ARCHEOLOGY. (BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN MASHONALAND.) 



35 



been edited by Dr. Schlect, and published under 

 the title Doctrina XII Apostolorum una cum an- 

 tiqua Versione Latina prius partis de Duabus 

 Viis. The manuscript is of the eleventh century, 

 and suggests that the original may have been of 

 pre-Christian-Jewish origin, adapted to the uses 

 of the composer of the Didache. 



At Tel Sandahannah, the explorations of the 

 Palestine Exploration Fund, under Dr. F. J. Bliss, 

 have resulted in the discovery of figures and tab- 

 lets which are regarded by the Orientalists who 

 have examined them as connected with the prac- 

 tice of witchcraft. Sixteen nude figurines in lead 

 of men and women having their hands and feet 

 bound- in complicated fetters and writhing in 

 agony, supposed by Dr. Bliss to represent captives, 

 are pronounced by M. Clermont-Ganneau to stand 

 for persons against whom incantations were di- 

 rected. About 50 small stone tablets in the Greek 

 inscriptions are decided by Prof. Sayce to be 

 magical charms and incantations. In their ex- 

 planations the authors refer to the practice in the 

 old magic of making a figure in wax (or in the 

 other soft and readily melting substance, lead) of 

 the person to be bewitched, and melting it be- 

 fore the fire or piercing it with needles or pins. 



Babylonian and Assyrian. Three important 

 discoveries in Babylon are announced in a pam- 

 phlet by Friedrich Delitzsch, Feb. 1, 1901: 1. The 

 location of the Marduk temple, Esagila, described 

 by Herodotus and referred to frequently in Baby- 

 lonian inscriptions, under the mound known as 

 Amram. 2. The great procession street which 

 was rebuilt by Nebuchadrezzar and named Aibur- 

 shabu, of the pavement of which slabs of lime- 

 stone have been found bearing the inscription, 

 " Nebuchadrezzar, King of Babylon, son of Nabo- 

 polassar, am I. The street of Babylon I have 

 paved gloriously for the procession of the god 

 Marduk, the great god, with tablets of limestone. 

 O Lord Marduk, grant everlasting life! " The 

 determination of the position of this street has 

 also led to the determination of the position of 

 the wall, Imgur-Bel, the great inner wall of 

 Babylon. The third discovery is that of the tem- 

 ple E-neach, the sanctuary of the goddess Nin- 

 mach, the giver of fertility. It is in the ruin 

 mound of Kasr, about the center of the Babylo- 

 nian complex of ruin mounds. 



The inscription on an obelisk which was erected 

 as a boundary stone or " landmark," discovered 

 at Susa, is cited by Mr. W. St. Chad Boscawen as 

 illustrating a highly civilized state of society 

 existing in Chaldea in an extremely remote an- 

 tiquity. The monument bears engraved upon it 

 the title deeds of estates purchased by a certain 

 Manishtusa or Manishturba, king of the city of 

 Kish, one of the oldest city kingdoms of Chaldea; 

 which show that a system was already established 

 of relations between the king and his tenants, 

 with fixed stipulations as to payments, provision 

 of food, etc. The date of the deeds is estimated 

 to be about 4500 B. c. 



Below the remains of the structures of Sargon 

 and Naramsin found by Prof. H. V. Hilprecht at 

 Nippur and already mentioned in the Annual 

 Cyclopaedia, the excavators went through 31 feet 

 of debris, representing a period of which we have 

 as yet no knowledge. Antiquities were found be- 

 longing to that period which indicated that the 

 arts had then already reached a high develop- 

 ment. Writing was in an advanced stage; and 

 the workmanship displayed in the carving of 

 some of the vases could well bear comparison with 

 the best efforts of later art. The relics found here 

 indicate, as a whole, to use the words of Prof. 

 Hilprecht, " that behind Sargon I and Naramsin 



there lies a long and uninterrupted chain of de- 

 velopment covering thousands of years; and that 

 these two powerful rulers of the fourth millennium 

 before Christ, far from leading us back to the 

 dawn of civilization, are at the best but two 

 prominent figures from a middle chapter of tho 

 history of Babylonia." Notices have been found 

 of about twelve kings who reigned before Sargon. 



An account of the educational system of the 

 ancient Babylonians as revealed by certain tablets 

 which are apparently of the nature of students' 

 exercise books, has been contributed to the So- 

 ciety of Biblical Archeology by Mr. T. G. Pinches. 

 In the system of study thus indicated as followed 

 by young students were found the single wedge 

 corresponding to the " pothooks and hangers " 

 of modern days, lists of characters, extracts from 

 bilingual lists and syllabaries, practice in writing 

 names of men and countries, together with titles 

 of officials, phrases used in trade documents, and 

 extracts from legends, which seem to have fur- 

 nished, as it were, the finish to a certain course 

 of study. Other scribes wrote out, as practice, 

 extracts from various bilingual lists wooden 

 objects, lists of plants, vessels, etc., preceded by 

 an extract from an incantation and perhaps from 

 a list of temples. Mr. Pinches had succeeded in 

 identifying one of the tablets written out by an 

 ancient Babylonian student and found that it was 

 part of an incantation invoking the aid of the 

 god Ea to restore to health a person suffering 

 from some disorder. The tablet contained some 

 curious and interesting expressions, particularly 

 in that part of it called the Prayer of Life. The 

 afflicted man was to be relieved by the food which 

 was placed near his head, so that he might live 

 and his foot might " stand on the ground of life." 

 He was the son of his god, an expression con- 

 nected by the late George Bertin with the " sons 

 of God" of Gen. vi, 2, which he regarded as ex- 

 plaining the biblical passage referred to This 

 man, therefore, being one of the faithful, the 

 eye which looked at him ill was seemingly to be 

 cast down. (This part -of the tablet is defective.) 



From the enormous number of baked-clay tab- 

 lets and fragments from the ruins of Nineveh and 

 Babylon preserved in the British Museum, a selec- 

 tion is to be made, under the authority of the 

 trustees of that institution, of all the texts relat- 

 ing to legends concerning the creation of the 

 world and the mythical origins and deeds of some 

 of the earliest and most famous kings of Meso- 

 potamia, with a view to their publication in a col- 

 lected edition. Since George Smith in 1876 called 

 attention to resemblances between parts of these 

 legends and some passages in the early chapters 

 of Genesis, several renderings of them have ap- 

 peared in English, French, and German, and much 

 attention has been given to the study of them in 

 America. The text used by Mr. Smith in his 

 work, after his death lost sight of for twenty-five 

 years, and only recently identified, will be pub- 

 lished for the first time in this collection. 



Mashonaland. Dr. Carl Peters has been for 

 the last two years, or since 1899, when previous 

 accounts of his work were published, exploring 

 the country between Zambesi and Sabi (Zambesia 

 or Mashonaland), and reports that he has been 

 able to ascertain that all the ancient ruins about 

 the eastern border of Mashonaland apparently be- 

 long to the same class of civilization. He has 

 everywhere found the same type of ruins, with the 

 cyclopean wall as the typical form of house-build- 

 ing; while in some parts whole cities of these 

 buildings are easily found. Artificial water fur- 

 rows are still existent in parts of the region. Not 

 only are all old workings on gold mines generally 



