Los Angeles herald., 1906-09-23

Ba bylon the great city of King
Nebuchadnezzar is the only ancient
Mesopotamian city whose site and name
have never been forgotten during the
two and a half mllenniums since the
empire passed away Hundreds Of
other Babylonian cities, far more an
cient and equally great once flouriShed
IN The valley Of the Tigris and I1u-
phra tes, but one by one they we're de-
populated by war and abandoned; their
buildings were left to crumble way,
and the unburned bricks of their thick
walls, deconposed by the rains Of win
ter turned into mounds Of clay. As the
cen tures pa ssed her cities were built
upon the mounds thus form ed. and they
in their turn fell 10 ruin TO serve as
foundations for later struc lures. Thus
the mounds Of Ba bylonia have grown
century by century. Birs, near the
city Of Babylon, rises 1873 feet above the
plain. Warks and Nppur resemble
mountains i'm contrast with the monoto-
nous flatness of the desert. The plain
from Bagdad south ward, distance Of
two hundred miles to the Junction OF
the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Is
dotted with these ancient mounds, each
Of which represents an ancient city. No
one knows their plumber, for each eX-
to the map Of the country. A dozen or
more OF them have been IDENTIFIED with
their ancient Babylonian names: in
hun dreds OF others 1t Is not yet known
what palaces and temples lie buried,
and some are unnamed even by the
modern Arabs who camp at their base
Excavations in these ancient mounds
have been confined to the last half CEN
turN. While Major Rawlinson was the
~ cb at cpfa
his lieutenants explored several of the
sites. Mugheir, In Southern Babylona
was then identified with the biblical
Ur of the Chaldees, the loirthpla ce of
Abraham. Successful In their excava-
tions as the British were, the French,
by NJ. De Sarzec, the vice
consul at Rusreh made still more re-
narkable discoveries. Fond of hunting
and the Euphrates valley still de-
lights the sportsInan-De Sarzec sailed
from the Tigris down the Shatt-el- Hal
one Of the few Babylonian canals which
de the country SO exc eedingly fer
tile. To the left of the canal, upon the
surface of an insignificant mound
which the natives call Telloh, he came
upon several large statues of black
granite In a style of art entirely un-
known, and mostly covered with char
acters of an early form of wedge shape
W
excavated the spot and found himself in
the court of a palace. The archa aeologi-
cal wealth which he speedily uncovered
was enormous. Twelve large statues
but unfortunately headesS; cold, silver
and bronze Objects statuettes, Votive
objects and thousands of inscribed
clay tables which he discovered, are
now some of the most valuable treas
ures of the Louvre. AS the inscriptions
L Il 10,
iStory; the names of nations long for
gotten were recovered and archaeolo-
gists began to realize how ancient was
the civilization of the cities buried in
the mounds of Ba bylonia.
American Expeditions
The Americans were compare lively
la te in entering the field. but the two
expeditions. one from the University of
Pennsylvania to Nippur and the other
from the University of Chicago at Bis
mya have surpa ssed all Others in the
importance Of results. AT Nippur DR..
Peters and his successor, DR.. Haynes,
uncovered 10000 inscribed objects of
clay stone and metal, dating from 1000
b. G. down to the beginning Of our era.
The greater part of them are tablets
which furnish vivid picture of the life
and the business transactions of the
people.
At Bsnya. where the writer was in
charge of the excavations in 1903-4, the
number of Inscribed objects did not
exceed 5000, yet many of them We're of
an exceedingly great antiquity, and
have thrown an abundance of light
upon the earliest known civiliza tion of
man. Many of the inscriptions discov
cred date almost from the early days
when men wrote by drawing the pic
lures from which the shape
writing of Babylonia descended. Mar
BILE statues from $500 B. c.. more an
cient than any other Statuary in the
world, were discovered. One the only
perfect Babylonian statue known, rep
resents the cost ume of that day as a
short plated skirt reaching from the
waist to the knees; it is but n slight
advance upon the hip-rag of primi-
tive man. The head and face of the
old King David, whom the statue repre-
sents, are shaved; the eyes are large
holes in which eyeballS of ivory were
once set The shoulders are square and
the figure short. The art displayed is
not inferior to the best produced dur