NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN.

Western Star, 23 April 1920, Page 2

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN.

The old Oriental world ’ (writes Prof. A. H. Sayce in the Sunday Observer) Was wonderfully like our own. It was not acquainted with the mechanical contrivances -of the twentieth century, with trains and steamers, telegraphs and telephones, but on the cultural side it was on a level with ourselves, and in some respects even in advance of us. Culture, as opposed to mechanical civilisation, is always confined to the few, and what is still the high-water mark of the few had already been attained 4000 years ago. We already knew that such was the case with the Greece and Rome df the classical age. Then came the revelation of ancient Egyptian, culture clearly Krete, and it is now the turn of Babylonia. The strong points of Babylonian culture, were not artistic, as was the case in. Egypt and Krete, hut literary and commercial. The latest discovery of Babylonian archaeology has an astonishing m/odlern ring. Some centuries before Abraham was born in Ur of the Chaldees, a dynasty of kings was reigning which had its capital in that city. Its rule or supremacy was acknowledged from Susa to the Mediterranean, from the Persian Gulf to the Taurus mountains. In eastern Asia Minor, three miles from the present Kaieariyeh, there was a Babylonian colony, partly military, partly' commercial, which held the high-road to the north-west and was the centre of the metal trade. Babylonian firms worked the silver, copper and lead/ mines oif Asia Minor, and supplied Western Asia with their products.

—A Republic of 4300 Years Ago.— They have left us their records inscribed in ouuieform characters on tablets of clay. Hundreds of them have been recently discovered, all belonging to the same l period,- about 2400 B.C. Some of the tablets are letters, often on business matters; others of them relate to comnueroial of legal affairs. They come: abruptly to an end; it is. probable that when internal decay* prevented the Babylonian Government from defending any longer their distant possessions the Babylonian settlements in Asia Minor were destroyed by the wild tribes of the North. At all events, excavation has shown that the particular city where the tablets were found was suddenly overthrown and: never inhabited again. The. larger number of colonists came from Assyria, which at that time was a Babylonian province. They had a republican, and ’not a monarcbial, foyni of government, though acknowledging in a sort of shadowy way the nominal supremacy of the Babylonian kings. But they were actually governed by their own officers, a prov»- _ ince or district being under the government of a “prince,” and a city ; under that rtf a “prefect.” Besides ; these officers there ■ were also judges, : as well as certain officials, who gave their names to the “weeks’ of five days each into which the year was i divided, and by means of which time 1 was counted. —The Woman’s University.— But by the side of the “prince* and • the “ prefect”' there was also a “prini cess” and a “ prelectees,” and a, cun--1 ous fact that emerges from* the tablets ; is that the ,l princess” and “ prefeet- ■ ess” had equal powers and rights ■ with the “prince” and the prefect ._ s “Women’s rights” had already tn- • umphed at Burns, as the city was ’ called); the women could trade there i like the men, could bequeath their i property like men, and possessed, it would seem, the same official author- . ity as the men. It would appear that, > after all, there was some truth in the i classical story of the Amiazons whose , home was in the same part of the • world. , . Along with “women’s rights,- nat- , urally, went women’s education, amt • the- latest discovery is the most mod- . ern touch of all. A tablet has turned up- which refers to at womans col- • lege” or “university.” in t* l6 neigh- ■ boirrhood of Burns, where it gave the names of “The Womens Town to the suburb in which it stood. This ■ university was divided mto the wo faculties of “ Leterature > each of which was under a- Principal,” who, however, was not a woman, but a mule professor. Surely ‘ there is nothing new under the sun. —The Babylonian Postman.— But the tablets have brought to light many other things which have their parallel in the modern world. We learn from the letters that there., were roads, throughout the country, along which the postman went regularly, though the letters and envelopes he aarried were of clay, like the •stamps which had the form of discs.* In one of the- letters the writer ex- . presses the hope that the postman will have •» bright moon, and a clear sky to light him on his way at night. In some of the correspondence reference is made to- a species of cheque, the messenger being instructed to receive from the correspondent of the writer the equivalent in money of the sum named on the tablet presented to i him. Truly, the Near East has a long | past of civilisation behind it’