are
now deposited IN the university, and of
these the inscriptions on l20 have been de-
ciphered, translated and published by Prof.
Hilprecht and DR.. Clay.
Many of the tablets are in an excellent
state of preservation, when ii is considered
that they are of soft clay and were made
more than 1000 years ago. Some are marred
or slightly broken and the missing words
and incomplete sentences are supplied with
difficulty. That they have retained their
original form for so many ages is thought
TO be due to the fact that they are made of
especially pure and soft clay, and were
modelled and baked with much greater care
than were most tablets of the Babylonian
period.
The two brothers. Bel-hatin and Bel
nadinshumu, sons of Muriashu, who con-
Quoted this banking house of the ante
Christian era, did not cOntine their trans
actions strictly to money changing and re-
receiving deposits, as is evidenced by the
great variety of records now brought TO
light. Mortgages wOrded i'm a form very
similar 10 that in use at the present day;
wills. deeds, leases, merchants guarantees
Of goods sold in the market and other bust
ness dealings of almost every conceivable
kind are found among them.
The text for the new publication will be
different from that contained I'm former
volumes. 1t will throw new light on the
manners, customs and lives of the subjects
of ArtaXerXes (64-426 b. c. and Darius ii
(423-4O5 b. c.
Many tablets at present at the university
were, by the best calculations, made 5000
years before Christ. but the contents of
most of them are not yet ready for publica-
tons. No collection is so complete or ex-
tensive as this one of the Murashu bankers,
and the work which DR.. Clay is at present
doing is therefore intensely interesting.
Work on the remaining 80 tablets at the
university will form a third volume and
will be begun as soon as the second volume
makes it's appearance, the first having been
published in 1SyS.
The result of the last Babylonian expedi-
ton. under Professor Hilprecht. for the
disposition of which he is now i'm CONSTANT
nople. comprises some thirty thousand tab
lets, mostly of the time prior 10 the DAYS
of Abraham. or more than two centuries
before Christ. The University first had TO
obtain the consent Of the Turkish govern
ment TO make these excavations. and, now
that they are made, must negotiate further
before bringing any Of the antiquities to
this country.