EXPLORING BABYLON.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19472, 6 May 1925, Page 10

EXPLORING BABYLON.

KOYAD CONVENT EEVEALED. A further report of the joint expedition of the British Museum and the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania to Mesopotamia, furnished hy Mr C. L». Woolley, was issued recently, states the Daily Telegraph. It states that during January the expedition carried on work on the site of the convent built by King Nabonidus for his daughter, the ground plan of which has been recovered almost in its entirety, a fine large building, well designed, with dwelling-houses at the back, then offices, school rooms, etc., surrounding on three sides the great paved court. Most of the convent buildings were found in a deplorably ruined state, and today virtually nothing of them is left, for all had to be removed in order that the explorers might reach the lower levels. " Six or eight feet below the foundations of tho Nabonidus house lies another big range of buildings connected with Edublalmakh in its earlier form. Again, there is a great courtyard paved with brick, and about it offices and stores; but now the old shrine stands isolated on the plinth of fluted brickwork, and the walls, preserved to a man’s height and more, bear on their bricks tho Boyal stamps of Kuri-galzh, of Sinidinnam, of Ishma-dagan, and of Bur-Sin, and date hack to more than 2000 years before Christ. Numerous objects were found in the process of removing the upper strata, little copper watchdpgs that were buried beneath the floors to protect the house, fragments of sculpture and of inscriptions, vases of bronze and of clay, and terra-cotta figurines; but tho most interesting discovery was of a hoard of clay tablets which preserve the records of the business affairs of the temple over a space of two or three years ab>ut 2200 B.c. ” There are inventories of the lands attached to the Nannar Temple, lists of the rent and tithes paid by the farmers on those lands, little clay receipts for every pound of butter or pint of oil or head of sheep that was brought into the great storehouse, and monthly and yearly summaries of all those receipts; lists of the payments by the town merchants in hides or woollen thread, gold, and silver, and copper; issue vouchers duly dated and signed and sealed for everything that the temple steward gave out to the priests and functionaries of the temple to the guards and sweepers, and to the men, women, and children employed in the temple workshops. And then there are the paybooks and registers of these workshops, recording how much raw wool was handed out per month to each employee, and how much finished cloth each one produced, and all the details of grain, oil, and tho like, supplied to each as rations and pay, the amount Varying according to the, age and utility of the worker. It all gives a wonderfully vivid picture of how life went on in the great buildings, through the ruins of which one walks to-day, repcopling it with a very real past. “The excavation of the temple of Nin-Gal is not yet complete. There is a large'building of conventional late Babylonian type put up bv an Assyrian Governor in 650 b.c., and added to or restored by Nebuchadnezzar 50 years later, and hv his grandson Nabonidus. A few deeper cuts have shown that below this lies another temple of very much earlier date, and from them chance has already brought to light a number of very important inscriptions, from which can be gathered mnch of the history of a building which w'c have not yet seen. Their discovery gives ground for the hope that the excavation of these lower levels will produce a rich harvest of museum objects.”