RECORDS IN CLAY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 21, 23 December 1925, Page 3

RECORDS IN CLAY.

TABLETS 3400 YEARS OLD. ANCIENT LIFE IN IRAK. One thousand clay tablets revealing public and private life in Irak 3400 years ago have arrived at the University of Pennsylvania. They were delivered to Dr. Edward Chiera, assistant professor of Assyriology at . the university, who believes their contents will show the complete life history of an ancient people of whom historians knew virtually nothing. _ Tho tablets were found by Dr. Chiera in a recent archeological expedition near Kirkuk, Irak, a region of earliest antiquity, heretofore said to have been unexplored. The expedition was carried on under the joint auspices of the American School of Oriental Research in Bagdad, and the Irak Museum. After they are translated half of the tablets will bo sent to tho Irak Museum, the others remaining at the University of Pensylvania.

According to Dr. Chiera, the table's aro records of oourt procedure, marriage contracts, real estate transactions, lists of slaves purchased, payrolls giving rates of wages and other business and personal documents. All were written by members of an ancient people, Dr. Chiera said. The tablets, all of unbaked clay and far more susceptible to breakage than tne baked variety, had been deposited by the ancients either in baskets or clay jars. In addition to deciphering all the letters, Dr. Chiera said he will be forced to remove many of them from their original clay envelopes. The envelopes wore made, he said, in much the same manner as the modern piecrust ,tho thinly rolled clay being carefully folded around a letter and the rough edges neatly trimmed. They were found in a ruined 22-room palace which has been destroyed, probably by Assyrians, according to Dr. Chiera. Proof of the destruction wrought in the palace was visible on all sides.