E. H. ADDINGTON

156 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GRAND LODGE
ancient ruins there is much that borders on the marvelous. In many instances
these cylinders of clay—libraries—testify to the life of man. The
more ancient they are, the more marvelous are the stories of that life
as to its beginning upon our globe. Just here it may be well to read
the recent opinion of one or more of the late explorers to be found
reported from the Smithsonian Institute. Mr. George McCurSy, a civil
engineer of great repute, who has charge of the engineering works that
are designed to redeem Mesopotamia from the drift and accumulations
of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and restore it, as a land of plenty,
where a high state of civilization formerly existed; a country once of
great cities and a large population, more ancient than Egypt.
Mr. MeCurdy finds the country of Mesopotamia, centuries old, and
remarkable at that early date for its agricultural resources and possessed
of a large'and increasing population more than ten thousand years
ago. He finds this fact established by cylinders of clay. And volumes
of cylinders, recently found in ancient libraries, long since buried beneath
the sand brought down by the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Also,
he claims there are evidences of man found in the Miocene strata. For
many years paleontologists have been busily engaged gathering and
depositing in the museums of Europe, many thousands of these tablets.
Numbers of these are from the tomb's of the Kings. These rulers are
described as builders and restorers of temples. Two of the kings are
of the old Accadian race. They left traces of their works in Sergalla,
Erach and dther ancient cities of Assyria.
Nabonidus, the last of the kings of Babylon, is described as a
zealous antiquarian; he busied himself with exhuming these memorial
cylinders which the restorers had found beneath their foundations.
These discoveries he recorded as special cylinders for information
of posterity and fortunately preserved. The Sun Temple of Larcum
he found intact in its chambers under the corner-stone. The King,
Hammurabi, stating that the Temple, begun by Urea, was finished by
Urea's son, seven hundred years before Hammurabi's time. Hammurabi
was a well known king and law-giver and existed about two thousand
years before Christ. The date Urea began his Temple would be
about 2700 B.C.
Nabonidus, speaking of the Sun Temple of Sippor, says: "Having
dug deep into its foundation for the cylinder of Noram-Sin, son of
Sharrukin, (Sargon II.) which for thirty-two hundred years, none of
the Kings who lived before him, had seen. Thus we have 3750 B. C.
as the date of Noram-Sin, to which add the date of Sargon II, makes
3800 B. C. equal to 7550 B. 0." .
Thus the Chaldean chronology is carried back to a date prior to
Urea, a builder and contemporary with the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt,
when the great Pyramids were builded. This is the period when Egypt
discloses the date of her civilization, as fully established by her monuments,
of over five thousand years. It is equally clear, if these figures