TOWN PUNNING IN 2000 B.C.

Shannon News, 6 September 1927, Page 3

TOWN PUNNING IN 2000 B.C.

HOMES OF THE CHALDEES. In the survey of the results of the excavations on the site of Ur of the Chaldees, before the Royal Institution recently, Mr Leonard C. Woolley gave detailed descriptions of many discoveries as full bf human interest as they are of importance to science. Mr Woolley is the leader of the joint expedition of the British Museum and the Museum, of the University of Pennsylvania, which restarted the work of excavation on October 28 last year, and continued until February 19. • The site selected was a lofty mound just outside the wall built by Nebuchadnezzar , round the sacred area. The work, the lecturer said, fell into two distinct parts, namely, the excavation of building sites principally houses of the Larsa period, and the examination of a large prehistoric ' cemetery. Parts of five streets were cleared, laying bare the remains, for the most part very well preserved, of fifteen private houses, which was suffi- . t eient to give a. fair idea of what town planning meant in the period between .; 2100 and 1900 B.C. The houses proved J to be remarkably well-built structures \ in burnt and crude brick, two storeys high, with an average, for the moderate size, of twelve rooms. One general type of dwelling was recognisable. It was built round a central courtyard, on to which opened all the rpoms. , Round the courtyard ran a wooden gallery, which was reached by r a staircase, of brick below and of wood for the upper flight, giving access to the cham. bers on the top floor. The roof extend- ( ed over the gallery, and sloped slightly inwards, leaving in the centre a comparatively small opening, which served as a light-well for the ground floor. It was possible to identify the purpose of some of the rooms. The front door led into a lobby communicating with rhe court, and facing the entrance was the reception-room, with the kitchen on one side. Altogether, in arrangement and appearance, such houses precisely resembled those to be found in the bet- f ter quarters of Basra or Baghdad at tlie present day. Evidence was dis- „ covered of an extension of the custom, r lready known, of burying the dead under the floors of the rooms in which/ they had lived. Some of the houses were provided with a regular funerary chanel designed as part of the original building. In one case, instead of the tomb sthere were grouped i<®und the altar clay bowls and coffins containing the bodies of infants, over thirty in number. It would appear that the chapel had been dedicated' to some goddess who was a patroness of children. One of the most important discoveriemade in the houses was that of a fallen brick arch in one of the doorways. That look back the history of the arch as a feutur° of domestic architecture several hundred years, and made is possible, to work out the reconstruction of buildings of the period (circa 2100 8.C.) in a manner for which there was hitherto no justification in fact. It was now certain that the arch and the vgult were regularly employed in temples, and it was not unreasonable to' suppose that in the next great building period, about 1400 8.C., the dome also u r as used.

The chief “finds” made in the houses were of inscribed tablets. Many of them were ordinary business documents, hut there were besides a few religious texts, lists of the pious foundations of kings, grammatical texts and syllabaries, and mathematical tablets with such subjects as tables of square and cube roots, exercises in land measurement, etc. Work on building sites other than that of Lar3a houses'threw much new light on the topography of the sacred Temenos, and led to the identification of the great temple of the Moon God, Nannar, in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. A remarkable building set up by Sinidinnam, King of Larsa, about 2000 8.C., was discovered, and further digging beneath the floors of the temple E-nun-Makh, first excavated in 1922, brought to light, in addition to. new historical infoimation, a set of ivory toilet instruments and an ivory plaque of Phoenician origin. The second part of the season was spent m the examination of a cemetery lying at the south-east end of the Temenos. The objects from the graves v were such as no previous excavations in Mesopotamia had produced, and it was n-oteworthy that in richness, in quality, and technique they were, better in proportion as they went back earlier in time. “It is clear,” Mr Woo-1 ioy said, “that we have to deal with a civilisation which, if not already decadent, had at least been in existene: for many centuries.” Most striking were the gold objects, including not \ (inly ornaments, but tools and instruments of gold, which must have been '‘or ceremonial rather than practical use. Copper was astonishingly abundant, and one instrument of iron was found in a grave in the lowest stratum. A great number of engraved cylinder seals were also' recovered - which were invaluable for the study of early art forms. Sculpture was represented by a fragment showing the funeral of - a king, the body being borne on a liondrawn vehicle. That was the earliest representation known of a wheeled vehicle. Concluding, Mr Woolley said, “The day we were due to stop excavating owing to lack of funds gold objects were to be seen sticking out of ; the ground at five or six places at once, so that it was obviously impossible to stop work altogether. Therefore with top men the work went on, and we made the most precious finds of the season. If we want to get to the beginning of civilisation we must not be satisfied with the sands of Egypt, nor must we stop short at the Euphrates: we must certainly look further east.”