Atlanta Georgian. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, April 20, 1913, Image 71

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V' Copyright UUli, by Hie Star Compans- , ciruut Bri tnSu Rights Reserved. T /3*» UNDe aplL, IOTO ' (0 * 5/1 WOOD A* r R rvo <? O • A/' V Searching the Houses Ancient Baby I on First Photographs of the Most Mag nificent City of the Past, Where King Nebuchadnezzar Ate Grass and Daniel Was Cast to Lions tom ■ • ’ll 1 uvu s jiinu :t ■. mp* built 1 The Living Present Looks upon the Long Dead Past. A Little Girl of the Squalid Village Which Nestles in a Come r of the Ruins Contemplating the Bones of a Babylonian Woman Who Died 4,000 Years Ago. The Fragments of the Skel eton Are Seen in the Edge of the Clay Coffin T HE German Oriental Society is pursuing a wonderful work in laying bare the re mains of the magnificent city of Babylon. A few years ago Babylon was merely a name that called up a vague vision of some- king vast and splendid. To-day, through the ■:bois of these archaeologists, we can see tile oily as it actually was in Biblical times. Herewith are some photographs of the latest excavations by the Oriental Society. Here is .e very city that was the capital of the empire cU Abraham came, it was countless old when that patriarch set out to he race of the chosen people. It al- ossessed a splendid civilization. noted for the luxury of its palaces, ,. an d mansions, although they were of brick on account of the lack of stone, tie unwinding country was then rich and me as a result of the splendid system of irrigation, although to-day it lies a barren desert for the lack of irrigation. Babylon’s walls were so thick that they were impregnable against any military force em ployed in those days. It was finally captured by an army that crept in through an unguarded gate while the army and people were plunged in drunkenness and shameless debauchery. The walls were strengthened and ornamented by tremendous towers that dominated the coun try for miles around. The palaces and mansions had beautiful gar dens the most attractive of which were those situated on the banks of the River Euphrates. The “Hanging Gardens” of Babylon connected with the royal palace formed one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The temples and libraries possesed millions of books, clay tablets engraved with cuneiform inscriptions, in which the origin of the human race and other primitive legends of intense in terest w'ere related This is the city which was a byword for wicked splendor throughout the Biblical period and for centuries after its downfall. Its end came nearly two thousand years ago, when the degenerate Belshazzar was overwhelmed in the midst of his sinful luxury, as related in the book of the prophet Daniel. One of the most curious objects unearthed by the present excavators is a huge lion stand ing over a man. It somewhat suggests the modern cubist style of art,, hut yet it is not without intelligence and artistic force. The sculptor’s idea was to express the power of a lion. . , ... This is the oldest and most primitive work ot art yet discovered in Babylon. It dates from at least four thousand years back. No other sculpture in this style has yet been found. It was a tremendous task to bring blocks of stone this size to Babylon. The block of granite from which the lion was carved was obtained in a quarry two hundred miles away and brought down the Euphrates on a raft. Another photograph shows a portion of the tremendous wall of ancient Babylon. This sec- ion of wall is part of the Triumphal Gateway of .Altar, the principal female divinity of Babylon, tuny of the sculptures decorating the wall at hi ; gateway still remain beneath the surface,^ end it is doubtful if the entire wall will ever >e uncovered. ;. ; gateway is profusely decorated with a any animals, conspicuous among which is the ■ p’l, the sacred animal of the god Nebo. The rick work, formed of very large bricks, is in per- ’ect condition. It has survived numerous earth- uakes and the ravages of time and weather for ■ or two thousand years. It bears eloquent tes timony to the excellence of Babylonian methods . f construction. The most interesting photograph, however ,is, probably, the one that shows a large group of the ruins of the temples and houses of Babylon. The thickness of the walls shown here again proves the magnificent construction of the an cient city and explains why the old historians speak of it with mingled awe and admiration. The nearest group of ruins represents all that is left of the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, the mightiest King of Babylon. Each brick of the foundation bears that monarch’s name and his royal titles all stamped in cuneiform writing. The inscribed side is placed downward. The great column of bricks shown in the fore ground formed part of the entrance hall of the palace. It was here, perhaps, that Bel shazzar saw 1 the w'riting on the wall: “Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting." The mass of ruins seep beyond tbe column encircles the site of the throne hall of Nebuchadnezzar, fn the back ground may be seen what is known to the explorers as the south mound. This covers the site cf the commercial and industrial city of Babylon and probably also the Tower of Babel. . To uncover the ruins shown here has been a tremendous task, for the Euphrates River bad buried them under an alluvial deposit over sixty feet deep The greater part of the city still lies under Jhis deposit. Among the interesting ruins still largely hidden is the Tower of Babel, whose construction and abandonment form one of the mo3t curious legends in the oldest part of the Bible. Many of the objects found relate to commercial dealings. Babylon was the greatest commercial city of the ancient world prior to about 500 B. C. Its wealth was naturally the greatest source of its power. Its merchants employed a perfect system of bookkeeping and of making out “com mercial paper” and other documents. The en tries were first made on soft clay and then baked hard. They could never be altered, burned or defaced. Even to destroy them with great force was difficult. Those that are found to day are as legible as when they were made. Owing to their system of bookkeeping and giving indestructible reoeipts, the Babylonion merchants enjoyed a great reputation for hon esty. They were considered very superior in that respect to their competitors in Egypt. The excavators have found an enormous col lection of tablets inscribed with the laws. The Babylonians enjoyed an elaborate system of law as long as thirty-five hundred years ago. It dealt with the most complex and intimate relations of life, with matrimonial relations and commercial disputes. Although the legal code appears harsh to us in many respects, it is in the main intel ligent and just, and there is every reason to be lieve that it was rigorously enforced. The darkest side of Babylonian life ig seen in the existence of an enormous body of women known as “public votaries.” It is said that there were 50,000 of them in the city. Many of them were kept in the temples of Ishtar and other divinities. The money paid by the citizens visit ing the “votaries” w'ent to the prients of these heathen temples, and the “votaries” themselves were slaves of the most wretched description. It is the existence o f this institution that has caused Babylon to be condemned as the city of sin, the most shameful type of corruption among the communities of the ancient world. In nearly every place where Babylon is mentioned in the Bible it is accompanied by w'ords of severe repro bation. The excavators have found many inscriptions relating to the female votaries of Babylon. Those who were attached to certain temples were never allowed to go away, and an attempt to escape, if discovered, was invariably punished with death. Colossal Figure of Oldest Sculpture semblance to th< a Lion Overcoming a Man. The Found in B<R)y| 0 n. Note its Re- Modern “C^obist” Sr.uloture. a r< e- y JLD U PmOTOj POeJ© UNDfAwodO & ' l/NOCff WOOD 1 W’Y The Triumphal Gate of the Goddesi Ishtar. An Ancient Seal Found in Babylon, Showing Hunters Gathering Ostrich Feathers for King Nebuchadnezzar Others wiere allowed to go at large, but they had no rights under the law. They were uranded on the forehead in order that every one might know who they were. ID one of them importuned a citizen for money or troubled him in any way her offence was puuiahtible with death. The whole civilized world was ransacked to find these women. Thity were bought or stolen from their distant bonnes. The choicest .speci mens were placed in the Temple of Ishta-r. These facts make it certain that Babylon was plunged in conscienceless self-indulgence and luxury to a degree unknown in the modern world. The wine shops were usually kept by women in Babylon and there are many provisions i:a the laws concerning them. The measure for drink was to be the same a|i tor corn. In case' she overcharged her custom ers they could throv / her into the water. For surgery and the pt notice of medicine, <t here was elaborate legislation. In order to dis courage the surgeon frq m making rash ex ueri- ments, severe penalties i.ere fixed in case of un successful operations. For an operation on the upper class, the surgeon received ten site ke’.s, on the lower class five, and on the slave two. If the patient, died the surgeon’s hands were cut off. In the case of a slave lie had to replace him with one of equal value. If the. eye. of a slave was lost the owner received half the price of the slave. Similar legislation was enacted fop builders. If the house fell down and kil ed the owner as the result of bad workmanship, the builder was sub ject to the death penalty. A man could give his wife, sou cqr daughter to work off a debt, but in the fourth y*>ar lie or she could regain freedom. The great early ruler of Babylon was King Khammurabi, whose famous code was the basis of all the laws that governed the empire. Nebuchadnezzar was King' when Babylon reached the zenth of its glory. The Bible tells us bow this man’s mind was unbalanced by the tremendous power he possessed- As a conse quence he became insane for a tSme and “did eat grass as the oxen.” He built the two great walls of the city. He built immense quays on tbje hanks of the Enphrates, besides developing otherwise the facilities for handling commerce; He dug wide moats about the walls so that it was as if the sea surrounded ij:e city. He built the causeway by whiiih the God Mar- duk was taken on New Year’s D:a.y from Babylon on a visit to his son, Nebo, the patron deity of Borsippa. All these interesting things will be laid bare by the excavators, so that the tourist may look at them i^hoto ev wooo""2"Tj^"dfrvv-ood hr y I he Houses of Ancient Babylon, the First Photograph Showing the Enormous Excavations of the German Expedition in the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar and the Heart of the Ancient City. Good Two-Cent Dinners for School Children™ By 0 , U t r h. C E“lu^ E R I ! y S a'u„tvJrf® N F ROM an analysis of the meals eaten by eight healthy chil dren of the middle classes, tt is found that what children need is food that contains seventy-two grammes of protein and sixty-nine grammes of fat, and for poor children those proportions have to be obtained at the lowest possible cost. For example, a bowl of thick len til soup containing %-pound o? le—tils, with a slice of bread, cost ing about 2 cents, contains much more nourishment than la-pound of meat and a slice of bread cost ing 10 cents. The question oi a good one- course dinner is important. In many of the houses of 'the poor the cooking facilities—one small open grate—are not well adapted to providing a two-course meal if such were otherwise available, and in connection with the feeding of large numbers of school children there is certainly economy of time and labor, and possibly of expense, in a one-course as compared with a two-course meal. Experience has shown that a one-course meal at low cost can be made as nour ishing and attractive to children as a two-course meal at similar out lay. It is of interest in this connec tion to refer to the nutritive value and cost of a series of five one- course dinners recently supplied, on my recommendation, by the Ed- inburgh School 11 dren: V\ Ixintil soup Meat, soup and 1K.5 Plum puddkiK MA 8**otti«h Ivrot! Porridge and hard 28.13 biscuit 24a Ta f Average ... - 27 J A study of the ferent columns, he says, is very in structive. The average amount of protein 27.1 grammes, fat 9.0 grammes, and carbohydrates 102 grammes, may be taken as a re liable standard for a highly nutri tious meal, er.’ing, if anything, in a deficiency in fa... if we compare the individual menus we find that: No. 1 is a.very nourishing dinner at small cost. No, 2 is of considerably lower nutritive value, and Is ou<t of pro portion expensive. No 3 is a rich highly nourishing meal and is proportionately dear; it is only advisable as an occa sional tneal. No. 4 is a good iliuuer obtained at moderate cost. No. 5 is also a good meal, a little belo-w the average in nutritive val ue; this can be rectified by slightly increasing the amount of tuilk. Tbo experience of the head mas ters in the different schools under the Edinburgh School Board has shown that meals planned on these lines have been followed by satis factory rate of growth, increased physical vigor and more efficient education of the children, these being the oriteriu for judging the correctness of any system of feed ing. It is probatdy no exaggeration to say that the medical profession, no less than the public has a very inadequate idea as to the extent of minor or major adulteration of common foodstuffs. Bread is an important illustra tion. A largo proportion of bread in daily use is now made front flour which has been artificially bleached by Lite passage of nitrous oxide fumes. Those are produced by au electrical discharge, the pro cess being described by the parties interested as ‘ electrified air,” and in ignorance accepted by millers and bakers as a process “from of chemicals ” The researches of Professor Ladd, U. 3. A., Professor Hallibur ton and the author, among others, have shown that the digestibility of flour so treated is appreciably reduced, and as there arc. unques tionably, no compensating advant ages In the process from the phy siological and dietric point of view, it is advisable that all bread should be made from the natural product of the wheat. it 1b conceivable that a child would thrive better on a diet con taining a smaller amount of food in a pure form than on a diet which is richer from the point of view of chemical composition, but with its nutritive value impaired by the ad dition of various preservatives. A further point of importance is the use of hard food adapted for promoting mastication, giving meat in a form which necessitates chewing, bread in baked form for similar reasons, and at the same time restricting indulgence in sugar and sweets, which promote fer mentation in relation to the teeth with resulting caries.