BURIED WITH MONARCH

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 14 January 1928, Page 5

BURIED WITH MONARCH

GOLD BEDECKED WOMEN

CHARIOTEERS AND SERVANTS

CHALDEAN TOMB

Y CABLE- PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT H NEW YORK, Jail. 12. Further details of the grave discovered in Ur of Chaldies •shows that besides being rich in treasures it is strewn with the bodies of musicians, servants, and gold bedecked women of the harem who accompanied their master in death.. The body of the king himself was not found.

The discoveries offer proof that in the fourth millenium B.C. there were practised in Mesopotamia burial ceremonies about which later tradition is silent and archaeologists hitherto knew nothing. Two grooms stood at the head of an ass in each chariot still holding the reins. A third lay by their side. Piled against a clothes chest were human bodies huddled as if suddenly smitten by death. 'Thirteen more bodies were found near the chariot, two of these being children. The others were apparently women, all dressed alike with elaborate headdressi and veils, from which hung gold pendants. Undoubtedly these belonged to the dead king’s harems. In a rectangle stood large limestone blocks, probably forming an altar on which the victims were sacrificed. The royal grave illustrates the' extraordinary degree of material civilisation Mesopotamia employed in the fourth millenium. The country seems to have been far in advance of contemporary Egypt, which shows as already old, stereotyped and even decadent.— “Svdnev Sun” Cable.