TAXES 4300 YEARS AGO.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 124, 26 May 1923, Page 19

TAXES 4300 YEARS AGO.

J Topical Interest has been lent to a tablet found in Mespotamla by Mr. Sydney Lee Bush, a Bath business man, while serving i during the war, by the remarkable finds ancient site of Uγ of the Chaldees, the city of Old Testament Abraham which flour--ished 6000 years ago. j In view of the recent finds, says the | , "Dally Mail," the tablet has been submit- ! ted to the inspection of Dr. Stephens' Langdon, Professor of Assyriology at j : Oxford, who writes:— j I "Undoubtedly your tablet is a record of I ' sacrifices made at the feast of the Heaven I ; god. It la dated in the reign of Dungi. ! I king of the Vr, dynasty, 2-166 to 2399: B.C. j "It is a record of the temple or tax office j et Lagash. the modern name of Tello, a ; city in Southern Mesopotamia, not far j 1 above modern Basra, inland on the old J I canal, west of the Tigris. I and goat supplied by 13 different persons. . ! most of them wives of distinguished !; citizens. i j "The name of the overseer or surveyor of i the temple and State revenues Is given, 1 namely, Arnlgingar. ■ ' '"One kid Is sent by the city governors I and one lamb by the Governor of Kis, a I city near Babylon and a long distance ' from La trash. ' : "The list seems to refer to some very ' ; particular sacrifice provided by influential ' J persons, and this theory Is sustained by ; the fact that your tablet is dated in the . month of the feast of the Heaven god. "Mr. Bush feels it may be some consolai tion to present-day business men to know n there were such things as taxes thousands (- of years before ever King Tut-ankh-Amen."