Casper Daily Tribune Newspaper, January 9, 1917, Page 6

This, according to May Bosman, writing in the i New York Sun. She continues: : At all events, the great wealth of tablet records dug up in Mesopotamian in recent years and THE CASPER DAILY TRIBUNE READING LETTERS 500 YEARS AGO Dr. Langdon of the Uni- 7 Sxppeaerempe rence versity of Pennsylvania g Museum is finding some remarkable documents on clay tablets dug out of Babylonian ruins. An in- teresting light has been shed on this ancient civil- ization of the Mystic East NDOUBTEDLY dian gentler the Sumertan-Akka- n of 2500 B. ©, took down from the shelves of his library a copy of “The Handy Letter Writer” and soughi the model upon which he might bulid the important communi- cation he bad in hand, To his wife he little hen scratches und scrawls that great scholars tell us re “Beloved light of mines eyes; Thy extravagances are beyond all the patience of man. Behold, thy slave is return- ing without the shekels thou so brazenly hast de- manded. Ever thy devoted husband.” Or, to a slave overseer who had wittingly or unwittingly done him In some household deal, he made stylused tn hot haste: “It is with sorrow that thy stupidity is borne upon my consciousness, Thou hast ‘cheated me in scales and tn price, D— thee, thou art not worth three bekus a we which is probably what a slave's food cost the cleaned and deciphered shows so many little fa- miliar, intimate touches and such an abundance of letter writing on all subjects under the sun that the possibility of the existence of epistolary Sd | There Winter modes are well established. We shall see deviations and adapta- jons of them, but little now till the yuyers have made their midwinter voy- age to Paris for spring styles. There are so many new ideas in the present modes that women will not tire of them soon. Indeed, it has been a constant struggle, to judge from ug on, to get used to the present long and slender contours decreed by Paris dressmakers and milliners. I have heard women speak with bit- terness of the expensiveness of winter shoes, “and they do not show half as much this winter,” and complain that the top coat was not half so practical and smart as the tailored trotteur. But when it comes to evening gowns with- out exception every woman just gasps and says, “My dear, they are perfectly lovely!” There seems to be no objec- tion to the trains, because “the not the kind that are in the way,” and the ankles manage to be in evidence because of the unevenness of the hem. One sees less of the fox animal scarf this winter; the predilection for fur sets is obvious, Sets of fur combined with some fabric have always been the vogue of “elegantes” in Paris, Now the idea is being taken up here. The result Is great individuality, for the scarfs or capes must harmonize with the dress with which they are worn. Most of them are of the shoulder-cape variety; this is good in that being worn with- out any other outsice garment they are plenty warm enough, except for the shivery sort of person and in very cold weather. Another peculiarity in winter modes is the reappearance of the long fur cape. It may or may not have a slit for the hand. Often these capes are shaped so they extend out of the sides enough to form something sembles a sleeve—enough to cover the arm. In the long fur coats and wraps the partly contrasting fur. The trimming hem er deep, 9 or 1 inches, flat in appear- ance, where last year the hem band was generally narrow and round in appearauce, Moyen Age contours on evening gowns are often arranged so there is 4 startling air of undress, for the lower part of the skirt, full and draped, is attached at the hip line, while the up- per part clings to the figure. This gives it a startling air of being a lounging gown—odd for a ballroom, But one soon grows accustomed to new contours.—New York Herald. PARTY FROCK FOR A+ GIRL Pretty and Simple Affair Which Any- one Who Can Sew Can Make, Just the prettiest little dress for a young girl's dance is at the same time the simplest. Anyone who can sew can make one like it at home. White China silk and white net make the dress, and white satin ribbon trims it. is a plain waist of silk, low in the neck and with just a sleeve-band over the shoulders. The skirt Is silk, rt and full. Then over this goes net, quite a coarse net. It is the draped onto the waist, and short, full puffed sleeves are added to the silk shoulder straps. The edges of the net unre trimmed on the body and sleeves with narrow white satin ribbon run on flat, and the skirt has the same rib- that re-} bend this year, if there is one, is rath-! STYLES FOR WINTER foliage, one on the waist at the upper edge, the other on the skirt, a little below the waistline and on the oppo- site side from the first bunch. Each bunch had three colors, the big berries in each being one of pink, one of blue, and one of yellow. The girl who wore that dainty little frock was dressed right. t USEFUL AND DAINTY CUSHION Can Be Made From Holland or Linen, and Needs Only a Rose for Decoration, Very effective and useful cushions can be made from holland or linen, and all that is needed in the way of decoration is simply a single rose with one or two leaves ettached. Grey linen looks very beautiful with |a rose worked in delicate pink shades; the heart of the rose should be deeper than the outside petals, The rose is simply worked with satin stitch in Perl Lusta, so that it can be easily washed as well as being deco- A Useful Cushion. collar is almost invariably made of a} rative; or a rose cut from good cre- ivune and appliqued on will have an | excellent effect. First make a bag for the cushion in calico the size you wish it to be, then | fill with vegetable down, real down or |feathers. The linen for the case should be embroidered before it is made up; when made, put it over the cushion, sew up the end and edge all | round with cord, and either put a tas- | Sel at each corner or else urrange the cord in loops. Though so very simple, the cushion is in exquisite taste, yet is not too fine to use for the wear and tear of every- | day life. EASILY MADE TRAVELING BAG An Eleven-Inch Square of Pink Linen and Some Tape All That Is Needed. A very pretty and quickly made traveling bag can be made with -an 11-inch square of pink linen. Bind the | entire square with white tape, then fold one side of the linen to one-third the depth. Featherstitch into five pock- ets, three narrow ones and two wide ones, placing a narrow one in the cen- ter at each end, with the wide ones between. The edges where the square is folded are overhanded together. The Small pockets are for toothpaste, tooth- brush and cold cream, the larger ones for taleum powder and powder puff. If the toothbrush is enclosed in a glass case, the pocket need not be rubber in bands. and so on for about five rows. DRESS FOR A GIRL. guldes then must be borne upon our consclous- : ane sale ness, too, a ; ocean - “ 1 sition is by no means primitive! The date of this rator since the beginning of the European war, | An interesting lot of deciphering of such tablets book Is 2,300 B. C. when Dr. Arno Poebel left to join his regiment | is being accomplished by Dr. Stephen Lang h Geography was taught, as were astronomy and at the German front. The Eckley B. Coxe, Jr., who came tn September fram Oxford, Englund, to history. In the collection Is the oldest history yet expeditions, which began operations in Egypt In ; be curator of the Babylonian division of the Uni- found, a tablet giving the list of Babylonian kings 1889 and have carried them on through various versity of Pennsylvania museum in Philadelphia. golng back to the flood, The claim is that itis a years since, even finding localities of the war- He is a young mun still, but he ts the ynly man record of 25,000 years; but this may be disputed, ridden land where they can still operate this year, living who has seen and handled all the thousands since the names of the monarchs, which seem to Have sent back to the museum an Incalculable of tablets unearthed by University of Pennsyl- be those of men who reigned successively, may be treasure-trove, not only in tablets, but in all kinds vanla museum expeditions above the city of Nip- of men who ruled simultaneously, In kingdoms of articles dug up from the dirt layers of Biblical pur, both those retained by the authorities at Con- that were adjacent. A conservative estimate is and pre-Biblical lands. sy stantinople and those sent to Philudelphia. that this history covers 14,000 years. All this aveumulation has not had the attention There are only about 15 men in the world who There Is a book on botany, teaching the people it deserved. Doctor Langdon's labors will be bent ean read Sumerian and Babylonian characters, how to raise the date palm, an important crop of toward arranging the Babylonian exhibit. The and he is one of them. Thanks to the war, which the times. Agricultural books abound, for the lection is the largest in the world, No other has left Oxford a dull, dend spot, America has se- temple had a collegiate department, just as have museum has such a quantity of sacred Sumerian cured him for one year, He will decipher as many Cornell and other American universities, where documents, which make this the most {mportant a8 possible of the thousands of tablets that have selentific farming was taught. The Babylonlans, Babylonian collection in the world, even though been cleaned at the University of Pennsylvania as is well known, were remarkable engineers and it Is not so large as that in the British museum, museum, will publish translations of all important past masters In the field of irrigati It Is not The war, which already has done so much dam- ones, now or later, and will classify and catalogue — SUrprising that Doctor Langdon has found many age, bids fair to rob us of this comparative re- the collection, a stupendous task. records of this in the museum's Babylonian col- cent achievement, the ability to decipher these In 2500 B. C. papyrus and paper for writing lection. We learn, agntn, of canals being dug, tablets which tell of the lives and historles of were unknown. Men scratched with a pointed and of a tablet that chronicles the opening of a peoples who lived so many hundred years ago. steel instrument called a stylus on unbaked red great waterway, like the Panama canal—the cele- Younger men, like Poebel, are at the front and clay tablets of various sizes, mostly about the Df atton over It, the presence of the king, and the — may never come back; other well-known Eg size, shape and thickness of a small book, They Pride felt In the groat nkill of Its engineers, logists are old men, wrote on both sides, and then, if they were not Further documents are reported verifying previ- Not enongh young men will be left to car through, continued on another tablet. The analogy OUS_ assertions that the Babylonian woman re- the work of translating the ancient cuneiform of these tnblets to sheets of paper Is not hard to Celved an education equal to man's, took her place writings. When the present scholars pass away comprehend, Sometimes a tale stops in the mid- with him in certain nes, and was compensated the achfevement may die with them and Sumerian- | f dle and the next tablet on which tt was continued With the same wage as he. Akkadian become again a dead language, for not is never found, or Is found years later. “Books” had no cases and when found are often enough young college men are proposing to take In the temples scribes were busy copying old crumbled, broken, cracked or so badly chipped up archeology. pieces of literature to hand down to posterity, that parts of the translation must be guessed at There is today no endowed seat of Assyriology gust as Inter monks spent their days and their 0F omitted entirely, Others, fortunately, are found ny any university. The University of Pennsyl- nights copying lnbortously and preserving old Intact, vania museum is exerting every effort to secure books fer the archives of the monasteér. The Letters, on the other hand, were sent tn en- such an endowment, that other intellects of: so work of the amnanuenses was placed on shelves In velopes, also of clay. When the tablet letter had high an order as Doctor Langdon’s may be en- a library—neat little rows and piles of clay books. been duly inscribed and signed, it was rolled in couraged and helped to carry on a work similar Men digging 5,000 yenrs Inter have found them, a fine clay powder and slipped into a hollow clay to his. and other men have spent their lives In studying pocket. More ctuy dust was then shaken tn, so Eckley B. Coxe, Ir., died in Philadelphia in Sep- ia them, that they might tell us what the tablets say, that Inyers of powder were packed about the con- temper Jast and left an endowment fund of $500,- The books cover a wide fletd and comprise odes, tents of the pocket and the letter could not get 000 to carry on the work he has been equipping eples, religious hymns, dictionaries, scientific rubbed or scratched. The clay opening was then — expeditions to do in Egypt so many years. But pamphlets, The old Babylonian and Sumerian senled and stamped with the sender's ring. one expedition can only scratch the surface of the temples were, also, great Industrial. commercial, Afterward, the address was added and a sla myriad hills there and the countless buried and f agricultural and stock-ralsing centers, and they dispatched with tt. Later, we know that Baby forgotten cities that lie beneath them. ; kept a vast number of documents relating to these loninn and Sumerian governments supported regu- “Our only hope of getting the rest of the tablets k, verious interests. Jar postal systems, It Is quite possible that that buried there,” says Doctor Langdon, “is to go back ‘ Millions of tablets have been found recording regime was In existence In 2900 B. C. to Nippur again and again, and dig for them.” En- i anles of cattle, slaves and staple goods; marringe letters are found with seals unbroken. gowments for these expeditions are another of the contracts and agreements; divorce decrees; wills; e are marvellously preserved in their soft erying needs of scholars. The world at large will receipts for innumerable things from Jewelry and d pads. We cam only surmise the reason lose if archeological for their senled state. Perhaps a man kept sealed copies of the most Important letters he had to write. Duplicate coples of records and transac- tions have been unearthed, sometimes miles apart; and the same practice could have held, rationally, of letters. Some of these letters may never have been delivered, thanks to an inefficient postal service in some particular locality; or, and this Is more plausible, the brenking out of frequent revolutions could have concelvably crippled the Babylonian post offices and left many letters forever unde- livered. Indubitably the oldest undelivered letter in the world {s in the Babylonian collection of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania museum. Its date would be 2200 B. C.. and Doctor Langdon opened and read it only last week! It Is from a master to tls slave or to some un- derling or employee. Obviously, it Is only one of several letters, since ft refers to previous corre- spondence and to a previous transaction over which the writer Is perturbed. Its archaic Su- merian {s dictatorial, overbearing and peevish, and rants of some unsatisfactory flour deal that the unferling has undertaken. One wonders whatever became of that flour! Other tablets now being catalogued have plc- tures on them. One, a hunting scene, reminds one of the prehistoric cave drawings found in France. There is another of a battle scene, very much broken but rare and interesting. ‘The coming of Langdon to the Universi- ty of Pennsylvania museum ts timely and for tunate. The Babylonian division has had no cu- ji woman's dresses to human chattels, There are % the timekeepers’ s!ips of the temple workers, and ¥ bookkeeping accounts. Doctor Langdon has found that one big banking house did business tn the Fi city of Babylon for 600 years. ' The great bulk of the tablets have been found on the site of the ancieut temple of Nippur tn Babylonia. This temple was both a_ religious ; center and a college designed primarily for the <s education of priests, but the range of textbooks unearthed there shows that Instruction began at a primary stage and continued through elementary and grammar grades to the regulation college course, as Babylonians conceived it, and to theo- logical classes. The textbooks show a high or der of intellectuality, Indeed, the resemblances of these people to us of today bring home again the unchangeableness of the great antiquity of civilization, so calted. e © Boys’ exercise books have been found ‘repeat- ; * edly, In this and tn other collections. They were like present-day school slates, but made of wet clay, and the little fellow marked on them with a stylus, and when he made a mistake blotted ee range of the textbooks aston: o ec a Pig ees ath mathematics abound; they taught the muttiptiytion table up to 2400 and 2,500 times a number. In their financial transac. 1 had to do stupendous calculations ngdon has just found, excavations and research have to be abandoned. ‘ There {fs no doubt that the general public appre- clates the work done by museums and by scholars. To Biblical students atone there Is Inexhaustible pleasure and satisfaction to be derived from facts unearthed of Biblical and pre-Biblical peoples. There is now complete agreement among arch- eologists that Hammurabi ts that sume Amraphel of Genesis 14:1, a contemporary of Abraham. From chronological inferences It follows that Abraham niay well have attended school at whe temple in Nippur; nay, that he studied these very books that are now In the University of Pennsyt- vania museum, He may have read there the ac- count of the creation. Why not? The dates dove- tail. “Let me take out and touch one of those tab- lets,” snid a religious man recently In the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania museum, “I believe tn my heart that the band of Abraham must have held any or all of them nearly 5,000 years ago!” Greek Meets Greek. Some Scots were enjoying the fun of the frir. Seeing an old fiddler in the street, a few of them went over to him, and one, handing him two-pence, asked him to play the “Battle of Stirling Brig.” The old fiddler took the money and went rasping away the same as before. The audience getting tired of this, the spokesman agali went over to the fiddler and said to him: “Hi, map, that's no’ the ‘Battle of Stirling Brig.’ “I ken,” replied the old fiddler, “that’s the skirmish before the bat- tle.” yee is A NIN SS K »> SS . SS 55 z > > S forms bon, In different widths running round The widest is used, one row of it, just a little above the edge, then a little above that a narrower ribbon, only other trimming, and the only bit of color, were two little bunches of silk-made frult, quite good-sized, with This useful little school dress is in navy serge, made with one box-plait each side front and back, The fulness is drawn in loosely by a band of ma- terial fastened by a metal hook; braid trimming. lined. Fasten a piece of tape In the center of the side opposite the pockets. * This is folded over and the tape tied around the case, Sets Fur Trimmed. Angora wool, knitted by hand or machine woven, Is fur trimmed and made into very delectable neckplece, muff and hat sets, not only for sports r, but for ordinary street wear as well. As for the velvets, silks and fine cloths joined with fur to make the little things of the winter costume, there is no end to then Whole hats of fur, relieved only by some single ornament or slight trim- mings of velvet or metal lace, are worn. One unusually becoming model of mole- skin has a smoke-color ostrich tip at one side and an embroidered velvet ribbon of blne which ties in a small bow at the front. The much-exploited beret is, of course, shown in fur, and there are 7 many fur hats that, like the velvets, have brims clasping the head close and flaring out at andacious angles as they slant upward.—New York Sun. After an exile of some months from the world of dress, leather 1s back in Py small quantities as dress and accessories. One blue serge coat % dress is the smartest for a set consist- ing of collar, deep gauntlet cuffs and wide belt of black patent leather. An- other blue serge frock {s trimmed with leather applique in a maroon shade. The cutout designs are out- lined with soutache braid of the e color. Whole skating coats in bright and sober, dull and