15.01.2019 Views

mch

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

22 OUR ANCESTORS CAME FROM OUTER SPACE<br />

rounded forms that they could not have been made by nature.<br />

Also, old pottery shards were found on many of these hills<br />

indicating<br />

that these sites were ancient human habitations.<br />

One day in 1840 Botta gave in to his urge to dig up one of the<br />

round mounds to see what was inside. He started excavating the<br />

Kuyunjik hill on the Tigris River, just outside of Mosul. Besides<br />

the usual broken pottery he found a great number of clay tablets<br />

in different sizes, but mostly measuring imiformly 17 by 22 centimeters<br />

or, as was discovered later,<br />

12 by 16 Sumerian fingers of<br />

14 millimeters each. These tablets were covered with cuneiform<br />

characters, produced with an angled stylus. At that time there<br />

was much talk about and interest in this form of writing, but<br />

nobody had deciphered it yet.<br />

Cuneiform inscriptions had been discovered for the first time<br />

during the fifteenth century in the ruins of Persepolis, in Persia,<br />

the ancient capital of King Darius I.<br />

In 1472 the ambassador of<br />

Venice at the Persian court, Giosophat Barbaro, described these<br />

tablets, as did in 1602 Antonio de Gouveia, the ambassador of<br />

Portugal, at the same court and the explorer Pietro della Valle,<br />

who brought the first samples of cuneiform tablets back to<br />

Europe.<br />

Luckily no one at that time could understand these writings,<br />

because if the Pope would have read their message and discovered<br />

that it was the earth that turned aroimd the sun, or that the<br />

biblical version of the Flood was nothing but a pale reflection of<br />

the saga of Gilgamesh, or that a great part of Genesis was inspired<br />

by Sumerian legends, it is not difficult to imagine what<br />

would have happened to the old clay tablets and the people who<br />

found or read them.<br />

Consul Botta tired fast from his efforts<br />

to collect broken pottery<br />

and clay tablets and started to lose interest when he met in<br />

Mosul in 1842 a young Englishman by the name of Henry<br />

Layard. They became good friends, smoking opium and hashish<br />

together, but luckily Layard had to give up on drug smoking because<br />

it made him very sick.<br />

Botta told him about his excavations and Layard became very<br />

interested. Together they climbed the Kuyunjik hill and Layard<br />

was convinced right away that this was a very interesting archaeological<br />

site worthy of serious exploration. But Layard had

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!