GREAT ART FIND OF BABEL AGE.

Shannon News, 28 August 1925, Page 1

GREAT ART FIND OF BABEL AGE.

We have found (says a Bagdad statement of March 8, 1925, issued lately by the Director of the British Museum) strewn over the floor of a courtyard which we were laboriously clearing, fragments, themselves large enough to be reckoned •as monuments of one of the greatest and most splendid works of art in stone that Mesopotamia has yet produced. Last year we laid bare the Ziggurat of Ur, the huge tower of the Moon god set up by King Ur-Engur about 2300 years before 1 Christ. Now we have, beautifully carved in relief upon a limestone slab which when complete was sft. across and nearly 15ft. high, the portrait of its builder and his own record of its conception and achievement.

In one scene the king receives from his god the order to build the tower; •the god Wlds out to liim the rod and line of the architect, the measuring reed and the flaxen line with which Ezekiel, an exile by the waters of Babylon, saw planned out the city and temple of his dreams. In another scene Ur-Engur shows obedience by appearing before the god'carrying all the tools of the mason, ready himself to lay the first brick of the Ziiggurat. In yet another scene, of which, unfortunately, but a few small fragments remain, we see the actual construction in progress with the builders carrying the mortar up ladders which are set against the unfinished walls. In further scenes the king celebrates other of his good deeds; he was a great digger of canals,, some for irrigation only, others for trade, that ships might pass from Ur to the Persian Gulf and take toll of the Arabian coast.

The list of such canals is written on the stone, and the blessing that they brought to the people is symbolically shown by scenes wherein the king stands in prayer before the god. Above his head angels fly downwards, holding out vases from which streams of water descend upon the earth. Scenes of sacrifice and of music illustrate the piety and the triumphs of the great founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur. Broken as it is, and in parts much damaged, this stela ranks as one of the two finest works of Sumerian art k'nown and in dramatic interest is surpassed by none. The discovery was made in the courtyard of E-dublalmakh, one of the most important of the ancient shrines of Ur. "In & previous report I described the excavation of its upper, levels. Now it has been cleared down to the, pavements laid by Kuri-galzu, King of Babylon, about the sixteenth century, 8.C., and only the Ziggurat itself is a more imposing ruin. Through side chambers arid gateways, which still stand to over the height of a man, the visitor passes into a great paved court, at one end of which the little «ihrine rises high on its pedestal of panelled brickwork to dominate the building and around. From a corner of the court a flight of steps leads up to the terrace on which the Ziggurat is built; another gateway forms the end of a paved street leading to the Temple of Nin Gal, the Moon god's wife. This temple has also been cleared in the course of the last month down to the Kuri-galzu level. It has yieided interesting plans of its several periods, and not a few fine objects, of which the. best was a small head in black diorite, the portrait of some priest of about 2200 B.C. Inscriptions found here prove that the foundation of the temple dates back to a time far earlier than that of Kuri-galzu, but the excavation of these lower ruins has been reserved three years* work we have covered between a third and a half of the area of the walled enclosure which was the Temenous or Sacred Place of Ur. Our plans at least for the various periods between the 16th Century B.C. and the to another season. At the end of his new Temenos wall round the ancient sanctuaries and his grandson Nabonidus restored them for the' last time) are fairly complete; so that we see the buildings, not as isolated units, sixth when Nebuchadnezzar put up but as parts of a connected whole which was the Moon God's temple. Though the older buildings have suffered more from time and restoration, and their excavation necessarily a longer and costlier task, is not yet so far advanced, we can already form a tolerably coherent and truthful picture of this northern end of the Temenos at a much earlier date, when Ur-En-gur's Ziggurat was new, or when, later, Abraham walked along the , brick-paved streets of Ur.