Evening Post. SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1929. HISTORY IN THE CLAY

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 73, 30 March 1929, Page 6

Evening Post. SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1929. HISTORY IN THE CLAY

Two interesting items of news concerning archaeological research have come to us by cable recently. One recorded opinions based upon researches at Ur and Kish that the Biblical story of the flood was derived from an actual catastrophe. The other staled that the site of the ancient city of Jericho was to be subjected to thorough archaeological exploration. The site of Jericho was explored some twenty years ago by a German expedition under Dr. Sellin. Professor Macalister states [hat the search, though thorough, produced nothing extraordinary. It may be, nevertheless, that a new expedition will make new discoveries. Many of the greatest finds of archaeology are of comparatively recent dale, and some of them have been recovered from ground previously explored. When we say recent we do not mean within the last year or two. Fifty years is "recent" if the discovery is of something hidden for two, three, or four thousand years. The exploration of Tell el Amarna has given us details of Egyptian town-planning and domestic architecture. Tutankhamun's tomb has shown the jewellery and furniture of the New Empire period; and the excavations in Crete have thrown new light on the Minoan civilisation. In Palestine, exploration of Ophel, the site of the most ancient Jerusalem, has revealed the Jebusite wall with the additions made by Solomon and Neh'emia, and what Professor Macalister considers to be the Millo bastion with the breach made by David when he stormed the city.

And the inhabitants of Jcbus snid to David, Thou shalt not come hither. Nevertheless David took the castle of Zion, which is the city of David.

The work done by Mr. C. L. Woolley at Ur and Professor Langdon at Kish has been recently referred to. It is sufficient to say here that it throws much light on the Sumerian civilisation of Babylonia before the Semitic invasion, and dates back even to the Fifth Millennium B.C. The excavating implements of Western civilisation have been digging out Abraham's home-town.

The hopes of obtaining much from Jericho are not in the main high, because the town has been so ofLen destroyed and refortified. It was the first city of Canaan to be captured by the Israelites, after the priests and armed men had compassed it seven days and seven times on the'seventh day, when the Avails fell down. It was rebuilt afterwards, despite Joshua's curse. It housed Elisha's college of prophets and it was the scene of Judah's last stand against Babylon. In New Testament times it was connected with several, well-known events. It was on the way to Jericho, for example, that the traveller fell among thieves and was rescued and tended by the good Samaritan. Apart from its Biblical history, it has had warlike associations—with Syrians, Romans, and Crusaders. The inhabitants in Canaanite times were not valiant. Rahab the harlot told Joshua's messengers: "Our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man because of you." The habit seems to have been fixed, for the inhabitants fled from Herod and from Vespasian. A modern writer has attributed this lack of warlike quality to the enervating heat of the depression in which the city lies, "which has the same effect on the handful of degraded humanity that still occupies the ancient site." Jericho fell last to British troops (including the New Zealand Mounted Rifles under Bri-gadier-General Meldrum) in February, 1918. It is now a squalid little village. Any glories it may have are certainly buried.

There are possibilities of greater interest in the discovery of evidence supporting the story of the Deluge. Mr. C. Leonard Woolley, head of the British Museum Expedition to Ur of the Chaldees, is reported to have declared that the sensational 'discoveries in ihe latest excavations arc capable of no other interpretation than that the story of Noah is true. The report of Mr. Woolley's statement is not quite clear, but it appears (placing it with other earlier reports) to indicate the discovery of an earlier Ur buried beneath eight feet of clay below the town which the excavators have been uncovering. The conclusion is that, old as Ur was, it succeeded a still older town which was overwhelmed by a flood of unexampled magnitude. Professor Langdon's statement is that the recent revelation of the Kish excavations is that there were two great deluges at Kish, the second one marking the beginning of the end of a long period of Sumerian civilisation. The Flood is probably the best known of Biblical stories. Every child has at some time possessed a Noah's ark with animals two and two, all made on the very ancient models. Viscount Bryce, who himself ascended Mount Ararat, records lhat in two views given by Sir John Chardin, a 17th century traveller, the Ark appears, in shape exactly'the Ark of the nursery on Sunday afternoons, poised on the summit of Great

Ararat,

But this (ho humorously adds) may bo merely emblematic; indeed, I have not found any author who Bays ho himself has scon it, though plenty who (liko tho retailers of ghost stories) mention other pooplo who have.

The Flood has, however, interested every anthropologist and sLudent of folk-lore, as well as every child, for

no story has a wider currency. Sir James Frazer (of "The Golden Bough" fame) has made what is probably the most complete collection of the stories available in ihe English language. He gives deluge legends from Wales, India, North and South America, Greece, New Zealand; in fact, all quarters of the world. The most ancient is the Babylonian or Sumerian, and it corresponds in many details with the Biblical story of Noah. Xisuthrus, its hero, as the tenth ante-diluvian Babylonian King, has been identified with Noah. He was warned in a dream of the coming flood, and instructed to make the ark to save his family and the animals. He used birds to reconnoitre the submerged territory. The two chief discrepancies are that the Sumerian narrative is polytheistic and that Xisuthrus did not survive on earth, but was caught up to heaven, like the Biblical Enoch. But these differences can be accounted for by the purging necessary in embodying the narrative in a monotheistic religion and by a scribe's error. The Sumerian story first came to us in fragments of the history written by a Greek in the third century 8.C., and preserved by the Jewish historian Josephus. Then only about half a century ago the library of the Assyrian King Asshurbanipal (in cuneiform characters on burnt brick) was pieced together and deciphered by an Englishman, George Smith, and we had the complete Babylonian story. Even this was not original, for other fragments have revealed the same story going back to the fifth Millennium B.C.

The problem of the anthropologists lias been to account for so many flood stories without a flood. Huxley, who gave some attention to the problem in his later years, concluded that a world-wide flood was in conflict with the teaching of geology. Yet even as late as 1895 a geologist, Sir Joseph Preslwich, argued for a temporary submersion long after the appearance of paleolithic man, of West, Central, and Southern Europe and parts of North Africa. The chief question, Sir James Frazer holds, is whether the stories indicate transmission of beliefs by direct or indirect contact of peoples, or whether they arose independently through the similar working of the human mind under similar circumstances, lie discovers similarities in groups of stories which indicate transmission, but others he deems of independent origin. These, he suggests, may be explained by many local traditions of great floods, such as those known to have occurred in the Euphrates and Tigris basins, or seismic waves in Polynesia. But Egypt, which for centuries has had floods, has no flood story. Some of the stories are simply myths and others are myths founded on mistaken observation of the fossil sea-shells high on the mountain-sides. For-a long time, it may be noted, fossil shells supplied an answer to the higher critics until the advance of geology made this explanation unacceptable. Will the researches of Mr. Woolley and Professor Langdon now afford evidence of a submersion which will not be contradicted by geology, but yet of sufficient magnitude to account for a story which most sections of the human race have preserved?