Posted on 10/19/2005 4:21:03 PM PDT by blam
Charles Harmon
Director of University Relations
Sementha Mathews
Manager of Public Information and Media Relations
5,000-year-old treasure rediscovered in library storage room
Dr. Melanie Byrd, professor and coordinator of planning and program review in the History Department, holds a piece of the treasure in the palm of her hand. Valdosta State University Odum Library has uncovered an ancient treasure that excites even the mildest Indiana Jones wanna-be.
The treasure is a collection of 5,000-year-old Babylonian cuneiform clay tablets, dating back from 2300 BC to 500 BC. Cuneiform is one of several writing systems of the ancient East, in which wedge-shaped impressions were made in soft clay tablets. These tablets, delicate in nature, literally fit in the palm of one’s hand, measuring only 1.5 inches squared.
Dr. Richard Holmes Powell, first president of South Georgia State Normal College (now VSU) acquired a collection of ten of these tablets from Edgar Banks, an archaeologist working in Iraq in the early 20th century. Powell intended the tablets to provide learning opportunities for the school’s students; however, over the years, the tablets remained preserved in a library storage room. It wasn’t until a few years ago, that the tablets were found by Deborah Davis, Archivist. In an effort to make them available to the public without frequent handling, the tablets were scanned and made available for viewing on the web, even though, no one could interpret the inscriptions.
Before long, Cale Johnson, a cuneiform scholar from UCLA, saw the tablets on the web and offered to translate them. Through his translations, many things can be studied about this ancient time of history. A detailed interpretation of these tablets and an explanation of their significance can be found at http://books.valdosta.edu/arch/Babylonian/babylonian.htm .
Odum Library Archivist Deborah Davis opens ten small boxes, each containing a unique historical clay tablet. Davis said these tablets are some of the earliest samples of writing, but just as important, they reveal a significant part of business exchange, religion, medicine, etc., of ancient everyday life. “And now, we have a part of it,” said Davis.
For more information, contact Davis at 333-7150 or dsdavis@valdosta.edu.
GGG Ping.
Great. Now I've gotta go read the translations...I can't help myself....and this was going to be a quick glance at FR before dinner. Ha!
5000?
How about 2500 - 4300 years instead.
Early generation palm pilots./
How could the tablets be 5000 yrs old when they date the oldest to 2300BC? 4300 yrs is respectable, true, but it is not early Sumer.
Just checking for the obligatory Helen Thomas photo.
Viva Valdosta PING
NOOOOOOO! The links for the translations don't work. How frustrating!
LOL. I had the same reaction, except I am so tired right now I think I'll just make this a bookmark and come back to it later. The time covered by these tablets just seems amazing to me.
You mean that these tablets are a part of her subpoenaed notebooks?
For me, there is no such a thing.
Works for me. It's a pdf file so you will need Adobe installed to view it.
They work for me. They are pdf files. Maybe you are having a problem with Acrobat.
Links are on this page:
I have adobe. I'll try again.
YEC SPOTREP
GMTA :-)
"...NOOOOOOO! The links for the translations don't work. How frustrating!...
They work just fine for me. I'd copy and post them in the reply, but they're PDF files.
A personal note: when Elmer Andersen, the former governor of Minnesota, passed away earlier this year, he bequeathed a huge book collection to the libraries, and I have the job of going through them and classifying them. Among the treasures I've found: a first printing of Henry George's Progress and Poverty, and an 1837 printing of Edmund Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. Physicist, take note: one of the books he had in his collection was Leon Lederman's The God Particle, one of my all time favorite physics books.
Cool! Iirc, a substantial amount of the Babylonian tablets found have been public-works accounting records. People are always the same ...
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