DISCOVERIES AT UR

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 775, 23 September 1929, Page 10

DISCOVERIES AT UR

PROOF OF FLOOD FOUND REMARKABLE EXHIBITS There was recently on view at the British Museum in London the annual exhibition of antiquities discovered in the past season by Mr. C. L. Woolley at Ur of the Chaldees. While not so sensational in its treasure of works of Sumerian art in gold as the exhibition of last year, it was in every way as interesting, and contained objects of capital importance for the history of art and early civilisation, says the London “Observer.” In the centre of the exhibition hall were shown great harps (or rather lyres) of gold, of’ silver, and of inlay on wood. One of these with inlaid sounding-box had as its chief ornament a great golden head of bearded bull, which is in some ways the most important work of art yet discovered at Ur; it has style as well as energy. Another, of silver, is adorned with a most remarkable group of deer rising on their hind legs ‘to browse on high waterplants. Another, also of silver, is remarkable for the fact that its tuningtubes are still in position. Another harp has only its bull-head remaining, but its original form is shown in plaster poured into the hole in the earth which contained its wooden frame that now has disappeared. The form of these lyres was confirmed by the actual representation of one on a remarkable gold cylinder-seal exhibited in a side-case.

In another case were two very curious works of art; two goats rising in the same way to browse on plants. Both were found crushed and deformed by the weight of earth that had lain on them for five thousand years; one was shown as found, the other had been restored to its original shape. The fleece of the goats is shown in locks made out of shell and lapis lazuli; the plants on which they feed are of gold overlaid on wood. A new feature this year was the exhibition of cuneiform tablets found, and of the specimens that illustrated Mr. Woolley’s discovery of archaeological proof (as he considers it) of the reality of a great prehistoric flood in Southern Babylonia, w T hich, in his opinion, is identical with the famous Ftbod of Babylonian legend, which undoubtedly must have been the original of the Biblical account of the Deluge. Cuneiform scholars have, of course, long been familiar with this, and have always considered that the story, like most traditions, was based upon fact, a real historical “deluge” of very great extent which remodelled early Babylonian history, bringing the pre-dyn-astic period of the chalcolithic makers of painted pottery to an er.d and ushering in the historic age. And now Mr. Woolley at Ur (and, we understand, Professor Langdon’s expedition also at Kish) have, in view of the excavations discovered archaeological proof of it. Mr. Woolley considers, inter alia, that the flood was hot powerful enough to penetrate into the walled cities, but only inundated the whole countryside and swept away its population. In the Nimrud Gallery, close by, were exhibited the results of Mr. Guy Bruuton’s expedition of 1925, carried out under the auspices of the British Museum, including important relics of the earliest pre-dynastic culture of Egj’pt, the “Badarian,” and, even more ancient, a “Tasian” stage now first identified by Mr. Brunton, where people show a skull-form quite distinct from that of the ordinary predynastic folk. This find wiill open a fruitful course of discussion among archaeologists.