The sun., 1916-12-03

tion between father and son, and Is In
Innate. familiar even to our ears. so
little change has there actually been in
civilization these Ave or more thou
sand years.
Babylonian and Sumerian- Akkndian
gentlemen and ladies' bought such clay
books: read them: discussed them.
let us hope: and then laid them on the
shelves ~ their libraries. Slaves
busted them. We c~onjure up a pic
tire OF culture and domestic.ty in 5000
B.. Ca picture that was destroyed
and buried by the elements and of
which men nave been striving with
pick and shovel since 1920 to reclaim
evidences.
For a number Of years Yale Univer-
sity had on exhibition in its Old
Library Building several large Assyr,an
slabs Of has relief and bricks. to which
were added. from time to time. tablets
n other antiquities that had been
dug up by wandering Arabs and sold
to dealers in Bagdad. from whom Yale
purchased them. To-day the collection
has grown to comprise about 5000
6umerian and Semitic Babylonian or
Akkadian inscriptions dating from the
earliest period known in history down
to the second century before Christ. a
collection which. according to its Gu
Sator. DR.. Albert r. Clay. is the sec
ond in size in this country. and the
most important for unpublished ma
terial.' Yale is. indeed. fortunate to
have accumulated In this way what is,
then. the third largest Babylonian col
lection In the world. the British Mu-
scum having the largest, the Univer-
sity Of Pennsylvania Museum the sec
ond largest in the world and the
largest in this country.
. In the last five years. since the APP
pointment 81 the present curator. Yale
has arranged and catalogued its treas
ures. has added to them replicas OF i'm
portant monuments and relics found In
other museums, and has moved the
whole into a structure dedicated to
their preservation. The de%ciphering
tina is being pushed forward indicates
the importance of the collection, and
the tablet interpretations published
last spring, together with others that
ara to he published after Christmas.
are of interest TO the general public in
their documentary testimony TO the
unchangableness Of civilization.
Dictionaries, for instance. were
found in every well regulated Baby
lonian household. The librar, of the
palace Of Ashurbanipal-that last re-
storer Of the temple OF Bel or Emil at
Nlppur and the Babylonian King Evil
merodach. who is mentioned in Jere-
miah 1881 and in III. Kings 25:27-
when unearthed through excavations
covering years yielded many sylla-
haries or dictionaries registering the
meanings Of the old cuneiform signs.
thereby enabling scholars to make
rapid advance in the d%eciphering OF
ancient tablets.
Yale has recorded n remarkable syl-
labary In it's collection. II is written
In W columns on both sides of a tab
let, n zach column IL divided up into
four columns. II contains 32l lines
and more thar a hundred signs.
The first column In each division OF
four gives the Sumerian word or
meaning: the second the sign to he in
terpreted or explained; the third the
name Of the sign. and the fourth the
Semitic Babylonian or Akkadian value
corresponding to the Sunerian in the
hrst column. Each time the sign IL
used 1t IL repeated, but the name Of
the sign Is given only once and after
that ditto marks. our own little old
ditto marks, are used.
B%abylonians writing to their friends
or creditors on the other side OF the
river and IN the next "ccuntS" had
only TO take dowr this precious book
from the shelf In order to know how
to spell and to he grammatical In their
~neighbors' tongues. Innumerable cop
~ Of 1t must have been In exist
snce, Tor the ancient Babylonians were
. thorough n efficient race. Witness
their achievements in irrigation and
other engineering feats.
Innumerable copies We're nndoubt-
sdly In the libraries OF temples and
palaces to which men and women
went for reading and reference; and
surely there was a circulating diction-
ny. not to say dictionaries. e. ad-