BEFORE THE FLOOD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 187, 9 August 1930, Page 13 (Supplement)

BEFORE THE FLOOD.

HOW THEY LIVED.

REED HOUSES AND FLINT

PLOUGHS.

ANTEDILUVIAN ART.

(By C. LEONARD WOOLLEY, Director of the joint expedition to Ur of the British Museum and the University Museum of Pennsylvania.)

A few years ago the Flood, even if not dismissed' as a legendary fiction, seemed something too remote and vague to be admitted into history. To-day we not only have proof of its real happening, but, although we still cannot fix its date, know whereabouts it came in the sequence of J*jman. affairs and cau speak familiw.rfy of things "just before the Flood" or "just after" it; we can trace its effects and see how it closed an era in the life of the people of the Euphrates Valley.

At the very bottom of the great pit we dug last winter, below the level of the distant sea, there is green clay full of the sinuous brown stains which were the roots of reeds and water-plants growing in the marshes before the dry land was formed, and above this there is a belt of black soil made up of the mud which was caught between the reed stems and of the decaying reeds themselves; in this, and especially at ,the bottom of it, there are fragments of i broken pots, all dying flat as they sank by their own weight. Clearly we are on the outskirts of an island where the first settlers in the marsh had their homes and they 'used to fling their household rubbish out into the reed-beds. Slowly, with the decay of the vegetation, the belt of mud grew thicker and rose above . the surface of the water, and we can ! see how at the top it becomes coarse and gravelly; now it was dry ground. Besting on this we find heaps of ashes, rubbish and potsherds, showing that men moved down to occupy the new site, and from the relics left in the rubbish Ave can learn something of" what these early inhabitants of Mesopotamia were like. They were by no means savages. Already they had outgrown the Oh'i Stone Age and were using weapons and

tools of metal; polished stone axes and celts arid arrow-heads of chipped flint, had not gone wholly out of fashion, but wrought copper was preferred for spearheads and the like. They had riot learnedthe use of the potter's wheel, but their clay vessels, delicately turned by hand, were often egg-sheel thin and decorated with elaborate, patterns in black or reddish brown paint, so well fired that even now it will stand being cleaned with scrubbing-brush arid water, and thej designs, .though composed of simple elements, are, extraordinarily artistic in themselves and always in harmony with the form of the.vase. Richer folk might possess vessels of polished stone, variegated marbles or alabaster imported from abroad, and similiar stones were cut into beads and amulets for persona,! adornment. They, spun thread and wove cloth for their garments (the cloth has vanished, but we find the spinningwhorls and the loom-weights): they caught fish in the marshes, using copper fish-hooks; they killed the wild boar for food, and they kept cattle, sheep, and goats, and" ate the meat of them. They cultivated the soil, using ploughshares of chipped flint, and they ground the barley on "saddle querns" of imported lava, the. upper grinder being set in bitumen to give, a better grip to the

hand; it is a loose stone, and the bread must have been very gritty, for in the I skulls found at al'Ubaid, nenr Ur, the teeth are in many cases worn down to the gums! We" iind, shallow'-clay bowls of which the inner face was roughened into ridges before baking, and this must have been for the bruising of boiled barley to make the "bourgoul," a sort of porridge, which is a favourite food of the Arab at the present day; a vegetable sediment found in someof the pots may show that some kind of- beer was manufactured. At one spot we came upon a pile of fallen bricks, well-moulded mud bricks set. in mud mortar, proving that before the Flood-mien built-decent houses for themselves, while door-sockets of imported stone showed that such houses had boasted wooden doors. In another place a different discovery was made, more dramatic because less to be expected. This was nothing more than a tumbled mass of lumps of clay, burnt red and black by some accidental conflagration; each lump .was smooth on one side, flat or curved, and on the other side bore the impress of reed stems set close together. These were the remains of a reed hut plastered with clay. Such reed' huts are in common use in Mesopotamia to-day; they are-figured on stone reliefs dating back to 3000 8.C., and earlier; in

. i.i m, j, the. Suinerian legend of the Flood &e„-, God who would save Noah from the ' coming disaster whispers His warning to* the walls of the hero's dwelling*-;.; "Reed-hut, reed-hut, hear!" There,, could he no doubt as to the antiquity of;the method of. construction, but the;w materials are not of a sort calculated endure; here fire had intervened to««J harden, the clay, and we could see and « handle the remains of a house otym "wattle and daub" set up just before: ;£ the Flood. Y£ For immediately above this stratum ofij; household debris lay a belt eleven feet**; thick and more of clean water-borne. -■■ sand, the deposit left by the Deluge.::;! The men who came after it were of the;;;: same stock as those who were before *» using the same pottery, burying with,.,their dead the same queer clay figures 01: % goddesses or demons, with human bodies and reptile-like faces and heads gro- « tesquely domed as we had found in the, - house ruins of the pre-Flood folk; but;;;, they were a- poorer and a decadent stock; ejj They passed through two well-marked -■■ stages'of degeneration, and then plete change .comes in the culture or;;:: Mesopotamia, and in the next stratum, w we find the relics of what must be a ■■ different race from that which knew the; ■'.: 1' lood. -«: