Science: Everlasting Books

If the material evidence of modern civilization should be left to ruin by world war or other cataclysm, archeologists thou sands of years hence might find the remains of skyscrapers, subways, concrete highways, pottery, glass, jewels, coins, some tools, the debris of machinery. The written records would have crumbled to dust, and the archeologists might conclude that the inhabitants of the present world were half-literate savages gifted with great engineering ability. But if future diggers explored the broad Mesopotamian valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, in what is now Iraq, they would find thousands of clay tablets bearing the cuneiform writing of the ancient Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians. Deciphering these, the diggers would read of civilizations 3,000 years or more before the Christian era, would probably conclude that here was the peak of enlightenment which their predecessors on earth had reached. So argued Edward Chiera, late professor of Assyriology at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, in They Wrote on Clay, posthumously published last week.*

“Clay,” says Professor Chiera, “is practically indestructible.” This is especially true if the clay has been baked, as some of the cuneiform writings were. Unbaked clay crumbles if left to weather on the surface, but if buried in moist ground it remains intact indefinitely. If it is dirty, it can be brushed vigorously without hurting the writing. In the mounds which were piled up by the debris of Babylonian cities built one on top of another the author estimates that 99% of history’s cuneiform writings still await discovery. The Babylonians and Assyrians wrote a great deal—records of lawsuits, family archives, commercial ledgers, domestic inventories; contracts, bills of sale; schoolbooks; legends of goods and achievements of kings.

If a primitive draws the image of a gazelle to amuse himself, it is a picture; but if a hunter makes such a picture to inform the next comer that the hunting is good, it is a message. Cuneiform writing (“cuneiform” means wedge-shaped) is a direct descendant of picture-writing, in which the symbols are so formalized and simplified that they are unrecognizable as representations of real objects. When symbols were assigned for phonetic syllables, the representation of abstract ideas became possible. The Babylonians realized that they could develop an al-phabet—that is, a set of symbols each of which would stand for a single consonant or vowel—but they resisted the innovation for the same reason that moderns resist simplified spelling.

In the chapters which tell what has been decoded from the tablets. Dr. Chiera gives a fascinating, chatty picture of the daily lives of the ancient Mesopotamian peoples, which he says are now better known than the ordinary lives of the later Greeks and Romans despite their elegant literature. Born to a Baptist minister in Italy in 1885, Dr. Chiera studied theology but plumped for archeology, joined the University of Chicago staff in 1927. Thin, slope-shouldered and bearded, he resembled the popular idea of a scientist, was noted for boundless energy and painstaking preciseness in his work. He it was who discovered and succeeded in bringing to Chicago one of the magnificent, 40-ton stone bulls of King Sargon II.

* University of Chicago Press ($3).