MAN WHO LIVED 5000 YEARS AGO

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 12 June 1929, Page 7

MAN WHO LIVED 5000 YEARS AGO

The bodv of a.man who lived nearly 5,000 years ago was found by the joint expedition of the, British Museum and the Museum of the- ■'ofPennsylvania during it's work at Ur. The expedition says: "The excavation of the ancient cemetery had come to'an end earlier ill the month, and it was characteristic of the site that the very last grave discovered should be the richest of its period yet brought to light. It was of the Sargonid Age (about 2,650 8.C.), and was that of a man, judging from the number of. copper weapons placed at the head and along the side of the wooden coffin. Six gold fillets adorned the head of the man, and round 'his neck were three strings of beads of gold and coloured stones—agate, carnelian, jasper, chalcedony, and sard stones. On the wrists were four heavy gold bangles and four of silver, and gold rings on the fingers. Having exhausted the graves in the -area selected for this season's work, We proceeded to dig down beneath them-for relics of the-older civilisation represented by the great rubbi;sh the graves are fn a stratum, of this rubbish, which is late in comparison with much that lies beneath it, but very much earlier than the oldest graves, we were fortunate enough Fq, find, in a ruined house some 200.HabMs itwritten in a very archaic script, one of the oldest forms of writing known' in Mesopotamia. Other remains go back' even further than these, and certain grotesque seal impressions on clay and types of decorated poitery extinct long before tlie age of the Royal tombs supply material for a relative chronology -which will carry us back almost to the beginnin" of things in the Lower Euphrates Valley."