Freethought & Rationalism Archive

deadman_932 · 02-12-2008, 10:50 PM

Uh, Sir Leonard Wooley was writing about ONE site...UR...and Kenyon didn't even deal with that site. Jericho isn't even NEAR there...nor is Nineveh UR , and there's no huge flood there at all

deadman_932 · 02-12-2008, 10:51 PM

So ...Where are the citations saying they all agree on a massive flood in Mesopotamia?
Jericho ain't even NEAR there and there's no flood layer in Nineveh so far as I know. Show me. By the way, you DO realize that Nineveh comes long after Sumer, right?

Sheshonq · 02-12-2008, 10:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JayW

Sheshonq

Here's some of them.
Sir Leonard Woolley
1953 and Excavations at Ur: A Record of 12 Years’ Work, published in
1954.Ur of the Chaldees: A Record of Seven Years of Excavation.
The Sumerians (1928), Digging Up the Past (1930),
Ur of the Chaldees (1938, rev. ed. 1952),
A Forgotten Kingdom (1953, rev. ed. 1959),
Excavations at Ur (1954).

A. H. Layard
Nineveh and Its Remains, London 1849
Nineveh and Babylon, London 1853
The Stones of Assyria (1936

Kathleen Kenyon
1942 The Buildings at Samaria
1954 Guide to Ancient Jericho
1957 Digging Up Jericho
1960 Archaeology in the Holy Land,second edition 1965,third 1970
1966 Amorites and Canaanites
1978 The Bible and recent archaeology

That's the second time I've posted them, Do you suppose you could keep them somewhere you can find them.

When you finish those let me know. I have a lot more.

Sorry; you'll need to do better than that.

1. You'll need to provide the exact quotes from these sources that say what you claim they do - I'm not going to go looking through a book merely because you *claim* something is there;

2. You'll also need to provide evidence from archaeologists that isn't 150 years old. Layard has been superseded - and in fact, did not have the tools available to him that modern archaeology does;

3. You've already been corrected on Kenyon - she says no such thing about floods;

Your claim was that EVERY archaeologist agrees with you. So far you have given us the name of only three:

a. none of whom you have cited directly;
b. two of whom have been superseded (and one of whom is over 150 years old);
c. the last (Kenyon) you've already been corrected on

Not a very good start here, JayW.

JayW · 02-12-2008, 10:54 PM

Quote:

Sheshonq
Great. Make sure that the archaeologists support your specific point: that there was a regional flood in Mesopotamia that covered that whole area and formed the basis for the Noah's flood myth.

What the hell are you babbling about. Did you see me write anything that would resemble
habing evidence for Noah's flood. All that writing I did and you still don't have clue. Your wasting my time. It would be better spent on someone who can actually comprehend what their reading. Could you please show me the post where I mentioned Noah's flood? I akso said nothing about the Black Sea. The black would not have dumped enough water to flood the Euphrates valley,much less leave a n eight foot layer of silt. If you keep drwing at straws trying to find false claim I made, you might eventually come up with something that coul be construed as such. In the meantime read the books.

deadman_932 · 02-12-2008, 10:59 PM

I have read them, and They don't say what you claimed...Sir Leonard Wooley's "flood" layer is semi-decadal deposition layers, not from a single flood. Kenyons stuff from Jericho isn't even NEAR there. Nineveh is LONG after UR, and can't have evidence of the "same" flood . You're just pulling shit out of air that you've never read yourself, have you?

Sheshonq · 02-12-2008, 11:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by deadman_932

Uh, Sir Leonard Wooley was writing about ONE site...UR...and Kenyon didn't even deal with that site. Jericho isn't even NEAR there...nor is Nineveh UR , and there's no huge flood there at all

Moreover, contrary to JayW's claim, Woolley's ideas are definitely not mainstream archaeology.

Quote:

Woolley's flood, sensational as it may have been, had to compete for public attention with evidence of another flood (more accurately, floods) discovered at Kish, in the northern portion of the floodplain. The upper Kish flood was later in date than Woolley's discovery, in fact roughly contemporary with Woolley's royal tombs. The Kish flood strata had apparently been discovered before Woolley had discovered his flood, and the Kish excavators felt that Woolley had cheated them of credit for the discovery of the flood. In a letter to the Director of the Field Museum dated March 20, 1929, Stephen Langdon, Director of the Field Museum-Oxford University Joint Expedition to Kish, pointed out that Woolley had been at Kish on January 26-27 and Charles Watlin, Field Director of the Kish excavations, had shown him the alluvial deposits. When Woolley returned to Ur, he discovered his own alluvial deposit and claimed credit for the discovery of the flood in the popular press without mention of Kish.

In reassessing the evidence for the flood, Max Mallowan, Woolley's assistant at Ur, who married Agatha Christie, argued that neither the Ur flood, dating as it did to a remote prehistoric period, nor the upper Kish flood, so late in time, could be the source of the Mesopotamian narratives. Instead, he suggested that a flood layer discovered at Fara (ancient Shuruppak) in the University of Pennsylvania Museum's 1931 excavations might lie behind the Mesopotamian legends. Mallowan cited literary traditions linking Shuruppak and the flood, as well as the likely identification of Ziusudra, king of Shuruppak, with Ziusudra, hero of the Sumerian flood story. Other archaeologists have noted that the date of the Fara flood, late Early Dynastic I (ca. 2750 BC), corresponds closely with the dating of the archaeological levels that have yielded the oldest inscription of an historically attested king.

Today, archaeologists and language specialists alike doubt that the Ur, Kish, or even Fara floods could be the source of the Mesopotamian flood narratives, and prefer to take them merely as evidence for the endemic hazard posed by floods in the flat alluvial plain of southern Mesopotamia.

Sheshonq · 02-12-2008, 11:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JayW

Quote:

Sheshonq
Great. Make sure that the archaeologists support your specific point: that there was a regional flood in Mesopotamia that covered that whole area and formed the basis for the Noah's flood myth.

What the hell are you babbling about. Did you see me write anything that would resemble
habing evidence for Noah's flood.

That isn't what I said. Apparently you can't read carefully.

and formed the basis for the Noah's flood myth. <--- what I said

Is not the same thing as saying "evidence for Noah's flood." You claimed that all the bible events have some basis in fact. That's what I'm asking about here. Don't blame me if you can't produce the evidence.

Quote:

All that writing I did and you still don't have clue. Your wasting my time.

I know exactly what you were claiming.

Quote:

It would be better spent on someone who can actually comprehend what their reading.

No, your time would be better spent carefully reading what I wrote, since it is the same thing as your claim about bible events.

JayW · 02-12-2008, 11:12 PM

Excavations at Shuruppak (modern Fara) conducted by the University of Philadelphia and others, have confirmed that during the end of the Jemdet Nasr period, Shuruppak did boom, as a result of four watercourses converging in the town, making it an important transport hub. The team of archaeologists found a layer of riverine silt, deposited between the late Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic deposits exactly as indicated by the Sumerian texts. This local river flood of the Euphrates River that has been radio-carbon dated to about 2900 BC at the end of the Jemdet Nasr Period. The Epic of Atrahasis tablet III,iv, lines 6-9 clearly identifies the flood as a local river flood: "Like dragonflies they [dead bodies] have filled the river. Like a raft they have moved in to the edge [of the boat]. Like a raft they have moved in to the riverbank." The WB-444 Sumerian king list places the flood after the reign of Ziusudra, the flood hero in the Epic of Ziusudra that has numerous parallels to the other flood stories. According to archaeologist Max Mallowan[28] the Genesis flood "was based on a real event which may have occurred in about 2900 BC... at the beginning of the Early Dynastic period."

More recently the cause and extent of this flood has been estimated. It has been found that the Shuruppak flood extended as far north as Kish, and was associated with a simultaneous flooding of both the Tigris and the Euphrates. According to one theory, the Priora oscillation, a worldwide climatic period from 3,500 to 3000 BC, led to a drying of the Middle East and a spread of sand-dunes. One of these dunes dammed the lower course of the Karun River creating an inland lake. In about 2,900 BC, this water swollen by winter rains and melted snows in early summer, broke out towards the north, inundating the Tigris and hence the Euphrates producing the Shuruppak flood mentioned in the Mesopotamian tablets[29]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_(mythology)

I also ran across Morton's critique. Hs reason for not belieing it is based on calm water,which may not have been the case since some flood stories mention a cyclones.

Quote:

Sheshonq
Sorry; you'll need to do better than that.

No I don't have to. Your not concrned about learnng anything anyway. It useless to keep posting anything to a person who's mind is so closed thye refuse to take anything into account except material that is in agreement. Either find out on your own or stay ignorant of ancient history. I don't care.

deadman_932 · 02-12-2008, 11:16 PM

Ooopppps, so now it's Shurrupak and Kish...at a different time from your first claims? Can't you keep your story straight?

Why didn't you post the rest of that Wiki page, along with a working link?

Quote:

Sir Leonard Woolley found evidence of marine sand to a depth of three metres below the city of Ur, and put forward the case that this was evidence of the Flood of Genesis. The date however, was in the Early Ubaid period, too early for the Babylonian accounts which were associated with the city of Shuruppak. Further excavations suggest that the Ur marine deposits were associated with the height of the Flandrian transgression, 5,600 BCE, during the Old Peronian, when the Persian Gulf was about 5 metres higher than its current level.

Evidence of more localised and possibly catastrophic floods have been found in a number of sites in Southern Iraq. One, dating to the end of Early Dynastic II, laid a series of riverine deposits beneath Shuruppak, extending possibly as far as Kish, associated with a possible flooding of the Karun River into the Tigris, and higher than average rainfall around Nineveh, at the end of the Priora oscillation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_%28mythology%29

And :

Quote:

Sir Leonard Woolley, in the period from 1929-1934, in his famous excavations of the "Death Pits" at Ur, sank a series of test trenches down to bedrock. Finding early evidence of human habitation, he was surprised to find this sequence interrupted by 11 feet (about 3 1/2 meters) of clean, water-lain silt. Woolley wrote, "Eleven feet of silt would probably mean a flood of no less than 25 feet deep; in the flat low-lying land of Mesopotamia a flood of that depth would cover an area about 300 miles long and 100 miles across....[which is evidence] ...of an inundation unparalleled in any later period of Mesopotamian history"[27]. Woolley concluded that this inundation of the early Ubaid period was the Biblical Deluge, and that the story had been carried to Canaan by Abraham.

However, examining the geology of the Persian Gulf showed that this period coincided with the warm Atlantic phase of world climatic history, when sea levels were 4 meters (12 feet) higher than they are now - the same rise that produced the so-called Black Sea Deluge. This rise of the sea level occurred at the rate of a few centimeters a decade - hardly capable of producing a flash flood described in Biblical or Mesopotamian myth. Furthermore, the Ubaid period dates did not coincide with Jemdet Nasr-Early Dynastic dating as suggested by the Sumerian king list.[citation needed]

JayW · 02-12-2008, 11:20 PM

Quote:

The Akkadian tablets, like the story in Genesis, are collections of myths. There was, however, a brief period of respectability, in the first half of the twentieth century, given to the notion of the occurrence of an actual catastrophic flood. An archaeological expedition in 1929 led by Sir Charles Leonard Wooley (1880-1960) found at the site of the ancient city of Ur, a stratum of clean clay about eight feet thick. Wooley originally estimated the layer of silt to be about four hundred miles long and about one hundred miles wide. The layer was dated at around 4000BC. Had this been true, a flood of such a magnitude would certainly has qualified as "world-wide" to the ancient Babylonians, for the area estimated by Wooley represented the whole of the known world to them. However, subsequent expeditions has shown that the thick layer of silt is localized and was nowhere as widespread as Wooley first thought it to be. [6]

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02-12-2008, 10:50 PM	#131
deadman_932 Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Altadena, California Posts: 3,271	Uh, Sir Leonard Wooley was writing about ONE site...UR...and Kenyon didn't even deal with that site. Jericho isn't even NEAR there...nor is Nineveh UR , and there's no huge flood there at all

02-12-2008, 10:51 PM	#132
deadman_932 Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Altadena, California Posts: 3,271	So ...Where are the citations saying they all agree on a massive flood in Mesopotamia? Jericho ain't even NEAR there and there's no flood layer in Nineveh so far as I know. Show me. By the way, you DO realize that Nineveh comes long after Sumer, right?

02-12-2008, 10:59 PM	#135
deadman_932 Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Altadena, California Posts: 3,271	I have read them, and They don't say what you claimed...Sir Leonard Wooley's "flood" layer is semi-decadal deposition layers, not from a single flood. Kenyons stuff from Jericho isn't even NEAR there. Nineveh is LONG after UR, and can't have evidence of the "same" flood . You're just pulling shit out of air that you've never read yourself, have you?

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