FROM ANCIENT BABYLON

Feilding Star, Volume 3, Issue 551, 28 December 1925, Page 6

FROM ANCIENT BABYLON

TABLET OE THE ANCIENT. • NEARLY 5000 YE A.ITS OLD. . la the Assyrian Gallery of the British Museum a table is set up which looks dull and grey to all but those who understand the lettering of its strange characters, which send out star-like rays into the forgotten" past. It is an astronomical tablet drawn up by the first, astronomers, who set 'down on it the times of the rising and setting in .Mesopotamian skies of that bright planet Venus, known as the Evening Star. When those Limes were recorded imperishable on the stone the first Tv in gs of Babylon sat on the throne.

How long ago was that? None can quite tell; but, because the rising and setting of the bright pallet vary •from century-to century, astronomers of to-day can trace back the times and periods and say how many thousands of years ago it was when the astronomers of old made those exact observations.

But till this year it was not possible to tell the exact time by the old tablet. It was so very old that it was defaced, and many learned men who looked on it did not quite trust it. But last year another tablet was discovered at Kish, eight miles from Babylon, which is like a clock that tells the' same time, as the first. Dr. Langdon, who has examined it, now says that both clocks are right.

By the aid of the times they tell another learned man, not only an archaeologist hut an astronomer as well—Dr Folheriugham, of Oxford—• has been able to 'calculate almost U> a year when the tablets were inscribed These tablets tell almost as certainly as the date of the reign id' William the Conqueror the years when Amizaduga, of the first Babylonian Dynasty, lived and died, or when Hammurabi drew up his famous code of laws. And though they lived nearly .5000 years ago, one mav learn hum the tablets exactly when Hammurabi. took prisoner Lot, the nephew of Abr!»,.«ui