THE FIRST ALPHABET

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 120, 16 November 1929, Page 20

THE FIRST ALPHABET

DISCOVERIES IN SYRIA

An entirely new page in the history of mankind was deciphered last spring by French archaeologists working in Syria. Their discoveries of towns, palaces, and tombs several thousand years old have thrown a new light on an almost prehistoric age extending from "the time of Abraham to that of Moses (says an overseas journal.) This period has now ceased" to be , legendary, as far as Syria is concerned. , With the documents unearthed, historians soon can tell in detail the ancient from the-time of Abraham to that of ways been the crossroads between tho East and the West. i In August the French Academy of Inscriptions heard two reports of young savants recently returned from Syria, and both these reports have been considered by older historians and scientist's as likely to open a new era in archaeology. The first was that of A. F. Schaeffer, curator of the .Strasburg museums, on finds made by him ■on the Mediterranean coast near the old town of Latakieh. In tho poor Alawit villages, called Benit ed Cecia and Ras Shamra, Schaeffer and hjs assistant, Georges Cherut, found the ruins of a palace built about 1300 B.G. — approximately the time of the exodus ,—and a vast necropolie with princely ■ tombs. . . ■ ' j Although these underground tombs; solidly built in stone, had been ravaged and robbed Several thousand years ago, they still contain many valuable indications of the religious rites of. those who built them. But the most remarkable discovery ,of the archaeologißti was a library of about sixty tablets, found in the grounds of the palace. Some of the' tablets, ■ written in Babylonian cuneiform signs—the diplomatic language of that time—were letters from Egyptian Pharaohs to the Princes of that mysterious town whose-name the savants have not yet discoverei Some others were the inventory of the King's treasuries. But the most-interesting among, them have not yet been deciphered, as they were written in what is believed to be the world's first alphabet. Twentysix' or twenty-seven letters could be discerned in it, but it probably will be some time before the experts in old alphabets identify the sounds these . letters represent. The excavations in : Ras Shamra will be continued' next spring—spring being the only season when digging in Syria is. possible. On that site evidently existed a large town —possibly an Aegian colony—that was a centre for trade with Egypt and Greece and Cyprus. No less interesting than M. Se&aeffer's report was the communication made at the academy by. Count, dv Mesnil dv Buisson on his diggirig'at Katna, in the middle Syrian desert. The town of Katha hks long been known to historians, but no one could indicate' its location.' Advised five years ago by a Jesuit missionary,' the archteologist er 'ored . part of the desert near Mishrif e, where an accumulation of sand indicated the probability of finding an underground town, and Count dv Mesnil unearthed there the ruina or three towns, built 6ne over the'other. The first, of which only the gates could be discovered -until now, had existed in the third millennium 8.C., before Abraham's time. The second had been built about 2300 8.C., and destroyed by invaderß in 1275 8.C., and the third was evidently of the Neo-Babylonian era, at its maximum of prosperity under' Namuchodonosor's reign. .--.■... ;■ .: "