Free Republic

A Sumerian “sacred code” has been deciphered, revealing divinely inspired building instructions echoed in the Bible. Experts have been puzzled since unearthing the 4,000-year-old statue of a leader called Gudea, which features an architectural plan, an inscription claiming he built a temple commanded to him in a dream, and a “ruler” of undeciphered measurements.... British Museum archaeologists have now cracked the “sacred code” of these mysterious measurements after finding a lost temple in Iraq...Dr Sebastien Rey, director of the British Museum’s project in Iraq, said: “It is like the precise measurement we see in the Bible in a much later...

Researchers have discovered a 5,000-year-old tavern hidden 19 inches underground in southern Iraq, according to a Jan. 23 press release from the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). Archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pisa conducted the excavation beginning in 2019, Smithsonian Magazine reported. The team used advanced technology, including drone imagery and magnetometry, to identify the site’s layout. The site, located in the ancient city of Lagash, offers clues about the lives of everyday people who lived in southern Mesopotamia around 2700 B.C.E. Inside the open-air eating space, archaeologists found benches, an oven, a clay refrigerator called...

...the pillar sat in British Museum for 150 years until Irving Finkel, a curator in the Middle East department, deciphered the Sumerian cuneiform writing on the cylinder this year. As it turns out, the object, now on view in an exhibit called "No Man's Land," was erected to establish a border between the warring city states of Lagash and Umma, located in present-day southern Iraq. According to the museum, the two cities were disputing over a fertile area called Gu'edina or the 'Edge of the Plain.' Around 2400 B.C. Enmetena, king of Lagash, had the pillar erected to stake his...