Nippur Explorations

NIPPUR EXPLORATIONS.

Discoveries In Babylonia Described by Professor Hilprecht.

Professor Hilprecht delivered the third lecture of the course on "The History and Results of the Four Babylonian Expeditions of the University of Pennsylvania" at Philadelphia the other afternoon. 

Professor Hilprecht took up the story of the researches from the time of the return of the explorers to Nippur in 1890, after having then abandoned the work temporarily because of the hostility of the Arabs, says the New York Times. In the interim, he said, an epidemic of cholera had swept throughout the country, which in a measure the Arabs attributed to the exercise of superhuman powers by the explorers as a punishment for their wrongdoing. Work was resumed on the mound covering the temple of Baal with much larger forces of men. Within a short time the whole of the Parthian fortress, built on top of the temple ruins, was uncovered.

Professor Hilprecht said that among other discoveries there was found in one of the chambers of the outer wall a large number of tablets and other objects of lapis lazuli and other substances, the cuneiform, Saumarian and Semitic inscriptions on which showed them to date back to periods 3,000 years B. C. When the fortress was destroyed, they were in the hands of a jeweler.

"The history of one of these little tablets," said Professor Hilprecht, "is plainly written thereon and assuredly substantiates the truth of the Biblical story of Abraham. Three thousand years before Christ it was owned by a king, who presented it to a deity, so that he might have long life. This fact he inscribed thereon. When Nippur was overthrown, the conquerors carried this tablet with their other spoils to Susa.

"After a lapse of nearly 1,200 years from the date of the inscription it was retaken by another king and again placed in the temple. This time a second inscription was engraved upon the reverse side relating these facts. Hundreds of years after the jeweler secured it."