EXPLORING BABYLON

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 101, 2 May 1925, Page 16

EXPLORING BABYLON

ROYAL CONVENT REVEALED.

A further report of the joint expedition of the British Museum and the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania to Mesopotamia, furnished by Mr. C. L. Woolley, was issued recently, states the "Daily Telegraph.: 1 It states that during January the expedition carried on work on the site of the convent built by King Nabonidus lor bis daughter, the ground-plan of which has been recovered almost in its entirety, a fine large building, well designed, with dwelling-houses at the back, then offices, schoolrooms, etc., surrounding on three sides the great paved court. Most of the convent buildings were found in a deplorably ruined state, and to-day virtually nothing of them is left, for all had to be removed in order that the explorers might reach tho lower levels.

_ -Six or eight feet below the foundations of the iNabonidus house lies another big range of buildings connected with E-aublal-makh in its earlier form. Again, there is a great courtyard paved with, brick, and about it offices and stoves: but now the old shrine stands isolated on a plinth of fluted brickwork, and the wails, preserved to a man's height and more, bear on their bricks the Royal stamps of Kuri-galzh, of Sin-idinnam, 01 Jshmadagan, and of Bur-Sin, and date back to more than 2000 years before Onrist. .Numerous objects were found in the process of removing the upper strata little copper watchdogs that.were buried beneath the floors to protect the house, iragments of sculpture and of inscriptions, vases of bronze and of clay, and terra-cotta figurines; but the most interesting discovery was of a hoai-d of clay tablets wluch preserve the records of the business affairs of the temple over a space of two or three years about 2200

lhere are inventories of the lands attached to the Nannar Temple, lists of the rent and tithes paid by the farmers on those kids, little clay receipts for every pound of butter or pint of oil or head of sheep that was brought into the great storehouse, and monthly and yearly summaries of all those receipts; lists of the payments by the town merchants in hides or woollen thread, gold and silver, and copper; issue vouchers duly dated and signed and sealed for everything that the temple steward gave out to the priests and functionaries of the temple, to the guards and sweepers, and to the men women, and children employed in the temple workshops. And then there are the pay-books and registeis of those workshops, recording how much raw wool was handed out per month to each employee, and how much finished cloth each one produced, and all the details of grain, oil, and the like, supplied to each as rations and pay the am°un, fc... varying according to the age and utility of tho worker It all gi4s a wonderfully vivid picture of how life vent on in tho great buildings, through the rums of which one walks°to-day, repeophng it with a very real past. Ihe excavation of the temple of Nim Gal is not yet complete. There is a arge building of conventional Jate Babylonian type put up by an Assyrian GovT° r, Ul 6^r ?- C- and added to or restored by Nebuchadnezzar fifty years later, and by his grandson Nabonidus! A few deeper cuts have shown that below this lies another tanplc of very muc h ar] datfi) d from P hem has already. br? ught to light a number °f l :. v l er.y.'JmEortant..- inscriptions, 'from which can.be gathered much of the M™ s^en T, •lld, I"S WWch We W nofc A seen Their d lS covery gives ground for the hope that the excavation of these lower levels will produce a rich harvest of museum objects."