EARLIER CIVILISATION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XL, Issue 9292, 29 April 1920, Page 2

EARLIER CIVILISATION.

NEAR EAST DISCOVERIES.

The old Oriental world (writes Prof. A. H. Sayce in the Sunday Observer) was wonderfully like our own. it was not acquainted with the mechanical contrivances of the twentieth century, with trains and steamers, telegraphs and telephones, but on the cultural side it was on a level with ourselves, ana in some respects even in advance of us. Culture, as opposed to mechanical civilisation, is always confined to tlie xevv, and what is still the highwater mark of the few had already been attained 4000 years ago. /

We already knew that such was the case with the Greece and Rome of the classical age. Then came the revelation of ancient Egyptian culture, 'followed by that of tlie art and culture of early Krete, and it is now the turn of Babylonia. The strong points of Babylonian culture, however, were not artistic, as was the case in Egypt and ivrete, but literary and commercial. The latest discovery of Babylonian ai'chajology has an astonishing modern ring. Some centuries before Abraham was born in (Jr or tlie Chaldees, a dy.nasty of kings was reigning which had its capital in that city, its rule or supremacy was acknowledged from Susa to the Mediterranean, from the Persian Gulf to the Taurus mountains. In eastern Asia Minor, 1 three miles from the presezit Kaisariyeh, there was a Babylonian colony, partly military, partly commercial, which held the high road to the north-west and was the centre of the metal trade. Babylonian linns worked the silver, copper mid lead mines of Asia Minor, and supplied Western, Asia with their products. They have left us their records inscribed in cuneiform characters oat tablets of clay. .Hundreds of them havebeen recently discovered, all belonging to the same period, about 2400.1*.C. Some of the tablets are letters, often on business matters; others of them relate to commercial or legal affairs. They come abruptly to an end; it is probable that when internal decay prevented the Babylonian Government, from defending any longer their', distant possessions the Babylonian settlements in Asia Minor were destroyed by the wild tribes of the North. At all events, excavation has shown thai die particular city where the tablets were found was suddenly overthrown and never inhabited again.' The larger number of colonists came from Assyria, which at that time was a Babylonian province. They had a republican, and not a- monarchical form of government, though acknowledging in a sort of shadowy way the nominal supremacy of the Babylonian kings. But they were actually governed uy their own officers, a province \of district being under the government of a "prince," and a city under that of a "prefect." Besides these officers there were also judges, as well as certain officials, who gave vtheir names to the "weeks" of five days each into which the year was divided, and by means of which time was counted.

'But by the side of the "prince" and the "prefect" there was also a "princess" and a "prefectress," v and a curious fact that emerges from the tablets is that the "princess" and "prefectress" had equal powers and rights with the "prince" and "prefect." "Women's rights" had already triumphed at Burus, as the city was called; the women could trade there like the men, could bequeath their property like the men, and possessed, it would seem, the same official authority as the men. It would appear that, after all, there was some truth in the classical story of the Amazons whose home was in the same'part of the world. Along with 'women's rights," naturally, went women's education, and the latest discovery is the most modern touch of all. A tablet has turned up ■which refers to a woman's "college" or "university," in the neighbourhood of Burus, where it gave the name of "The Women's Town" to the suburb in which it stood. This university was divided into the two faculties of "Literature" and "Arts," each of which was under a "Principal," who, however, was not a woman, but a male professor. Surely "there is nothing new under the sun."

But the tablets have brought to light many other things which have their parallel in the modern world. We learn from the letters that there were roads throughout the country, along which the postman went regularly, though the letters and envelopes he carried were of clay, like the stamps, which had the form of discs. In one of the letters the writer expresses the hope that the postman will ha^ :'"R bright moon and a clear sk?> c 0 light him on his way at night '"■ln some of the correspondence.--"^'erenco is made to a species ./^-cHeque, the messenger being inducted to receive from the corrp^pcmdent o f the writer the equivalent in money of the sum named on the tablet presented to him.

Truly, the Near East has a long past of civilisation behind it!