The Knoxville independent. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1894-current, 1917-01-06

rator since the beginning of the European war,
when DR.. Arno Poebel left to join his regiment
at the German front. The Eekley B. Coke, Jr,
expeditions, which began operations in Egypt in
1889 and have carried them on through various
years since, even finding localities of the war
ridden land where they still operate this year,
have sent back to the museum an incalculable
treasuretroye not only in tablets, but in all kinds
of articles dug up from the dirt layers of Biblical
and re-Biblietl lands.
All this sa&kHRiuatiQp has not had the attention
1t deserved. Dbcfor Langdon's labors will be bent
toward arranging the Babylonian exhibit. The
collection is the largest in the world No other
museum has such quantity of sacred Sumerian
documents, which make this the most important
Babylonian collection in the world, even though
1t is not so large that in the British museum
The war, which already has done so much dam
age, bids fair to rob us of this comparative re-
cent achievement, the ability to decipher these
tablets which tell of the lives and histories of
peoples who lived many hundred years ago.
Younger men, like Poebel, are at the front and
may never come back; other well-kn0wn Egypto-
logists are old men.
Not enough young men will be left to carry on
the work of transating the ancient cuneiform
writings When the present scholars pass away
the achievement may die with them and Sumerian-
Akkadian become again a dead language for not
enough young college men are proposing to take
up archaeology
There is today no endowed seat of Assyriology
In any university. The University OF Pennsyt
vania museum is exerting every effort to secure
such an endowment that other intellects of SO
high order as Doctor Langdons may be en-
couraged and helped to carry on work similar
to his.
Eckey B. Coke, Jr., died in Philadelphia in Sep
mi last nd oft n endowment fund
600 to carry on the work he has been equipping
expeditions to do in Egypt so many years. But
one expedition can only scratch the surface of the
myriad hills there and the countless buried and
forgotten cities that lie beneath them.
"Our only hope of getting the rest Of the tablets
buried there" says Doctor Langdon, sis to go back
to Nippur again and again, and dig for them" En-
dowments for these expeditions are another of the
crying needs of scholars. The world at large will
lose If archaeological excavations and research
have to be abandoned.
There is no doubt that the general public appre
ciates the work done by museums and by scholars
To Biblical students alone there is inexhaustiblt
pleasure and satisfaction to be derived from fact:
unearthed of Biblical and pre-Bblical peoples
There is now complete agreement among arch
biologists that Hammurabi is that same Amraphe
of Genesis 14:1 contemporary of Abraham
From chronological differences 1t follows tina
Abraham may well have attended school at tint
temple in Nlppur; nay, that he studied these very
books that are now In the University OF Pennsyl
vania museum. He may have read there the ac
count of the creation. Why not? The dates dove
tail.
'Let me take out and touch one of those tab
let's" said a religious man recently In the Uni
versity of Pennsylvania museum Il believe II
my heart that the hand of Abraham must have
held env or all Of them nearly 5000 years AgOW