Evening star., 1931-04-05

THE book then relates how the King finally
met death at the hands Of two of his sons
"And it came to pass. he worshiping in
the house of Nisroch his god, that Adram-
melach and ShareZer, his sons, Smote him with
the sword and they escaped into the land of
Armenia and Esar-haddon his son, reigned in
his stead"
The archaeological discoveries of the season
just passed rank in importance, as far con-
firmation of Bible history is concerned with
those announced the previous year dealing with
the Deluge. Proof of the great flood was found
by two expeditions working in different areas
The expedition of the Field Museum of Chi
cago and the oxford University working in
Mesopotamia on the site of the ancient Su-
merriam city of Kish, which lies some distance
northwest of Ur, uncovered evidences of two
vast foundations. Similar evidences were un-
covered the same season at Ur by Prof. Wool
ley and Members of the joint expedition of
the University of Pennsylvania and the British
Museums.
Prof Stephen Langdon, working with the
Chicago-Oxford unit on the site of the City
of KiSh, tells of uncovering at different levels
strata of silt and clay in which no evidences of
human life found. He attributes the
abrupt breaking of the chain of human habita-
ton, evidenced in ruined cities, graves and
various implements to great floods. He sets
the date for the first inundation at about 1000
BIC. and the latter one about 340O BIC. The
second one is believed to be that to which the
Bible refers in relating the story of Noah the
Ark and the Deluge in the seventh chapter of
the Book of Genesis.
The discoveries of Mr.. Woolley at Ur led to
almost identical conclusions The deposit of
clay and silt was found beneath Sumerian
graves which had been dated at between $500
and 1000 BIC.
ITO me the discovery is most surprising"
Mr. Woolley declared in commenting on the
ERd lrTa IL rH1k ,,.k< z1I-I
diSprove anything. We go to find the facts
and interpret them as best we can. All his
torical sources that available are used to
aid us in interpreting what we find We place
the description of the Tower of Babel in
Genesis upon exactly the same basis as the
description of the Tower of Babylon given us
hundreds of years later in the writings of
HerodotuS
"RRTEFLY what we have uncovered Is evil
dence of an extremely early occupation
in which two elements seem to combine OF
its duration our work on the fringe of the
island can give no idea. Then comes a cataS-
trophe which buries the low-lyng parts OF the
island with it's relics of human life under a
huge bank of water-laid clay a bank which
has been eroded by later and higher water
channel that originally may have spread uni
formly over much wider area. On the top
OF this we have a fresh occupation which car
ries on somewhat of the old traditions but de-
parts entirely from Others as if one element
In the population had survived at the expense
of the other.
"The eight-foot deposit of clay which we
find everything the oldest remains and that not
at one point alone but in three places as much
as 200 yards apart. can only have resulted from
flood OF unexam9led magnitude, and this can
only be the flood of Sumerian legend and his
tory, the flood of the Book of Genesis He
would be an optimist indeed who had hop9d
to produce material evidence for such an event
as that, but in no other way can 1 interpret
the facts in the light of our excavations
There never has been such combination
OF causes for flood since that time. but il there
were to be just exactly the same kind of catas-
trophe would take place Those causes would
be stiff wind blowing back the waters of the
Persian Gulf, thus backing up the Mesopo-
tamian rivers and. added to this, heavy rainsS
(copyrght, 1917