At a meeting of the Acad. des Inscr. M. Heuzey read a paper upon the "Stèle des Vautours." M. de Sarzec has been able to find and piece together several additional fragments, from which it appears that the name of the person who set up the pillar was E-anna-du, king of Sirpula, son of A-kur-gal, and grandson of King of Ur-Nina. He is represented in front of his warriors, beating down his enemies, sometimes on foot, sometimes in a chariot, of which only a trace remains. The details of the armor resemble in some respects that of the Assyrians of a much later date. From what can be read of the inscription, it seems that the conquered enemies belonged to the country of Is-ban-ki. There is also mention of a city of Ur, allied with Sirpula. The pillar was sculptured on both faces. On the reverse is a royal or divine figure, of large size, holding in one hand the heraldic design of Sirpula (an eagle with the head of a lion), while the other brandishes a war-club over a crowd of prisoners, who are tumbling one over another in a sort of net or cage. In illustration of this scene, M. Heuzey quoted the passage from Habakkuk (i. 15), describing the vengeance of the Chaldeans: "They catch them in their net and gather them in their drag."--Academy, Sept. 3.
THE BABYLONIAN STANDARD WEIGHT.--Prof. Sayce writes: "Mr. Greville Chester has become the possessor of a very remarkable relic of antiquity, discovered in Babylonia, probably on the site of Babylon. It is a large weight of hard green stone, highly polished, and of a cone-like form. The picture of an altar has been engraved upon it, and down one side runs a cuneiform inscription of ten lines. They read as follows:
"One maneh standard weight, the property of Merodach-sar-ilani, a duplicate of the weight which Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, the son of Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, made in exact accordance with the weight prescribed by the deified Dungi, a former king."
The historical importance of the inscription is obvious at the first glance. Dungi was the son and successor of Ur-Bagas, and his date may be roughly assigned to about 3000 B.C. It would appear that he had fixed the standard of weight in Babylonia; and the actual weight made by him in accordance with this standard seems to have been preserved down to the time of Nebuchadrezzar, who caused a duplicate of it to be made. The duplicate again became the standard by which all other weights in the country had to be tested.
The fact that Dungi is called "the deified" is not surprising. We know of other early kings of Chaldaea who were similarly raised to the rank of gods. One of them prefixes the title of "divine" to his own bricks; another, Naram-Sin, the son of Sargon, of Accad, is called "a god" on the seal of an individual who describes himself as his "worshipper." It is possible that in this cult of certain Babylonian kings we have an evidence of early intercourse with Egypt."--Academy, Dec. 19.
CATALOGUE OF BRITISH MUSEUM TABLETS.--Stored in the British Museum are some 50,000 inscribed pieces of terracotta or clay-tablets, forming the libraries of Assyria and Babylonia. The great impetus given to cuneiform studies has made it necessary that the tablets should be catalogued, and the trustees have now issued a descriptive catalogue of some 8,000 inscribed tablets. The inscriptions in question come from the Kuyuryik Mound, at Nineveh. The tablets embrace every class of literature, historical documents, hymns, prayers and educational works, such as syllabaries or spelling-books, and dictionaries. The catalogues, of which the second is just issued, are prepared by Dr. Bezold.--Biblia, Sept., 1892.
ASHNUNNAK.--M. Pognon, French Consul at Bagdad, has announced to the Acad. des Inscriptions that he has discovered the exact location of the region called anciently the land of Ashnunnak. He declares that he is not yet ready to announce his discovery more exactly, but publishes several bricks with the names and titles of several princes of Ashnunnak hitherto unknown. These are Ibalpil, Amil and Nulaku.
PERSIA.
M. de MORGAN'S RESEARCHES IN PERSIA AND LURISTAN.--In a communication to the Acad. des Inscr. M. de Morgan gives a report upon his mission in Persia and Luristan, of which the following are a few extracts. "In the valley of the Lar, I made a study of the subterranean habitations excavated in the rock and made a plan of the very ancient castle, Molla-Kölo, which once defended the pass of Vahné. Finally, in the ravine called Ab-é-pardöma, I discovered in the alluvion some stone instruments presenting very ancient paleolithic characters. At Amol, I studied the ruins of the ancient city and gathered some interesting collections containing quite a number of pieces of pottery and some bronzes of the xiv century."..... "Near Asterabad there is a mound called Khaighruch-tépè. I attempted to make some excavations of this point; unfortunately my work here was arrested by order of the Persian government just when, after twenty days of working with sixty laborers, I had reached a depth of 11½ meters. In this excavation I found some human bones, some pottery, some whorls and some thin objects composed of bronze much decomposed; all in the midst of ashes and cooking-debris. At the bottom was a skeleton stretched upon a very regular bed of pebbles, and I am of the opinion that Khaighruch-tépè was primitively raised as a tomb and afterwards served for the construction of a village, the successive ruins of which coming to increase the importance of the mound. At a depth of 11½ meters I found more cinders and debris, indicating that I had not yet come to the level of the earliest works.".... "The tépès are near together in the eastern part of the Mazanderan and in the Turkoman steppe; but in the Lenkoran, the Ghilan and the western Mazanderan they are entirely wanting. It is concluded from this observation that the people who built here were not aborigines of the north of Persia, but that their migration moreover has left traces on the right and on the left of the Caspian. The Scythians of Herodotus present a very satisfactory solution for the problem of the Caspian tépès".... "From an archaeological point of view the Lenkoran was absolutely virgin soil and the finding of the first tomb was not an easy task. Finally, after long and minute research in the forests, I discovered the necropolis of Kravelady, composed of dolmens almost completely despoiled, but in sufficiently good condition to permit me to organize the natives in research for burial places of the same sort. I at first encountered much repugnance on the part of the inhabitants to excavate the tombs; finally, with some money and very long explanations, I brought them to terms and, thanks to my tomb-hunters, I found and excavated the necropoli of Horil, Beri, Djon, Tülü, Mistaïl, Hiveri, etc. These tombs present, according to their age, very different characteristics; the most ancient and at the same time the largest, contain rude arms of bronze. Those of the period following show the bronze well worked, iron, gold and silver being employed as jewels. Although we saw iron in very small quantities in the tombs of the second period, it is not until the third that it appears as the material of arms; at the same time, the jewels take the forms of animals, which change, as I have shown in the case of Russian Armenia in my preceding mission, indicates the appearance of a strange tribe possessed of special arts. During the last epoch all the arms are of iron. The pottery found in the tombs is glazed.
"As to the form of the monuments, it is very variable at different ages; there are some covered passages or chambers completely closed, some dolmens with openings like those of India. At the very time when my excavations were attaining their greatest importance I was compelled to discontinue them by order of the Russian administration and was obliged to leave the country, having only made a beginning in archaeology. An ukase of the Czar reserves the excavations in all his great empire for the Archæological Society of St. Petersburg. But this interdict did not arrive until after I had excavated about two hundred and twenty tombs, so that we now possess more than fifteen hundred objects, vases, arms, trinkets of gold,bronze, silver, etc.