TREASURE CASKETS

Evening Star, Issue 19198, 15 March 1926, Page 8

TREASURE CASKETS

4,200 YEARS OLD Four brick boxes containing undisturbed objects deposited at the time ol the founding ol the Palace of Dungi, who reigned 2250 n.c., have been excavated at Ur of the Chaldees—the city of that pastoral prince of old, tho patriarch Abraham (says the London "Daily Chronicle ’). These included copper statuettes of Dungg carrying on his head the basket of mortar lor the laying ol the first brick, and stone tablets inscribed with tho dedication of the work. “ It was a dramatic moment when tho cover was lifted off the first box,” writes Mr C. Leonard Wooley, leader of tho excavations, in a report to tho British Museum authorities.

The little figure, its metal turned to a vivid green, was seen standing up right in one corner of tho box, with the tablet laid at its feet Close to this was found, loose in the rubble, a broken figure of the same king, curved in black diorite. Not far olf was the most beautiful example of Sumerian sculpture yet found —the head of tho Moon Goddess, cxquisfciely carved in white marble, its eyes inlaid with lapis lazuli and shell. 'This is described as a. most lifelike piece of work, the contours of tho face full and soft, the hair a faithful rendering of an elaborately waved coiffure; a piece which proves that the artists of the Third Dynasty had achieved a skill worthy of tho great empire ruled by their kings. ,

The season’s work at Ur started on October 23 (wrote Mr Woolley), and Hie first month's digging proved most successful. The programme was that we should excavate a largo mound under which 1 expected to find tho palace of Dungi, son of the builder of the great Ziggurat, but we iiad scarcely started work when we came upon tombs and drains sot so thickly together that f had to move tile host part of my men to the next mound. That we were correct in expecting to find remains of DungLiiero was proved by the welcome discovery, in a broken stretch of mud brick wall, of the four brick boxes. The graves, which made so difficult our search for tho buildings, wore in themselves interesting. Against the side of ono we found the gravediggers’ tools, dropped accidentally—hoes or adzes, like those used by the modern Egyptian peasant, hut of bronze instead of iron. Inside another, the grave of an assessor in the law courts, was a little set of tablets recording his last business transactions. Amongst other things, he had just added a single room to his town house, and had bought the necessary little plot of land for the modest equivalent of 17s 6d.

Tho neighboring mound proved no less fertile. We traced out the inner face of the groat wall built by King Nebuchadnezzar, round tho old buildings of the sacred area of Ur, and found its south-west gate, and then, going deeper inside the wall, laid hare some houses. These seem to have been inhabited about 692 8.C., when someone dropped on the floor a lot of inscribed clay tablets, some of which contained Bchoolboys’ exercises and grammars and some religious hymns of prayer But it was beneath the floor o f this house that our best, discoveries were made, for here, as it appears, fheio had been thrown out some of the contents of a very ancient shrine. .Mere wo found pots of archaic forms, beads in gold and silver, lapis lazuli and carnelian, and a pair of rams carved in white gypsum, probably tho supports for the throne of a god, which must date from at lcast/3000 n.c. A little plaque of alabaster, tarred on both sides, which, though only half of the original work, and, though almost grotesquely primitive in its carving, raised our interest to a high pitch, continues Mr Woolley. Tho scene represented is a boat made of reeds tied together, with its stern rising high in the air—or this may be (ho early artist’s convention for showing the guffah, that coracle-like craft which ono can see any day on the Tigris at Bagdad; amidships there is a deck cabin with an arched roof. On one side of the plaque a, man is seen standing at the, stern of the boat, a naked figure whose head is, unluckily, missing, while in the cabin is a pig. On the other side the pig’s place is taken by a. goose, and two fish are hanging against the stern by a string. Here is a genre piece illustrating the life of the marshdwellers, in this case a prehistoric folk, later in Babylonian history tho People of the Sea, to-day the Marsh Arabs. But the temptation to sec more in it than this was too strong; we called it Noah’s Ark as soon as it was found, and as the earliest representation of Noah’s Ark, tho boat of Utanapishtim, it wi}l take its place amongst the treasures of Ur. >