because folks have been excavating over there. They have dug up thousands of tablets with writing on them. These tablets are several thousand years old. They tell about the life of those times.

These folks were about as civilized as we are now, in certain ways. They could write, but had to write on these clay tablets, and then they had to bake them. And they had to write with a triangle-sort of instrument, which they held in the hand and pressed down on the clay tablet.

A whole library of these tablets was found at one of their cities-I've forgotten the name of the city. The tablets seem to have been put on the second floor, and then the building fell down.

They believed in all kinds of signs, and were very superstitious. They cut open animals to look at their livers to tell what was going to happen in the future. And they foretold things by the stars, too. Doctors thought headaches were caused by evil spirits.

Doctors had to cure their patients or pay for them if they died-that is, if they were slaves. If the person was higher up, the law was harder on them.

The writer of this article said Abraham isn't as old now as he used to seem to us, because we have found out that a great many rulers lived before him.

In another place he tells about a flood the Babylonians had that was very much like ours.

Some of the kings made good laws then, such as laws about how a father should treat his son, and what divorced people had to undergo. I think these

laws were pretty good, considering how far back they

were.

This is about all I can think of now.

3. A Second Student Oral Composition on

"Pushing Back History's Horizon"

A few days ago while I was looking over some magazines in the library, I ran across three interesting articles in the National Geographic Magazine. All three were along pretty much the same line-the oldness of man-how much older man is than we think, and how much older civilization is than we think. The article I liked best was "Pushing Back History's Horizon." It was written by Professor Clay, who is a teacher of Assyriology and Babylonian literature in Yale University. He has done considerable work as an excavator in the Orient.

We have come to know a great deal within the past seventy-five years about Babylonia. We know that this country was a cultured, civilized country long before the time of Abraham. Some of the tablets, or writings, dug up in recent excavations are at least seven thousand years old. So Abraham is a kind of modern hero, although we have been accustomed to thinking of him as very old in the world's history.

The method of writing back in the Babylonian days was quite different from our method. People wrote, or rather engraved, on clay tablets. A metal or wood instrument called the "stylus" was used to impress the characters on the soft clay tablets. The stylus

was either of a triangular or quadrangular shape, depending on whether it was used in the early or late Babylonian days. If what was being written was very important and liable to be forged, an outer covering of clay was put over the original impressed tablet. This covering had the same writing as the inner tablet.

The scribes, or tablet engravers, corresponded to our present-day stenographers. Many of them were women, as to-day. The "stenographers" wrote what was dictated to them. Then the "dictator" signed the tablet-not with the stylus, but with his thumb nail or with his personal seal.

Some years ago Ashurbanipal's library was excavated at Nineveh. It was what you might call a modern library. For the librarians used a cataloguing system very much like the system used in our presentday libraries. The tablets were arranged in the library according to subject matter. They had titles and numbers given them. A great variety of subjects was covered: religion, astronomy, magic, accounts, poetry, literature, and so on. Many of the tablets were copies of older writings, or copies of tablets from other cities. The copies of the old writings had both the old and new language on them-kind of inter linear translations. Other libraries were unearthed, but the Nineveh one was the most important.

Among these old writings are many letters. Some of them are letters from father to son, business letters, love letters, and so on. One rather interesting love

letter was from a young man to his sweetheart in Babylon. The sentiment is very modern-full of compiments and worshipping. In the first of the letter te young man calls down the blessings of the Babylonian gods upon his lady. Then he asks whether she is well; for he went to Babylon hoping to see her, but he did not. He inquires as to why she was not there. He closes by bidding her to keep well always, for his sake.

Many laws of the great law-maker Hammurabi were found. Some were on the ordinary clay tablets, while some were cut on stone or bronze. These laws deal with all kinds of subjects.

Marriage laws were strict. People had to have marriage contracts-written statements of what property was given on each side. If the woman secured the divorce, she could go back to her father and take her dowry with her. If the husband wasn't true to his wife, she could easily get a divorce. If she wasn't true to him, he could divorce her, make her a slave, or even drown her.

Laws dealing with parents and children also were strict. A father could not kill his child, or punish him without good cause. He could not sell the child for a period longer than four years. If the child were very disobedient, the father could cut off his hands. A child could not be disinherited; the law fixed his amount of inheritance.

The doctors seem to have been harder hit by laws then than now. The law fixed the doctor's fees. If

he cured a slave, he got a certain sum; if it was a middle class person, he got about two and a half times as much as for a slave; if it was a rich person, he got about five times as much as for a slave. If the patient died, and it was judged to be the doctor's fault, his hands were cut off. If it was a slave, the doctor had to put another slave in the dead one's place.

There were a great many tablets about other things, but I thought these the most interesting.

(1) It would be an almost impossible task for a student to re-tell the entire original. From such a long article he should select what he regards as important or interesting.

(2) Did the student in Number 2 (the first oral composition) have anything definite in mind to talk about? What are some of the faults with his talk?

(3) Do you think the student who told Number 3 had a mental outline? Did he select the essentials? Did he vary his order of telling from the original? Compare the two oral compositions.

(4) Don't forget to use here, as well as elsewhere, the test questions given on page 45.

(5) Would the inclusion of difficult Assyrian and Babylonian names have helped or harmed the student's talk? Would the effort to remember such names tend to lessen the remembering of more impor

9