682ND ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING, HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM D, THE CENTRAL HALL, WESTMINSTER, S.W.1, ON MONDAY, JANUARY 11TH, 1926, AT 4.30 P.M. DR. JAMES W. THIRTLE, M.R.A.S., IN THE CHAIR. The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read, confirmed, and signed, and the HON. SECRETARY announced the election of the following as Associates:-The Rev. William Hudson; Major William J. Rowland; and Miss Agnes M. Naish. The CHAIRMAN then introduced Professor T. G. Pinches, LL.D., M.R.A.S., to read his paper on "Notes on the Discoveries at Ur and Tel al-Obeid, and the Worship of the Moon-God." NOTES ON THE DISCOVERIES AT UR AND TEL AL-OBEID, AND THE WORSHIP OF THE MOONGOD. By PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S. (With lantern illustrations.) "AND the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shin'ar." How well we Assyriologists know these words so simple, so ordinary, and yet, for us, so full of romance that romance which lends poetry, as it were, even to the commonplace! How we should like to fathom the mystery of it all-the hidden things of mankind's history on the earth after the Flood! But there is more than this, for soon the writer of Genesis proceeds to tell us about the Tower of Babel, the first of Shin'ar's cities, and the circumstances in which it was founded. They (we must regard this section of the earth's population as having been the Sumerians) were travelling from the East (miq-qedem) and they found a plain in Shin'ar, where they decided to build a city and a tower whose head was to be in the heavens (bash-shamayim). The opinion at present is, that these words do not contain any announcement that the old inhabitants of Shin'ar intended to scale to invade-Heaven: they wished only to build a very high tower which would be a rallying-point for their race: Let us make us a name," they are reported as saying, "lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." 66 Nothing is said in Gen. xi as to the use to which this tower was to be put, and it has been taken, almost, if not quite, without question, as referring to the great "Tower of Babylon," Ê-temen-an-ki, "the house of the foundation-plinth of heaven and earth." I think that there is no doubt as to this identification, the more especially as there is no reference in history to any other great erection, rivalling the house of the "foundationplinth," in the Babylonian capital. The identification, therefore, must be regarded as practically certain. There is also no indication in the Bible-narrative that the tower erected by those who were journeying "from the East" was a religious structure, but its Babylonian name places that beyond a doubt. The tradition is, that the builders of the tower wished to reach Heaven, but such an idea certainly never entered their minds. Coming, as is stated, from the Eastprobably somewhere in the mountainous region of Elam—they knew perfectly well that if they seemed to be no nearer Heaven on the top of a high mountain than when they stood at its base, their comparatively puny erection at Babylon would be just as ineffective. Moreover, had they not already had experience of these things? The answer to this question must be, it seems to me, in the affirmative, for the sacred towers of Babylonia were so numerous that that at Babylon may well not have been the first. Erech, Akkad, Calneh, and Ur all had them,* and we may take it for granted that all the great cities of Babylonia possessed them too. In Assyria there were also several of these erections, the best known being that at Calah, which is mentioned by Ovid; and as * The cities with temple-towers are given in Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, ii, 50, as follows: "Šu-anna (Babylon), Borsippa, Niffer (Calneh), Šatti, Sippar, Agade (Akkad-two towers, apparently), Kiš (Okheimer seemingly two again), Gudua (Cutha-dedicated to Nannar), Dilmu (Dailem), Marad (Amar-da), Ur, Uruk (Erech), Eridu, and Muru. D to the old capital, Aššur, that site had several, including a double tower, dedicated to Anu and Hadad. It is therefore not surprising that the explorers in Babylonia of recent years have turned their attention to the excavation of the sacred mountain-temples (as we may call them) of Babylonia, and they were naturally attracted by the promising nature and condition of that at Ür. This was a city-probably a Sumerian foundation-of no small importance. Bible-students have always been much interested in its identification, as it is generally regarded as being the Ur of the Chaldees of Gen. xi, 28. This site is now called Mugheir," the bitumenized," or "pitchy," owing to the use of bitumen in its construction. According to Eupolemus, the city where Abraham sojourned was known as Urie (probably from the Sumerian form Uriwa), and signified "a city of the Chaldeans." He does not refer to the patron-deity of the place, Nannar or Sin, the moon-god, but states that it was known by another name, probably Aramaic, Kamarina, which is evidently derived from the same root as the Arabic qamar, "the moon." Eupolemus describes Abraham as having been the thirteenth in descent, and a man of noble race, superior to all others in wisdom. It was stated of him that he was the inventor of astrology and Chaldean magic, and on account of his eminent piety he was esteemed by God. It was further said, that under the direction of God he removed and lived in Phoenicia, and there taught the Phoenicians the motions of the sun and moon, and all other things, for which reason he was held in great reverence by their king. Such is the translation from Eusebius' Praepar. Evangelica as given by the late E. Richmond Hodges in his edition of Cory's Fragments, p. 77. The question naturally arises, whether Eupolemus' statements may not have been adopted by the Jews (from whom Eupolemus probably derived them) during the Jewish Captivity at Babylon. As is well known, Babylonia, as a whole, was called by the Sumerians Kengi-Ura, rendered by the Semitic population as "Šumer and Akkad," the latter element being the Accad of the English editions of the Old Testament (Gen. x, 10). Ura was, in this case, equivalent to Akkad, the Babylonian state so named, apparently, from the name of the capital, called anciently Agade. Notwithstanding the precise and rather probable statements of Eupolemus, therefore, it seems more reasonable to think that Abraham dwelt in the pastoral lands of Ura than in the city of Ur, though it may also reasonably be contended that he and his family pastured their flocks around the city of Ur, otherwise called Uriwa and Camarina. The Hebrew form of the name of Ur () would in this case have been derived from the shortened Akkadian form, just as Akkad and Asshur, in Gen. x, must have been derived from the same Semitic nationality. Most of the late Assyro-Babylonian names in the Old Testament, on the other hand, seem to have been derived from Assyria. The earlier contact with the farther Semitic East on the part of the Patriarch was apparently the cause of the Babylonian name-forms, just as the Assyrian invasions of Jewish territory in later times caused the scribes to write Tiglath-pileser for Tiglath-pilesher* and Esarhaddon for Esharhaddon. Abraham's residence in Babylonia seems therefore to be confirmed by the orthography of the writer of the book of Genesis. Among the first to explore the ruins of Ur (now known as Mugheir) was the former British Consul at Basra, Mr. Taylor, who seems to have been aided by W. K. Loftus, who, in his book, Chaldea and Susiana, published in 1857, describes the site as he saw it. He naturally pays much attention to the zikkurat or tower in stages, which differs from those of other Babylonian cities, in that it was not square in its plan, but oblong. The longest sides face N.E. and S.W., and measure 198 ft., against 133 ft. in the case of the narrower sides. Both are described as Apparently this slope sloping inwards at an angle of 9 degrees. was not considered sufficiently pronounced to secure the safety of the erection through a long series of years, so it was further strengthened by buttresses. The basement-stage was 27 ft. high, and had what is described as an entrance on the N.E. side, a little S. of the centre. This entrance, Loftus says, was 8 ft. wide, and was reached by a straight stairway at right angles with the N.E. wall. A reference to the platform, on which this lowest stage was placed, gives the author an opportunity of describing the state of the country during the rainy season, for it was probably built to keep the structure clear of the floods, when they came; and we learn that, when the Euphrates is high, the surrounding plain is so covered with water that the ruins can only be reached in boats. These floods, indeed, must have greatly * More correctly, Tukulthi-apil-éšarra. hampered the Babylonians, and account, doubtless, for the solidity and consequent want of elegance in their buildings. Ornamental decorations, moreover, had to be reduced, in that stoneless country, to a minimum, for though unbaked clay is very durable when well cared for and protected from the weather, and baked clay is practically indestructible, weathering did not improve it, and small pieces, when detached, had a tendency to be carried away. It is probably owing in part to these drawbacks that Babylonian buildings-palaces, temples and templetowers were so plain, and even Nebuchadrezzar's renowned palace at Babylon must have been much more attractive within than without. The plain outer walls of their buildings were generally relieved by the recessed panels which brick construction allowed them to introduce into their work. In addition to the temple-tower, Sur-Engur, the renowned Babylonian king of forty-two centuries ago, claims to have rebuilt the defensive rampart of the city-Bad-Uriwa. Some of his bricks seem to have been inscribed with a stilus for impressing wedges, whilst others are impressed with a brick-stampprimitive records printed without ink. The following is a similar text, but longer : (To) Nannar, his king, the mighty man, lord of Erech, King of Ur, King of Sumer and Akkad. his beloved house, he has built, its site he has restored. Two meanings for E-temen-imi-ila are possible, namely, “the house of the lofty clay-foundation" and "the house of the foundation of elevation," according as one thought of the loftiness of the structure or of the elevation of mind that its durability and its constant pointing heavenwards, like the steeples of our |