The Washington times., 1918-08-04

were recorded on beautifully
pressed bricks in cuneiform characters.
Nebuchadnezzar's degenerate son and successor
plunged into such disspatOn in spite of Daniels wise
warnings that he brought ruin upon himself The Bible
relates that the great banQueng hall of his father:
"Beshazzar, the King, made q great feast to thou
sand of his lords and drank wine before the thousand
'Beshazzar while he tasted the wne commanded to
bring the golden and SILVER vessels which his father
Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which
in Jerusalem; that the king and his princes his wives
and his concubines might drink therein. /"
During this mpous feast, perhaps the most famous
in history the Hand of Jehovah wrote those mysterious
words upon the wall which the sacriegiOus King could
not understand but which Daniel interpreted meanings
Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting
At that feast, and that very night Darius the
head of the rising power of Persia surprised the degner
Beshazzar in his palace and slaughtered him and his
courtiers and favorites.
In recent years archaeologists have unearthed the
ruins of Nebuchadnezzars mighty palace his great h.
brary and the banauetng ha which Beshazzar feased
1t is of modest satisfaction to the British who
occupy the ruins that the hardest work In eKcavat
ing the ground has been done by the German Oriental
Society," patronzed by the Kaiser whose scientists have
been compelled to relnqush their territory very in
terestng description Of the latest discoveries at Babylon
has recently been written by Professor Leonard W. King
of the British Museum, who says:
The most interesting apartment within the palace is
that may be identified NebuehadneZZars throne
This is the Immediately to the south of the
Great Court 1t the largest chamber of the palace and
far broader than those at the ends it possible that they
supported barrevaulting 1t has three entrances from
the court and in the back wall opposite the centre
broad niche doub recessed into the structure of the
wall where may assume the royal throne stood.
During any elaborate court ceremony the King would
thus have been visible upon his throne only to those
within the chamber but also from the central portion of
the Great Court 1t in this portion of the palace that
traces of the later Babyonian methods of mural
decoration discovered For while the inner walls
of the Throne Room were merely washed with
plaster of white gypsum the brick work of the outer
facade which faced the court decorated with brightly
coored enamel.
"Only fragments of the ensmelled surface dis
covered but these suced to restore the scheme of deco
ration. series of yellow columns with bright blue
capitals both edged with white borders stand against
dark blue ground. The capitals the most striking
feature of the composition Each consists of sets of
double volutes above the other and white rosete
with yellow centres partly into sight above them
Between each member is bud in sheath forming refo
and linking the volues of the capitals by of light
blue bands which fall in shadow curve from either side
of it. Still higher the wall ran a frieze of double
palmetes in similar coorng between yellow line borders
the centres of the latter picked with ozenges coored
black and yellow and black and white alternately
The rich effect of this enameled facade of the Throne
Room enhanced by the decoration of the gate
way the surface of which was adorned in like fashion
with figures of lions So, too were the gateways of the
other eastern courts to judge from the fragments Of
enamel found there but the Of the walls
left undeeorated or perhaps merely received coat Of
plaster The fact that the interior Of the Throne Room