WAR MAY SOLVE BIBLE MYSTERY.

Cromwell Argus, Volume L, Issue 2647, 10 November 1919, Page 7

WAR MAY SOLVE BIBLE MYSTERY.

TRUTH ABOUT DELUGE PROMISED.

The great world-war is going to build as well as destroy. It promises to solve more than one new problem of modern life, and is quite as sure to shed a flood of light upon questions which have seemed almost past human understanding. Professor Langdon has pointed the way to a most promising field of investigation and discovery. He has discovered upon very careful and close study of some thousands of Babylonian clay tablets, brought from the great library of Nippur, that some of the most important inscriptions were actually copies of still more ancient tablets, which are as yet undiscovered. And Professor Langdon has done very much more, for he has ascertained the very site at which" the excavator must first plant his spade, if he is to bring to light tablets which will astound the world, carrying back the history of human thought thousands of years. References upon the tablets of Nippur to still older tablets, which were the originals, of which these are com--paratively late copies, have proved that if ' the originals are to be uncovered the excavators will have to dig long and deeply upon the site of ancient Ur. Ur was the city from which, according to Genesis xi. 31, Abraham emigrated when be went to the Promised Land, with his family and his nephew Lot. Fortunately for the projected work the site of Ur has been known ever since 1847, when Sir Henry Rawlinson, the famous Babylonian scholar, deciphered inscribed tablets found in the ruin mounds of what the Arabs called Mugheir, proving that here once stood the mighty city of Ur, with its majestic temple to Sin, the Moon-God. It lies on the west bank of the Euphrates, half way between Babylon and the Persian Gulf. It was undoubtedly that great capital of Babylon at the earliest period of the civilisation of that powerful monarchy, and thus, helps to bear out Professor Langdon’s suggestion that there will be found the primaeval originals of that extensive literature which furnished to the Hebrews the material out of which they built up the earlier chapters of the' Bible itself.

For more than sixty years, or <*ver since the first translation of the Deluge Tablets was made by George Smith, scholars have recognised thej more than striking similarity between the story of the flood, as told in the Bible and as deciphered upon the clay tablets found in the ruins of Nineveh. But how the Hebrews possessed themselves of this very ancient Semitic tradition was a constant puzzle to students of the Bible, who had no record before them of any contact between the Hebrews and the city of Nineveh in very an-

cient times. Many a scholar has desired to dig over the ruins of Ur, simply because it had been the home of Abraham, and not for a moment suspecting that here was ail that Professor Langdon promises. The Turkish Government invariably refused to grant a firman, or permission to dig, because that would have meant that they would give adequate protection to the excavating party. This they were not in a position to offer, because the wild Arabs of Southern Babylonia barely acknowledged the rule of the _ Sultan, and preyed upon any unwary travellers who were so foolish as to come that way. Matters promise very differently as & result; of the war. Great Britain has been forcing her way through Mesopotamia, and' under her rule will come peace and protection for Europeans, as well as for the native Arabs, -who will be compelled to become law-abiding. From the dry sands and lofty mounds of these ruins may come new revelations of the life and literature of the third, fourth and possibly the fifth millennium before the Christian! Era. For Abraham lived about 2100 and that was by no means the beginning of Babylonian civilisation and culr ture.

From that ancient time will come according to Professor Langdon, Dr. Sayce and other scholars, the great original tablets on which the first of the Babylonian priests wrote down their talc of the deluge, man’s early attempt to solve the problem of sinners and righteous men on earth. In the later version and copies already translated we know that the Babylonian Noah built his ark, took aboard his family and the animals which were to be kept alive, and that he sent forth, a raven and a dove, just as the Noah of the Bible did. But how much closer the older version will come to the Bible narrative, we do not know. If it is found however, it will go far towards establishing the fact that Abraham took the story with him when he emigrated to Palestine, and that in the Promised Land the story was worked over, and preserved, until it reached the hands of Moses, and other editors,, many generations afterwards. "Nippur is no longer a virgin field," says Prof. Langdon. • "Excavations have been made by the Germans, the English and the American museums at other points, too. But I am convinced that in spite of all the great discoveries which have been made in the last dozen years the work so far accomplished has hardly scratched the surface. Nippur is in the midst of a large number of buried cities that probably were populous before Nippur was thought of. Among 1 ’ them, to mention but two, are Ur of the Chaldees, and Warka —the Ararat of the Bible. According to Genesis Ur of the Chaldees was the birthplace of Abraham." In this region, inhabited by the Hittites, women had almost the same status as men. Nearly every reference on one of the tablets to a prefect., who ruled over the cities, is followed by a reference to the prefec-

tess, or woman mayor. Although the discovery by Dr. Sayce is the first definite indication that women enjoyed positions of authority in the government of ancient civilisation, sharing with men presumably on a basis of equality, the lore of all Babylonia is replete with records showing that woman’s place was almost as important in those days as it is to-day, and far more so than up to the beginning of the nineteenth century. And in many respects the laws of Sumer and Babylon regarding women were far superior—from the viewpoint of the woman — to present-day statutes.

The best instance of this is found in the largo collection of marriage contracts engraved in clay tablets. Hundreds of these semi-private documents were found in the temple archives at Nippur. They show that when a woman married she entered into an elaborate civil contract with her husband, the main, purpose of which seems to have been to protect her legal rights in any difficulty that might arise later. The laws of all Babylonia would seem drastic to the worst victims of alimony * to-day. One provision in them was that when a man divorced a woman he must pay alimony even though she married again, provided he got his divorce for the purpose of taking another wife, or for any reason not her fault. Also, at the time of his death under these circumstances she was entitled to a definite share of his estate.

It was when the Assyrians came down from Nineveh and the cult of Ishtar —who created men out of clay —began to lose ground that woman started to lose her ancient independence and place of equality with men.

Cappadocia, as it is now known, the home of the Hittites, was under the control of Babylon. The discovery by Dr. Sayce that women had authority in the government there is interesting as tending to show that the ancient Babylonians even extended the unusual roman’s rights of their time to the women of subject nations. It is interesting to note in this connection that the Armenians of to-day claim to be the direct .descendants of the Hittites. —“Popular Science Siftings.”