The Appeal. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. ;) 1889-19??, 1905-08-05
OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD
in Has Placed
the Garden of Eden

when Babylon was in it's infancy. 1t
was, like Ur of the Chaldeans, a city
of the tabled Olden times, when Khan.
murabi began his reign in Babylon
2 400 years before the birth of Christ.
For years-back, in fact, to 1877,
when the work of exploration and dis
covery began to give startling results
at Babylon and Nineveh-the field IF
more ancient human occupation in
Southern Babylonia, down near where
the remains of great canals and colos-
sal mounds mark the sites of vast Gre
atoms and activities, of which there
is no historic chronicle, has been the
desire of all explorers. Since the brief
yielded priceless treasures, the
mounds at Mukayer have possessed an
intense allurement for or entail schol'
ars.
But the very eagerness with which
they sought permission to uncover
buried walls of Ur and unearth it's
hidden secrets has defeated the aims
of the explorers.
For fifteen years Prof. Banks has
been one Of those who desired to
probe the mysteries of the mounds of
Ur. In 1891 he secured the position
of United States consular agent at
-Bagdad, in the hope that it would
bring to him the coveted opportunity.
To his disgust he found that members
of the consular service were forbidden
to do work of exploration within the
Turkish dOmlnlOnS. He therefore re-
turned to this country.
Three years ago Prof. Banks went
to Constantinople to seek authority
from the Turkish government to open
the mounds at the Moor city," hav-
ing organized many influences in sup
port of his petition.
It was only after two and a half
years of waiting and striving that
Prof. Banks was able to get a permit
through the intricate channels of Of
ficialdom in Turkey and Mesopotamia,
to work on the unidentified mounds
south of Nippur.
Here he has now made the discov-
cry of perhaps SURPRISING importance
in uncovering the temple of city
that was closely linked to ancient Nip
pur, and which lies further south
within the narrow circle of the earliest
known civilization of the world.
1851 In fact, Prof Banks discovery is
of four temples, one superimposed
above the ruins Of the other, indicat-
ing the immense antiquity of the city
as well as the vicisitudes it underwent
in the contests of ancient sovereign
ties in this valley of primitive CON-
munities.
From the brief descriptions received
it is known that the temple unearthed
by Prof. Banks is in all essential re-
spects similar to those brought to
light elsewhere in Babylonia-in fact,
similar to the "Tower of Babel" the
ruins of which we're identified as the
mound Birs Mimrud at Borsippa, and
the ruined building at Babylon now
fully exposed that Nebuchadnezzar
Lu0 lOWC1 VI 4OoOJ i'm IAAS
great Temple of Belus.
The temple consists of several solid
brick platforms, reared one above the
other, each successive story being
smaller than the one beneath it. A
staircase or inclined plane leads from
the shelf of one story to the next, with
shrines on the shelves or in inches
in the walls, the shrine of the chief
deity being in a small building at the
top To give beauty to the structure
the exterior was coated with enameled
brick and roofs we're supported by
tree trunks sheathed with FURNISHED
metal Buttresses and palisades sup
porting the platforms gave further
variety to the architecture.
The work has but just begun at
Adab. In the debris of the older tenn
pies have been found marble statues,
onyx and sandstone lamps and many
bronze articles, but when the earth
has been removed from some palace
of the city, of which the eloquent
mounds indicate there are many, the
disclosures it will yield of the life
of this remotely ancient people can
be hopefully conjectured from the
wonderful discoveries and achieve
ments of recent explorations in this
land of the dawn of humanity.-New
York World.