lew@ihuxr.UUCP (Lew Mammel, Jr.) (11/03/84)
I recently read UR OF THE CHALDEES, by Wooley (I forget his initials), revised by (I forget his too) Moorey. Wooley spent over a decade excavating the site of Ur in southern Iraq in the early 1900's, and Moorey is a protege of his. In the preface, Moorey apologizes for his mentor's strong religious views and assures us that he has spared us the embarrassment of being subjected to them by the mercy of his revisions. In particular he tells us that he has removed a lot of discussion based on Abraham and various biblical references to Ur. Nevertheless, a discussion of The Flood by Wooley remains. It seems that in an excavation of a deep pit made as sort of a sounding, Wooley came to a thick layer of dirt with no artifacts present. By his own account, he resisted the idea that this was the original pre-occupation level, and kept digging. After about 15 more feet he found a thin (a few feet) layer with some more primitive artifacts. Wooley unhesitatingly took this as the archaeological record of The Flood. He shows a little of the religious bias that Moorey tried to revise out when he describes the pottery as being evidently the product of a degenrate culture, bringing the record further into line with the Genesis account. A little further on, Moorey adds his party-pooper comments about how there is no evidence for a single region wide flood to be identified with the Sumerian and Biblical legends etc. etc. Now, a flood that buries a culture under fifteen feet of mud is pretty impressive, and I wouldn't fault the devout for seizing on this as scientific confirmation of the Bible. Ironically, though, today's Creationists have cut themselves off from this interpretation. Their outlandish scenario deals in thousands of feet of rock strata and whole mountain ranges. I think this inflation of scale reflects the greater ambitions of today's fundamentalists. I'll let Wooley have his Flood, but the whole earth is too much. Lew Mammel, Jr. ihnp4!ihuxr!lew