Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 169, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 July 1918 — LIFE CENTURIES AGO [ARTICLE]

LIFE CENTURIES AGO

Discoveries Show There Were Many Points' of Resemblance to That of the Present Day. Translation of prehistoric tablets In the University of Pennsylvania museum at Philadelphia has revealed that women mayors were regularly constituted public officials In Asia Minor 5,000 years ago. That prototypes of newspaper men at that remote time, true to more modern traditions of the profession, occasionally became involved in litigations of the present day “libel suit” character, but generally were released “on ball” Is also Indicated in the newiy deciphered writings. The translations which concern a once-powerful, well-organized government apd people of which nearly all trace has been lost through long forgotten centuries have just been completed by Dr. A. B. Sayce of Oxford university, famous oriental scholar. He copied the tablets two years ago and took the copies to Egypt, where he was finally able to master their time.shrouded messages.The tablets were the work of Hittites of Cappadocians, whose national boundaries 50 centuries ago extended from the Mediterranean to the Black sea and from the headquarters of the Euphrates into what is now Persia. Each province was subdivided into cities, and these were supervised by a mayor and a prefectress, whose powers, the tablets indicate, were co-ordi-nated. In one instance it appeared the woman mayor had an official status independent of the male head of the “municipal” government. An insight into many other interesting and hitherto unknown phases of life in the ancient kingdoms whose lands comprised the present-day Mesopotamian battle grounds are afforded by Doctor Sayce’s discoveries.