Los Angeles herald., 1910-04-17
D HISTORY 9fBe FLOOD

Copyright by Herald All rights reservedl
New York, Saturday,
. IN hundred years before Moses, twenty-onC
hundred years before the birth Of Christ in
the sacred Babylonian city of Nippur,
priestly scribe fashioned a little tablet of clay,
and thereon with reed wrote account
Of the deuge ne had learned it in the service
Enlil "the father of the gods"
-Four thousand years have passed since that wise
man of the East composed his work in wedge
shaped characters And a wise of the
West, Professor Herman V. Hnprecht, Assyrioogist
of the University of Pennsylvania, has discovered
and translated a fragment Of the cuneiform tablet.
The result is the oldest and most startling Verifca-
tion of the Biblical story of the food thus far known
Professor Hilprecht is engaged in what might be
called without offence the jigsaw puzzle Of the
The University of Pennsylvania owns, largely
through his efforts, a collection of $4,000 broken
specimens of cuneiform writing, unearthed at Nippur.
So far only $4,000 have been decphered and classl-
fed for the task is monumental. At any moment
while carrying this great work Professor Hill
precht is likely TO make even more wonderful
discovery than his latest triumph. Among the re-
manning $4,000 pieces he may find the missing parts
of the food story, may fit together authentic &C
of nations and rulers of whose very existence
the world is still in ignorance. He is playing the
most fascinating game that science has to Offer
This has been Professor Hilprechts life mission TO
let in the light upon that dim and clouded vista
where, TO the backward sweeping eye, history van
ishes in the mist He has rescued forty kings from
oblivion, has given TO us their names, attributes,
wars civilizations and records He has pushed away
by hundreds of years the veil of mystery beyond
which human knowledge does not reach. He has
traced and reconstructed ordly cities that dust
when Esau sold his birthright. He has conjured up
whole epochs when forgotten strove and lived
and loved
Tn hi cla to cIe to
ment Professor Hilprecht is like great master de-
tecive concerned with the problem of happenings in
early times Here he unearths fact, there another
fact, and he goes on he forms a story into which
all his facts will fit Out of buried ruins and
chips of clay he resurrects empire, tells who its
people were what they did what they achieved, what
they were interested in With his detective sense
and his jigsaw scraps he builds pictures of ancient
nations which but for him would remain nameless
and unknown.
These clay scraps are the broken bits Of Babylo-
niap books 1t is as If some one should enter the
Astor Library and all the volumes into tiny slips,
mix them together and bury them then as if an in
vestigator four thousand years from now should dig
up part of them end try to put them together That
practically what happened at the spot where FRO
fessor Hiprecht excavated his scraps. An invading
enemy sacked the city of Nippur and wilfully de-
sroyed the clay tablets on which the priests had Kept
the literature of the country.
Making Masterpiece.
When Professor HIprecht sits down before heap
of his shattered gsaw bits of clay and tries to patch
them together anything is possible. A dozen frag'
ments might give him a masterpiece that would de-
light and astonsh the world But he has just about
as much chance of getting a complete tablet as the
imaginary Investigator the site Of the Astor Library
would have Of piecing a whole book out OF paper
scraps, and Eleven Of those fragments
may be scattered among the thirty two thousand Or
they may s be under the barren hills where Nippur
stood, not yet brought to light
And Professor Hilprecht has other difficulties 10
face. These iigsaw bits not clean and clear with
smooth sharp edges They worn and defaced,
covered with sediment caked with nire crystals
drawn out of the substance Of the clay, injured by
their four thousand years of burial. The greatest
care be taken with them lest they crumble and
become lost for all time Then, too they are wlltten
in different languages and in different hands.
Many times he comes upon one little fragment
which viii not fit with any others; the parts that go
with it cannot be found. He translates the few in
complete lines the fragment and finds, it may be-
that he holds a tiny scrap of a great work work
that would be of the utmost interest Christendom
IT is tantalizing this hint of missing treasure Per
haps the rest Of 1t may be found some day, but at
present he go no further with this particular
puzzle Suppose that imaginary investigator
found a passage out of Hamlet among the ruins of
the Astor Library and could not find the rest. He
would be in the same position in which Professor
Hiprecht is sometimes placed when going over his
BabylOnan fragments
1t just such thing this that happened in
the present case of the Babylonian deuge story He
came upon piece Of a large tablet on which priest
Of EMIL had set down the whole national epic of
Babylonla four thousand years ago The account of
the deluge was a chapter, TO speak, in this epic
Professor Hilprecht's fragment Just paragraph
out of the chapter, and far from complete at that
But the great point was that he could prove two
factsth paragraph dealt with the deuge according
TO Babylonan beliefs and its writing antedated the
writing of the Old Testament by one thousand years
or there8bOuts.
The significance Of this find can hardly he over
estimated, for the passage in he Babyouiau tablet
which be brought 10 light corrObomtes the CORE
spending passage in the Bible vivdly in every
ial, while of the details identical Yet the
priest of EMIL wrote under different traditions and in
sprations, the mouthpiecc Of different and older
religion. The language in which he composed his
work has not been used in common speech for three
thousand years.
BabylOniaus had eye to future ages They
lid not intend that their doings should perish from