BABYLONIAN ANTIQUITIES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5469, 7 October 1878, Page 3

BABYLONIAN ANTIQUITIES.

The Department of Oriental Antiquities of the British Museum has ; just obtained, by purchase, some interesting cuneiform inscriptions in a aeries of small "contract tablets, dated in the reign of Mithridates If., or Artabanus 11.,. one of the Arsacian‘Kings of Babylon, These tablets are of very'great importance, on account of their being dated with the dual system of both Seleucidm and the Arsacian mras, and thus fixing by indisputable authority the' starting : points of both these'epochs. Of tho seven tablets obtained, there are three that bear the double calculation of dates—the earliest being “Month Sebat (11) 18th day iu the 154th year—which equals - tho 213th year of Arsaka—King of Kings/’ There are also in the series two in the 155th or 219th year of Arsaka, and four , which bear only the date of the years reckoned'from; the revolt of the Seleucidm. The revolt of the . Soleucidco took place in n.c. 812, and by these tablets wo find that 84 years after, or in B.c. 228, that the revolt of Arsaces took place, and the Arsacian epoch . commenced. The lesser date, therefore, 155th year, .will give us tho year B.c. 93, which falls in : the reign of Artabanus 11., or Mithridates 11., the sixth of tho Arsaces. These tablets; with the exception of one dated in the reign of Pecorua, which is in. the museum at Zurich, are the latest examples of cuneiform writing known. They are contract tables relating to loans of money, and their -material is very coarse and , the writing careless. ’ It is also to ho noticed that, with very few exceptions,-the contracting parties are - designated by Semitic names, indicating, apparently, that this mode of record was confined almost solely to the conservative Semitic merchant of Babylon.