THE LATEST DISCOVERIES IN BABYLONIA. 



193 



shown in the astronomical figures on boundary stones. He asked 

 for information as to the substitution of the constellation Libra for 

 that of the Altar in the Zodiac. He believed that the modern 

 zodiacal Libra was spurious and was introduced by Egyptian 

 influences. 



Mr. M. L. EousE said that at the great Palestine Exhibition in 

 1907 a seed-plough of the same kind as that portrayed in these 

 most ancient inscriptions was driven by a Bedouin upon a model 

 field; in surprise he asked the driver whether wheat was not usually 

 sown broadcast in the East, but received the answer that many 

 other seeds were sown broadcast, but wheat was always sown through 

 this leather hopper and tube set behind the ploughshare. 



Lentil that evening he had not known which of the two great 

 towers lying respectively in the heart of the ruins of Babylon and 

 at Birs Nimrud was the original Tower of Bal)el, the former 

 corresponding to E-Sagila, or Temple of the Lofty Head, the latter 

 to E-Zida, or Temple of Life ; he now knew that it was the 

 former. 



He noted that according to this latest found Deluge Story the 

 God Ea was constantly served by Ziugiddu (or Noah) before the 

 Deluge, and since, in the Gisdhubar story it was Ea who warned the 

 good man to prepare the ship of deliverance, was not the name Ea 

 really a variant of Jah^ the shorter alternative Hebrew name for the 

 true God ^ 



Colonel Van Someren urged that if the Tower of Babylon was 

 only 200 feet high, it could not fulfil the Biblical description of 

 "reaching up to heaven." There was no verb in the Hebrew at all. 

 He had read that the real meaning was that the Tower was an 

 observatory ; perhaps Avith a planisphere or map of the heavens laid 

 out at the top ? Could the Lecturer enlighten them on this point 1 



The Rev. F. A. Jones observed that the period chiefly dealt 

 with by Dr. Pinches was an intensely interesting one, it being so 

 close to that represented in Scripture as immediately following the 

 Flood. It was remarkable how entirely the account of Berosus was 

 confirmed, even in its chronology, by the contemporary inscriptions 

 already deciphered, and we were probably on the eve of discoveries 

 which would elucidate the strange period he gave as 33,091 years, 

 which read as days was 91 years, and so read made his chronology 

 practically the same as that of Genesis. 



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