22 SEPTEMBER 1917, Page 21

The Babylonian section of the Pennsylvania University Museum has issued

four parts of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth volumes of its scholarly publications of tablets from the Nippur collection. The most important is a collection of Sumerian Liturgical Tests, edited by Mr. Stephen Langdon. There are hymns and liturgies used by the Sumerians in public worship from the twenty-fifth to the twenty-second centuries before Christ, in the age preceding their conquest by the Semitic people. Tho Sumerians regarded the priest-Kings of Ur as " Messiahs who had at lent arrived to restore on earth the prodiluviart paradise." Even the destruction of Ur

by the Elatnites and the capture of their last King Ibi-Sin did not • destroy the Sumerians' faith.