Author Description

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. From the Introduction Reconstructing ancient history in Babylonia before B.C. 2000 up to 4000, and even to the kings after the flood, has become possible, thanks to the material provided by the Nippur excavations. A summary classification of unpublished tablets in the Museum collections has led to the discovery of fragments of historical import. They have been collected in the present volume. Prominent among them are: the chronological fragments, the portrait of King Ibi-Sin, and his official despatches at the time of the revolt of Isbi-irra, the founder of the Isin dynasty. They will be studied in turn along with less important, or comparatively more recent, fragments of the Cassite and Neo-Babylonian period. Due allowance should be made for further corrections to difficult Sumerian texts of damaged fragments. The main enlightening fact is that we gain a sure footing for more than two thousand years of history before the foundation of the first Babylonian empire-the empire of Hammurabi, when Abraham was a citizen of Ur in Chaldza-a fact that brings the early Babylonian to the level of, if not before, the Egyptian chronology.... Among so many questions connected with the early settlement and religious influence of the Sumerians we will single out only two, and give them only a provisional answer. How are we to understand the high number of years of the first kings recorded by chronology? Was Nippur on the Euphrates or on the Tiger?