The Wonderful City of Abraham

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12406, 27 March 1926, Page 11

The Wonderful City of Abraham

Ancient Relics Unearthed

CASKETS OF TREASURES

A N interesting account of recent discoveries at Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, is given by . the “Daily Chronicle.” The treasures brought to light include relics of the royaFart and advanced architecture of TTr about 4200 years ago, within 100 years of the time assigned by Dasher to Noah’s Deluge. Other carvings found are estimated to be closp on 6000 yearo old, dating from years when Methuselah was supposed to have been a comparatively young man. Four brick boxes containing undisturbed the objects deposited at the time of the founding of the Palace of King l>nngi, who reigned 2250 8.C., have been excavated at Ur of the Chaldees ■ —the city of that pastoral prihce of old, the patriarch Abraham. These include copper statuettes of Dungi carrying on his head the basket of mortar for tile laying of the first brick, and ■tone tablets inscribed with the dedication of the work. “It was a dramatic moment when the cover was lifted off the first box,” writes Mr C. Leonard Woolley', leader of the excavations, in a repost issued recently by the British Museum authorities. The little figure, its metal turned to a vivid green, was seen standing ■upright in one corner of the box, with the tablet laid at its feet. Close to this was found, loose in the rubble, a broken figure of the same king, carved in black: diorite.”

HEAD OF THE MOON GODDESS Not far off was the most beautiful example of Sumerian sculpture yet found —the head of the Moon Goddess, exquisitely carved in white marble, its eyes inlaid with lapis lazuli and, shell. This is described as a most lifelike piece of work, the contours of the face full and soft, the hair a faithful rendering of an elaborately waved coilture s «■

r piece which is regarded as proving that the artists of. the Third Dynasty had achieved • a skill worthy of the great empire ruled by their kings. “The season’s work at Ur started on October 28th last,” writes Mr .Woolley, “and the first month’s digging proved-most successful. The programme was that we should excavate a large mound under whioh I expected to .find the palace-of Dungi, son of the builder of the great Ziggurat, hut we scarcely started work when we came upon tombs and drains set'so thickly together that I had to move the best part of my men on to the next mound. That we were correct in expecting to find the remains of Dungi here was proved by the welcome discovery, in a broken stretch.of mud briok wall,i of tho four brick boxes. . “The graves which made so difficult our search for the buildings _ were in themselves interesting. Against the side of one we found the gravediggers’ tools, dropped accidentally—hoes or adzes, like those used by the modern Egyptian peasant, but of bronze instead of iron. SCHOOLBOY EXERCISES “Inside another, the grave of an assessor in the law courts, was a little set of tablets recording his last business transactions. Among other things, he had just added a single room to his town house,. and had bought the necessary little plot of land for the modest equivalent of 17s 6d. “The neighbouring mound proved no less fertile. We traced out the inner face of the great wall built by King Nebuchadnezzar round thp old buildings of the Sacred Area of Ur, and found its south-wegt gate, and then, going deeper inside the wall, laid bare some houses. These seem to have been inhabited about 693 8.C., when some-

uiiiiHiunniiuiiiiiniiiiiliiiuiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiniuiiiliiiiiiiiiiillile one dropped on the floor -a lot of inscribed clay tablets, some of whioh contained schoolboys’ .exercises and grammars and some religious hymns or prayers.

“But it was beneath |the floor of this house that our best discoveries were made, for here, as. if appears, there had been thrown out' some of the contents of a very ancient shrine. Here we found pots of archaic forms,' beads in gold and silver, lapis lazuli and carnelian, and a pair of rams carved in white gypsum, probably the supports for the throne of a god, which must date from at least 3000 B.C. “A little plaque of alabaster, carved on both sides, tlhmgh only half of the original work and thofigh. almost grotesquely primitive in., its carving, raised our interest to a high pitch,continues Mr Woolley. “The scene represented is a boat made of reeds tied together, with its stern rising high in the air—or this may be the early artist’s convention far showing the guffah, that coracle-like craft which one can see any. day on fche Tigris at Bagdad; amidships there is a deckcabin with an arched roof. “On one side of the plaque a man is seen standing at the stern of a boat, a naked figure whose head is, unluckily, missing, while in the cabin is a pig. On the other side the pig’s.-.place- is taken by a gooSe, and two fish are hanging, against the stern by a sliring. “Here is a genre piece illustrating the life of the marsh-dwellers, in this case a prehistoric folk, later m Babylonian history the People of the Sea, to-day the Marsh Arabs. But the temptation to see more in it than this was tod strbng; we called it Noah’s Ark as soon as it was found, and, 'as the earliest representation of Noah’s Ark, the boat of Utanapishtim, it will take it place among the treasures of Ur.”,