ABRAHAM'S BIRTHPLACE

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 11538, 15 January 1932, Page 3

ABRAHAM'S BIRTHPLACE

VISIT TO UR. OPI THE CHALDEES FLOOR, FIFTY CENTURIES OLD!

\ . ; ;TR ACES OF THE FLOOD

' The excavating of tlie city of Ur, the birthplace of Abrliam, lias been [riven so much publicity of late, through the Tress, through Professor (Leonard Woolley’s books ami lectures, and through the exhibitions at tho British Museum, that there is no need to give details of the undertaking -here. My purpose u-is to describe an tirioffieial visit to the'seene oF 'theseTexpayatibns, 'to give’ ah' account '‘Of-'what,' may .be seen there and on the way there by an ordinary observer, writes Michael- J. Dealdon in “John O’Ltondonte. AYeeldy.P ' ■

, . With'a party of-eight, I crossed the desert' by - Car ’-froth ■ Aba den , on the . PeysianV Givlf, to Ur, ’ spending ■ a night in Basrah? oh" the way. The following morning we took tho road. to'Zubeah,- -leaving itho great aerpdrorae at"' Shaihah: bn the East; and passing Sindbad’s Tower, the"le- ' geiidayy home of Sinbad the Sailor. - Zubeah is- one of the most ancient of the!'desert towns, and the last halt-ing-phtce of;the camel caravan on its thirty-day journey across Syria-from Aleppo to the Persian Gulf. It seems not to have been touched bv Western influence'; and-.I saw no white faces. Tho air is full of. tho sound of camel bells- and T the shuffling .“pad-pad’t,of ■the great beasts’ feet as they pace., odato’y with-highAhead'and' sardon-. ic eye through the narrow streets. There is an Arab legend which accounts for the camel’s ; habit of going about with its nose in the air—it is said that there are ninety-nine of God’s names known to man, but the camel knows the hundredth ' ■

; "FIRST SIGHT OF UR. We arrived at Ur in the afternoon, first sighting' the Ziggurat, or Temple, of the Moon God, which formed tho nucleus of the hill that once pid tho ruined city, and which is now tho .most outstanding .landmark for many miles.--.To describe Ur’s first appearance I' cannot do better than quote Professor-Woolley:— ‘‘A mile - and a-half to the east runs the single line of railway. .. . . but westwards of the line is desert, blank, and unredeemed. Out of tho waste :riso the mounds which . were Ur, called hy the Arabs “Tell' el Mdqayyer’ or -‘The Mound of'Pitch.’. . Nothing, relieves the vast plain oyer wliich.‘the shimmering ’ heat' waves, dance and the mirage, spreads - its moekerv of .placid waters.. It seems inoredihlo .that such a 'wilderness should oyer hayo been habitable -for man, and yet the-weathered hillocks at-.one!s< feet cover the temples and houses of a very groat city.” - Part of this ■ wilderness -we had just crossed,- and the very great city,, brought once more-to the lightof ; day, lay. before us.. • ■

THE DEAD-WEfOHT OF

CENTURIES

I have space to mention only some of the things which impressed me most- at- Ur; one ought really to spend many weeks there, to capture tho spirit of the place. There is really less to see than to think about, and it would take some time to. learn even to th'iik properly, to get rid of the dead-weight of time which presses upon and clogs both brain and imagination.

.. Apart from the outstanding Zig- 1 gurat, or tempV of Nannar. the Moon God, the city looks at firstsight like any of the ruined villages so frequently met- with in the Persian and Arabian desert. It is only as one draws nearer that one sees that it is not built of mud, but bricks. The hardest thing is to realise tho great antiquity of it all. 8o little has the country changed that the.previous night I had - slept in a "room' floored' with- bricks ' which were-•actually, the same as those I now trod in the Moon God’s temple—yet those had been mpdern, and these were five thousand years old. This floor had already been laid down when Caesar came to Britain . and found our ancestors wearing woad. I believo that the floor I then trod was old when Mioses led Israel from the Captivity in Egypt. “Half as old as Time!”—this city built when the surrounding desert was a fertile plain, seemed as old as Eternity, old beyond the grasp'of human imagination, . . ....

THE WORLD ’ S OLDEST ARCHWAY.

The brick floors were at once noticeable, manv bricks stamped with the name of the maker and other details. Outside the Woolley’s bungalow were great piles'of as yet unclassified pottery taken from the tombs, and looking as fresh os that T had seen in Basrah straight from the potter’s wheel. Jars, bowls, drinking cups; lamps, none of which had seen daylight for 3000 years lay heaped together in the open like China on a market' stall.

I saw a brick fireplace, still hearing tho marks of the fire whichburned there -5000 years ago, and before’it'the well shaft, with some dregs of brackish water in the bottom still.

Tt hag often been said that our modem' discoveries are but re-dis-coveries,' the construction of round archways with wedge-shaped bricks has been considered a comparatively modern method; at Ur I photographed the oldest archway in the world; it is 3500 years ohl, and is built' of wedge-shaped bricks. V; In the middlo of the excavations is a deep pit known .as “Woolley’s Hole.” It was dug for chronological purposes. It has sheer sides and noi thing ha s been' taken out 'of the walls. Bones, bricks, and pottpry have just-been cut through,, and looking at tho sides one can road in each ~ successive stratum of-'debris, the his‘tqry : ( of TTr for the last 7000 years. Near ihe bottom is an , eight-foot Watum of fine black day, which was laid down the Flood; under this -if! virgin soil,- and under that, wat>er —we are .below f.ea-level. . ‘ Tho Great Death Hit, which containfcd the royal tombs and- the most : valuable'treasures’is now empty; on- * . ** ’ ' V yV . * *' •

(Continued from previous column)

ly the ruins of walls and parts of the roofs of buried chambers remain In this pit wore buried kings and nobles; their burial was forgotten with the passage of time, and others were buried above them, as one new city after anottfer rose upon- the. remains of older ones.

ABRAHAM’S HOME? 1

In ono quarter - the remains of dwelling houses have been unearthed, one of which probably sheltered the child Abraham, whose name has meant so much more to mankind than that of tho city of his birth. In another direction the remains of a nunnery have been found in which n .sisterhood, of Moon Priestesses kept a school, and in -it wero found clay tablets with half-finished exercises on them, where the youth of Ur had been taught to write. Unless next year’s work brings unanticipated “finds”, the excavation within the wall built by Nebuchadnezzar is. almost completed. The objects, found are divided among the British Museum, Baghdad, and Philadelphia. Only the she’l of the city stands, bereft of the treasures it guarded for so many years; hub an atmosphero remains. I am well content to have seen tho ruins of Ur. I havo made a journey which I shall remember all m.v life. I havo seen Time robed back and. the remote past live again beneath my feet, and I haVe found it strangely like tho present. To me “ancient history” will never again seem quite so ancient, and I have found a new meaning for the word “Resurr<!ci;ion, ,,