194 



T. G. PINCHES_, LL.D., M.R.A.S., ON 



The ruins at Nippur were reported by Haines as going down to 

 virgin soil 33 feet below the present level of the plain, and Mr. 

 Jones said he could only understand that on the assumption that 

 the level of the plain was raised by a flood ; if so the lowest 

 Ziggurat was antediluvian : a conclusion to which several other 

 facts in that connection pointed. 



The Rev. A. Irving, B.A., D.Sc, would only detain the meeting 

 at that late hour with one or two brief remarks (suggested by his 

 own recent work*) on the most valuable paper that they had just 

 listened to. One point that especially struck him was the bold 

 perspective, in which it tended to place Abraham as an historical 

 personage, in the face of much speculation of late years as to the 

 mythical character of the Patriarchs. He enquired if the term 

 "cattle" (p. 179) included the liorse^ that animal being never men- 

 tioned in the Genesis enumerations of the possessions of the 

 Patriarch, used mostly for war purposes (chiefly by the Egyptians) 

 in those Pentateuchal times [and ignored in the Tenth Command- 

 ment].! Might it be possible that the Babylonian term "black- 

 headed" (p. 168) had some reference to traditions or survivals of the 

 negroid (?) Neolithic people of the Grimaldi Race % And was it 

 possible to fill in hypothetically the gap (p. 169) so as to read 

 "denizens of [the caves]"? He desired to associate himself with 

 Dr. Pinches' "contention" in the paragraph: "How early the 

 date . . . original scheme " (pp. 170,171). It seems to suggest 

 an Abrahamic inspiration for the Creation Story of Genesis ! 



On the motion of the Chairman, the Meeting returned a hearty 

 vote of thanks to the Lecturer, and to the Secretary of the Society 

 of Biblical Archaeology, who had furnished some of the slides by 

 which the Lecture had been illustrated. 



The Lecturer thanked the Meeting for the appreciative atten- 

 tion which had been given him, and for the cordial vote of thanks. 

 In reply to the first question, he would say that towers like that 



* See Reports of the British Association for the years 1910, 1911, 1913. 



t Cf. Job xxxix, 19 11". The wild horse was known long before, and 

 had probably been domesticated by the Neolithic men. Its immediate 

 ancestry dates back to the Pliocene Period, in which remains of several 

 species of Equus are well known. 



% As described by Professor Marcellin Boule from the Grimaldi grottoes 

 near Meiitone. Any clue, which seems to bring us on Biblical lines into 

 touch with pre-Adamic races, is of interest. 



