Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 154, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 June 1911 — RECORD OF ANTIQUITY [ARTICLE]

RECORD OF ANTIQUITY

BBS? ' ■ ' LIFE IN FORMERJies. '-•* ... 7. Religious Forms-, Business Methods, Historical Events and jMdtty Other Things Revealed 1# Carvings In Btone and Metal. Inscriptions by no are the product of modem learpjyj The ancients left 150,000 thjKpihve been resurrected, translated j§|t' printed, not' counting the epitaphs on'ordinary graves of thousands ofigjhfers ago. which are not deemed wfißkihe trouAncient peoples—Sahaeene, Phoenicians, Etruscans, Oscane, ians. Babylonians, Germanic tribes, Iberians, Celsß, Norse —all carved their records in stone and ’ metal. Paper was not ail common in those days as now. mm*. The permanent records left Include religious forms, btqtfness accounts, royal proclamationsand boasts of deeds accomplished, epitaphs. moTtuary tablets, altars, tepees, aqueducts, tax receipts, etc. Evidently property was not safe in the old days and they had the habit of writing cn seals, gems, vases and <®jp| brick-a-brae by way of identifyifg them. Both in this country and abroad scholars devote much of time to deciphering these mute reebyds of the past, and it is quite likely that the successors to our - such there shall bo—will find information in the Eliot inscription* for their learned tomes. . . WB# In France, along with other acade= mies, they have one of the inscriptions, which is preparing books of the Greek and Latin relics by photography. The experts began this job in 1881. r ’ In 1888 Mommsen and Huebaer, the great historians, projected a-similar task under the Berlin academy and at last accounts the savants who are continning their labors were still collecting. They have published many volumes and have preserved, some 10,00& of the 20,000 extant Greek Inscriptions. ' v ' ' It is a great part that the carved words of bygone ages has played In modem knowledge. The fihding of the Rosetta stone with its identical message in both Egyptian and'Greek the clew that unlocked the mysteries of the Nilene delta’s early Some of the languages tod* most of the history of Asia Minor bilk been preserved by the same method. Also some years ago at Hisjj?jGhorab on the Arabian coast, there' was found a stone, which being deciphered, proclaimed, -according to sofip; that the apple which Eve gave to Adam and thug made us all work fdr a living wasn’t an apple, but a pomegranate. Earth’s oldest inscription belonged to the Phoenicians once, and was hewn out some 3,000 years ago, being a dedicated bronze vessel for the temple of Baal Lebanon by Hiram*, king of the Sidonians. It was found in Cyprus and is now-Jn the Louvrp museum at Paris.