THE EXCAVATIONS AT BABYLON

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXVII, Issue 5372, 3 September 1904, Page 12

THE EXCAVATIONS AT BABYLON

. (From the "Sunday Strand.") Within the last two decades the excavator has been actively engaged uncovering a lew cities in. the land of Eden, the homo of Abraham. The University of Pennsylvania is excavating Nippur, the Biblical name of which is Culneh (Gen. x. 10); the French are excavating Tello. a city which flourished before Abraham was born; and the Germans are at work upon the temple and the "Tower of Babel," in the city of Babylon. The origin of these remarkable Babylonian legends which so closely resemble the Biblical accounts of the Creation, Eden, and the Deluge belongs to this region. The Deluge story, for instance, as recorded by the Babylonians, is strikingly similar to the Old Testament, even in minor details. Atrachasis, the Babylonian Noah, is commended by the gods, after they had decreed a flood, to build a ship or ark; to pour pitch over the outside and the inside, ana to take the seed of life of every kind into the ship. When it was ready Atrachasis embarked with his family, servants, possessions, cattle, and beasts of the field, and closed the door. The heavens rained destruction for six days and nights, . . . The ship grounded on a mountain of Nizir. After seven days a dove is sent forth, but it returns, ns a resting-place it cannot find. A swallow is then sent forth, but it also returns. Lastly, a raven is let go, which does not turn back. Everything is then sent forth to the four points of the compass. An altar is erected and. sacrifices offered. The gods smell the sweet savour, and gather like flies about the sacrificer, after which it is decided that, instead of a deluge, wild beasts and famines shall diminish mankind because of its sins. A number of the tablets containing these legends were written about the time of Abraham. While they are doubtless copies of inscriptions which belong to a much earlier age, they certainly have a common origin with Die Biblical account. A number of very important building inscriptions from the ziggurrat Etcmenanki (Tower of Babel) have been found. They illustrate • the fact that the story in Genesis concerning its erection is in remarkable accord witli what is known from the inscriptions of the ancients who lived in the plain of Shinar. For instance, in Genesis, the builders, said, “Let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven.” Nebuchadnezzar, in an inscription which is to be seen in the museum of the University of Pennsylvania, recording his restoration of the tower, says that he puts his hand to -work “to raise up the tower, that the top may reach unto heaven/’ and yet the tower in his day was not over 150 feet high. It is not only that the ancients, in their exaggerated conceptions, used this expression to signify something lofty; but, as Professor Hilprecht has shown, these towers were local representations of the mythical mountain where the gods were supposed to live. The land of the Pharaohs during the last 50 years has been a scene of great activity on the part of the excavator. Here are brought to light not only the great monuments of antiquity, but the builders themselves who set up the monuments. In Babylonia, a basrelief picture of Amraphel, the contemporary of Abraham, was found, but in Egypt wo are permitted to gaze upon the very features of the Pharaohs that knew not Joseph, that oppressed Israel, and the one that was forced to liberate them from their bondage. Every lino in the Pentateuch which refers to Egypt has been shown through the excavations to be in remarkable accord with the facts revealed.