DISCOVERY OF AN ASSYRIAN LIBRARY 3500 YEARS OLD

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 2243, 3 October 1889, Page 2

DISCOVERY OF AN ASSYRIAN LIBRARY 3500 YEARS OLD

The Vlotorla Institute of London held Its annual meeting at Adelphl terraoe on 1 t July. It was anaouno.d tbat family matters, consequent on the death of his father, prevented Professor Ssyce's presenoe and he had ohoson the Rev Dr Wright author of ' The Hlttitea,' to read tbe address. It gave an historical description of wh t bas beoome known In regard tothe oocques'H of Amenophlslllfaashown by the archive*, of his palace, whioh have ooly lately been discovered, and whioh the profess- r weat laat winter to Investigate on the spot before writing tho addiess for iho Vlotorla Institute. Of tbe tablets and Inscriptions ho Bald: — "From them we learn that In the fifteenth oentury before our era— a oontury before the Exodus — active 11 erary Intercourse waa going on thnnghput '.be civilised word of Western Asia, between Babylon and Egypt and the smaller States of Palestine, of Syria, of Mesopotamia, and even of Oippadoola. And this intercourse was oarrled on by means of ihe Babylonian language and tbe complicated Bibylontan script. This Implies that all over the civilised Eaat there wero libraries aad sohools where the Babylonian lauguage and literature were taught and learned, Babylonian appeared to have been as muoh the languige of diplomacy aud oultlvated society ai Frenoh has beoome ln modern times, with the d'fforenoe tbat wtoreas It does not take long to learn to read Frenoh, tin cuneiform syllabary rf quired years of hard labor and attention before It could be aoqnired. Wo oan now understand the meaning of tho name of the Oanaanitieh city which stood near Hebron, and whioh seema to have been one of the most important of the towns of Southern Palestine __irjath-Sepher, or • Booktown,' mnit have been the seat of a famous library, consisting mainly, if not altogether, as the Tel-el-Amarna tablets inform us, of day tablets inscribed with cuneiform characters- As the city also bore the name of Debir, or ' Sanctupry," we may conclude that the tablets were stored m <U chief temple, like the libraries ot Assyria and Babylonia. Tt may be that tbey are still lying under the soil, awaiting Ihe day when the spade of the excavator shall restore tbem to the light. Tbe literary influence of Babylonia io the age before ihe Israelii lab. conquest of Palestine explains the o ourrence of the names of the Babylonian deities among the Inhabitants ofthe nest, Moses died on the summit of Mount Nebo, which received its name from the Babylonian god of literature, to whom tbe groat temple of B irelppa was dedloated ; and Slnul Itself, the mountain "of Sin," testifies to a worship of the JJ-bylonlan Moon* god, Sin, amid the aolitudes of the desert. Moloch, or Malik, was a Babylonian divinity like Rlmmon, the air god, after whom more than one locality m Palestine was named, and Anat, the wife of Ano, the sky god, gave ber name t. the Palestinian Anah, is well as to the Anatbotb, the oity of 'tha Anat gnddeaieß." In a oarsful reading of the tablets Oanon Sayoe oame upon many ancient names and incidents known up to tbe present only from tbeir appearance In tbe Bible, All these he o're'ully described, as well as several references In the talbets to tbe Hlttltes. !In regard to another point he said :— " Ever sinpe the progress cf Egyptology made It clear that R»me_ea IJ w»s the Pharaoh of tbe oppression, it w«a diffioult to understand how suoh an interval aa the whole period of the 18th Dynasty oould lie between him and the 'new' King whose else Beemp to have beep followed almost Immediately by the f'ervltude and oppression of the Hebrew. The tablets of Te . lei - Amarna now show ihat the difficulty does not exist. Up to tho death of Khu-.n-Aten tbo t-emlto had , greater influence then tbe uallve m tbo ! land of Mlzralm."