By courtesy of Major Kenneth Mason, M.C., R.E.
THE REMAINS OF MIGHTY BABYLON, WHICH WERE BURIED UNDER THE DRIFT OF CENTURIES UNTIL OUR OWN TIME. THE ISHTAR TOWER SEEN TO THE LEFT WAS COMPLETELY COVERED WITH DEBRIS BEFORE PROFESSOR KOLDEWEY EXCAVATED IT
By courtesy of Major Kenneth Mason, M.C., R.E.
THE RUINS OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR’S PALACE IN BABYLON. THE SEEMING CLIFFS HERE AND IN THE TOP PHOTOGRAPH SHOW THE MODERN GROUND LEVEL AND INDICATE THE ENORMOUS QUANTITIES OF SOIL WHICH THE DIGGERS HAVE REMOVED IN ORDER TO UNCOVER THE RUINS
The clay tablets of Mesopotamia have told us many things since Rawlinson stripped them of their secret; they are pages from the Book of Mankind. Not the least remarkable discovery we owe to George Smith, who, going out to the East on an expedition for the Daily Telegraph, found among hundreds of the clay books of the ancients an account of the Flood. He crowded some fine work into his short life, before succumbing at Aleppo in 1876 at the age of thirty-six.
Just across the borders in Persia the French have explored many an ancient site in the quest for knowledge. De Morgan, in the remaining years of last century, dug down and down at Susa for 80 feet, until he came to the virgin soil. Throughout this huge deposit were scattered the relics of many civilizations, among them a stone which has provided us with a unique record of the time when the Sumerians held sway over the land. Inscribed on this stone is the code of laws made by Hammurabi, the Sumerian king who reigned about four thousand years ago.
Throughout the ages history has been repeating itself. Just as we carried off the Rosetta Stone from Egypt as one of the spoils of war, so the people of Susa, setting their heel on Babylon, conveyed the stone of Hammurabi back in triumph to Susa. Then the sword of the Assyrians swept through Susa, and the code of Hammurabi was engulfed in the ruins, to await the spade of de Morgan.
The laws of Hammurabi set forth on his stone are good laws, and they indicate a people governed justly. The sun god himself is shown taking the stylus from the king in order to set down the laws, implying that the laws were derived from the god himself.