BABYLONIAN LIBRARIES.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2501, 21 July 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

BABYLONIAN LIBRARIES.

Two Thousand Tablets Pound. y

Mr Boscawkn, in a recent lccturo upon this subject at the British Museum, informed his astonished hearers that a few months ago, buried within one mound alone, were discovered 2,090 Babylonian tablets—a discovery which has indeed shed the most brilliant light upon a very interesting but ft hitherto very obsr.uro subject. Gradually but surely is being brought to light the cvideuces of Babylonian literary and artistic civilisation and pursuits. They were first , and foremost, a liternrv people. Much of their literature was of an encyclopedic and carefully tabulated nature ; for many series of tablets exist, each of which is a book in itself, and each part of a series of sixty or seventy tablets dealing with the same subject. As stated in a recent article, the temple was the source and centre of all life—political sind educational, as well as religious—and to each temple there was attached a school and a library. It was the duty of a parent to educate his child, and when a little Babylonian first went to school he was set to woik at a constant copying of the cuneiform characters ; and there are now to be -con in the British Museum little clay tablets upon which tho childreu wrote their exeieises, and which contain tho corrections the master made 5,000 years aio. Having mastered these preliminaries, the little fellow was made to copy and to write a series of phrases which are ridiculously like, although more sensibld than, Ollendorff series, so well-known nowadays-. Here is a specimen : " If any father to his child shall say 'Thou art not my son,'in the house they shtill enclose liirn." Tho little tablets from which they Learned these phrases were called " uua-itti-su,'' a word which means " to be with him "—a vademecum, a handbuok. And it is from th< se vt rj tablets that tho B ibyloniau scholar of to-day has learned to read the tablets as fluently as in the presence of his audience, Mr Boseawen read one, the first time probably it had ever been since it was placed within the temple thousands of years ago. Up to tho time of Esarhnddon tlto priests wore tho cducatora of the y«uth of Assyria, for each great priest city had its own school of thought, its own gods, its own theology, its own doctrine*—and sometimes, indeed, there was more of secular teaching than of sacred. Notably was this the case in Borsippa, who«o library was the most universal and extensive, but the teaching of which was hardly religious at all. Astronomy and astrology are subjects that are evor appearing upon the di-covered tablets ; and also there was a medical course of study. This has been , distinctly proved, and is a diroct contradiction of the old Greek writers who have left it upon record that there were no doctors in Babylonia, and that sick people were carried out into the street in order that the passers-by might give their opinion as to tho medicines to be administered and the course to be pursued for the relief and cure of the luokless wight so ruthlessly delivered over to popular opinion—and that opinion must have differed, and h?w the amateur faculty must have quarrel el. l'rofessor Sayre, however has upset this theory of so happy-go-lucky a practice by the production of a tablet upon which these words are inscribed '• This is the way of cure according to all gre.it teachings of tho Temple of Borsippa." And also there are tablets which nllude to the diseases that are even now most common in that region, and which speak of the vegetable cures for thesa diseases. In tho city of Litza, near Ur of the Chii?dees, there w.is another greit library ; for in 1852 Mr Loftus discovered a terrace which was part of a suite of rooms, in which there were a number of largo unbaked tablets, with innumerable arithmetical figures inscribed upon them —measures of lengths employed by Assyrians, squares and square roots from one to sixty, then, cubes one to sixty. Here it is evident that mntfiematics were taught, and also geometry ; and it was here that Mr Rassara discovered the tablet plans of fields, with dimensions and estimates of produce which were oarried by the taxgatherers. But it was Eridu, the oldest , city of Babylon, that was the great centre

of leiiriiiiiir, for hero was worshipped the Guil of Wi.-iloin, with his son, the ilemitir gos Merodaoh. Ilero are found magnificent magical and religious hymns, in one of which thoro is an eloquent and touching aspiration after perfect purity. In tho library of Kutha, which is buried beneath the mound of Tel Ibrahim, and out of which "city tho Samaritans originally came, thera have been discovered tablets which provo that hero was chiefly taught tho religion of Babylon, and from th"in wo learn something of its eschstologio doctrines. Tho tablet called the " Descent of Isbtar," which records her descent, into tho city of tho dead, is of singular beauty and power, and many of its passages are strikingly similar to wll-known passages in our own loved Bible. "I go down the death road ; I go to that place whence there is no return ; to that plainwherein is no light; and where I shall over sit in thick darkness." How sublime in its simplicity, how touching in its pathos, and how gloomy is the Valley of tho Shadow of Death when we walk therein unaccompanied; by Him who is the Life from tho dead and the Light that shineth unto tho perfect day. How essentially mathematically and analytically minded tho Babylonians were is proved by tho exact manner in which they arrauged and catalogued these enormous libraries, a. system so thorough and so perfect that, this day the authorities of tho British Museum can find no better, and they docket and tabulate theso very Babylonian inscriptions exactly as they were docketed and tabulated 6000 years ago.—Times.