DISCOVERY 



255 



noticed, earthquakes may yet have been caused by 

 eruptions of molten lava which have not reached the 

 surface, since geological evidence shows that these 

 subterranean intrusions do take place. 



***** 



The theory that earthquakes are due to the tidal 

 attraction of the moon has been recently revived in 

 several charters. It is a very old idea, and super- 

 ficially sounds attractive, especially if the view, now 

 discredited, that the earth consists of a solid crust and 

 a molten centre, is held. It was put on some kind of 

 basis by Alexis Pewey in 1864 ; he collected a very 

 large number of records of earthquakes, and found that 

 they were more numerous when the moon was nearest 

 to the earth. Since his day, however, a great many 

 more records have been made, and it is certain that 

 there is no relationship between the nearness of the 

 moon and disasters such as that in Tokyo. However, 

 the statistical work done by Pewey has pro\-ed 

 invaluable to later workers. 



In a general sense, it is certain that an earthquake is 

 an effort on the part of the surface of the earth to 

 accommodate itself to a stress or strain. Dr. Robert 

 Mullet thought that this strain was caused by the 

 gradual cooling of a heated globe ; every now and then 

 the earth cracks like a glass vessel, in his view, since 

 the hard outer crust must accommodate itself to the 

 shrinking core. Other authorities have considered 

 the effect of long ages of redistribution of loads caused 

 by the denudation of mountains by ice and rain, and 

 the consequent instability. Perhaps most earth- 

 quakes may be attributed to a cause of this nature. 

 The balance of the earth's surface, which has been 

 upset by ages of denudation and sedimentation, is sud- 

 denly restored by what is called a " Tectonic earth- 

 quake." Sometimes a deep shelf is caused by the 

 sudden collapse ; sometimes the disturbance is beneath 

 the sea. Why earthquakes are more common in one 

 part of the world than another ; why volcanoes appear 

 to have a definite relationship in many cases, remain 

 difficult questions to answer. They are perhaps bound 

 up with the problem of the formation of the earth's 

 surface discussed in recent articles in this Journal.' 

 ***** 



Articles in our November number will include ; An 

 Imperial Airship Service, by Major W. T. Blake ; 

 .4 Working Philosophy of Life, by Dr. W. Tudor Jones ; 

 The Berber Tribes of Morocco, by Dr. E. Gurney Salter ; 

 and Arsenic Burning in Devon and Cornwall, by Edward 

 Cohen. 



' See Discovery, vol. iii. No, 29 : The Origin of Continents 

 and Oceans, by Professor Alfred Wegener ; vol. iv. No. 43 : 

 The Structure of the Ea'lh — .■) New Theory, bj' O. H. T. Rish- 

 beth (describing Kober's thcor)-). 



The Shrine of the Moon- 

 god, and other Recent 

 Discoveries at Ur 



By H. R. Hall, D.Litt., and C. L. Woolley, M.A. 



The mounds of Tell el-Mukayyar, near Nasiriyeh in 

 Southern 'Irak, which we now know to mark the site 

 of the ancient Ur of the Chaldees, have been noted as 

 a seat of early civilisation ever since the time of the 

 Italian traveller Pietro della Valle, who in 1625 first 

 described the temple-tower which then as now 

 dominated the surrounding mounds like an Egyptian 

 pyramid. Delia Valle brought back to Europe some 

 of the inscribed bricks that then as now strewed the 

 site, and was the first to conjecture that the strange 

 marks upon them were ancient writing. 



Early Excavations on the Site 



The interest of the British Museum in Tell el-Mu- 

 kayyar dates from the time when Rawlinson at Baghdad 

 was deciphering the cuneiform script and British in- 

 fluence was powerful in Turkish Asia, so that requests 

 from British travellers and antiquarians to e.xcavate 

 and seek for antiquities met with ready acquiescence. 

 Moved by Rawlinson and the accounts of Mr. Loftus, 

 of the Persian-Turkish boundary commission of 1849, 

 who had excavated at Warka and Susa and visited 

 Mukayyar, the Trustees of the British Museum in 

 1854 deputed Mr. J. E. Taylor, H.M. Vice-Consul 

 at Basrah, to excavate at Mukayyar and at the neigh- 

 bouring mounds of Shahrein, which cover the ancient 

 city of Eridu. He dug with considerable success at 

 both places and gave us the first intelligible accounts 

 of them, besides sending back interesting antiquities 

 (such as the foundation-cylinders of Nabonidus's 

 restoration of the temple-tower at Ur) which have 

 been in the British Museum since the time of the 

 Crimean \\'ar. 



Post-war Excavations 



The work then lapsed, and was not resumed till 

 the last year of the Great War, when the Trustees 

 determined to take advantage of the British military 

 occupation of Trak, and resume archaeological opera- 

 tions there. Captain R. Campbell Thompson, late of 

 the British Museum and then on the Intelligence Staff 

 of the Army in Mesopotamia, was commissioned by 

 the Museum authorities to take up this work, and 

 proceeded to Ur and Shahrein in igiS. At Ur he 

 made a short preliminary investigation, then confining 

 his work to Shahrein. Next year (1919) Mr. (then 

 Captain) H. R. Hall, of the British Museum, was sent 



