BABYLON’S HISTORY

Evening Star, Issue 21077, 14 April 1932, Page 14

BABYLON’S HISTORY

ROMANCE OF EXCAVATIONS ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR HUNTER As the first of a series of lectures in the Y.M.O.A. Assembly Hall, Professor Hunter last night gave an address on ‘The Romance of Excavation in Mesopotamia.’ There was a fairly largo attendance, and Mr J. L. Salmond, who presided, briefly outlined the object of the programme arranged, _ which was, he said to impart information of educational value to young men and others connected with the association at a time when it was felt that something better than pictures and other amusements was needed. Professor Hunter took his audience hack to 3500 n.o and the periods that followed, and gave an interesting account or the corroboration of the history and in the Old Testament by the discoveries in ancient Babylon. One hundred years ago nothing was known about Babylon history except what was contained in the Old Testament, and all the memorials in the British Museum were in a box three feet square, and not on© word of the script had been deciphered. Babylonian script was like a series of wedge-shaped marks. In 1835 Sir Henry Rawlinson, who was helping to reconstruct the troops of the Persian King at Behistun, saw a rock 1.700 ft high, and 300 ft above its base was an inscription in Babylonian, Medean, and Old Persian. There_ was also a picture showing Darius receiving prisoners of war and with his foot on In’s foes, while nine vanquished pretenders were being led up to him in cords. By moans of ropes and ladders Sir Henry Rawlinson was able to climb up to the inscription at great risk to his life and took copies of the Medean and old Persian writing. In 1844 he was again near that locality as consul at Bagdad, and secured a Kurdish boy, aged about sixteen, who performed a very plucky act, climbing up the face of the rock and hammering in a peg from which he swung by a rope to a point at the base of the inscription, where, hanging on to a point of rock, ho hammered another peg to which he clung and gained a foothold. With pieces of wet paper he made several impressions of the inscription, and Sir Henry Rawlinson took them Home and worked over them. He was able to arrive at a translation, and when it was found that the Medean and the Persian were the same the Babylonian script was also translated.

Professor Hunter pointed out that this discovery was similar to that of the Rosetta stone which was found by one of Napoleon’s men near the mouth of the Nile, and which proved to be the key by which the hieroglyphics on the Egyptian monuments were translated. The three languages on the Rosetta stone were Greek, Coptic, and Egyptian. To Sir Henry Rawlinson we owe the interpretation of the Babylonian language and script, but it was to Austen Henry Layard, who lived in the early part of the last century, that we owed the material on which to work. Trained as a lawyer, he chose to live in Ceylon, and on his way out he went to Egypt, Palestine, and Assyria, and at last came to the old capital of the Assyrian Empire, Calah or Nimroud. near the ruins of Nineveh, where lie made his first discoveries. He never got to Ceylon. Monuments had been unearthed in that locality by dozens, and from them we knew the history of that part of the world even before* the flood. We knew as well as we knew British history the history of the people 3,000 years before Christ up to the time of Christ. The earliest monuments, Professor Hunter continued, connected the Assyrian Empire with the Hebrew people. In 1326 Layard sent Home the black obelisk of Shalmaneser 11., King of Assyria, which told a story not related in the Old Testament, and recorded in twenty pictures—five to each side—-the victories of thirty-one military expeditions of his reign. The defeat of Ahab, not recorded in the Old Testament, was also recorded.

A cylindrical cunieform record of the seizure of Samaria by Sargon, another King of Assyria, w r as similar to the account given in the Old Testament. Another discovery showed Sennacherib at the head of his army. From the Assyrians we had a long story connected with the death of Sennacherib, whereas there was only a small paragraph in the Old Testament. Herodotus recorded how the mice ate the bowstrings of the army, but it had been deduced that the army bad been smitten with bubonic plague. All these discoveries provided one of the romantic aspects of the excavations. The Assyrian Empire fell, Professor Hunter said, because it became top heavy and weakened at its own base. All the men became soldiers and the country was drained of its man power because of its conquests. Assyria broke up after 625 n.c. and the Modes and Babylonians combined and in Gl2 mo. Nineveh fell. The Egyptians rallied to the help of Nineveh and were defeated. The fall of Nineveh was regarded as the vindication of the sovereignty of a just God. Professor Hunter mentioned that one of the oldest things in Babylon was an old tower, and outside the ancient city was another old tower. It was not certain which of the two was the Tower of Babel. The second tower had a cleft in the top as though lightning had struck it, and the bitumen had malted and formed a hard glaze. Professor Hunter showed a number of very interesting lantern slides depicting the ruins of Babylon and some of the discoveries that had been made there. Pictures of the Temple of Ur, which had been buried under a hill, were also shown, together with a picture of the great death pit in the cemetery of Ur. Here two chambers were found in which a king and queen had been buried with their attendants, who had been slaughtered after the funeral rites in order to bear their rulers company in the after life. These remains had been discovered after they had lain buried for over 5,000 years. Professor Hunter was accorded a hearty vote of thanks for his address.