THE ASSYRIAN TABLETS AND THE SABBATH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7824, 18 December 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE ASSYRIAN TABLETS AND THE SABBATH.

It is well known that the late Mr. George Smith and others recently made most extensive explorations and most valuable dis coveries in Assyria* Mr. Smith unearthed whole royal libraries from its moundslibraries not consisting, like ours, of volumes of paper, bat of clay tablets, which, while the clay was in a soft state, had been written upon with an iron pen, and then baked hard 10 an oven. Among these curious old volumes we find accounts of the Creation, of the deluge, and of other events of sacred history, tinctured, as we should naturally expect them to be, by the nature of the soil through which they had filtered, so that they do not correspond exactly with the Biblical account*, but yet corresponding sufficiently to yield a most remarkable ana most valuable corroboration of their testa mony. We take up the fifth tablet, for instance. Here is a translation of seven lines of this strange volume from the library of King Assur-bani-pal, from which the reader may eee that it is a kind of heathen Genesis : — The moon He appointed to role the night, And to wander though the night until the dawn of day. Every month, without fail, he nude holy assembly days. In the beginning: of the month, at the rising of the night. It shot forth its horns to illuminate the heavens. On the seventh day He appointed a holy day, And to cease from all business lie commanded. Our quotation is from the translation of Mr. H. Fox Talbor. Now the data of this, tablet is about 700 8.C.; but Mr. Smith, of whose eminence as an Assyriologist it would be impertinence to apeak, says, " The present copies of the Chaldean account of creation were written during the reign of Assur-bani-pal, B.C. 673-626 ; but they appear to be copies of much earlier accounts of creation works the date of the composition of which «ras probably near B.C. 2000. The legends, however, existed earlier thaa this, and were in the form of oral teaching." Thousands of years, therefore, before the Christian era, it appears that the Sabbath was known in Chaldea. This is not the only Assyrian discovery which bears on our point. "In 1869," says Mr. Smith in his " Assyrian Discoveries" (p. 12), "I discovered among other things a curious religious calendar of the Assyrians, in which every month is divided into four weeks, and the seventh days, or Sabbaths, are marked out as days on which no work should be undertaken. What a remarkable testimony to the early knowledge of the Day off Rest I