BOOKKEEPING IN BABYLONIA.
PAPER and ink are perishable things, like certain other "modern improvements," says the Youth's Companion, but some of the clay tablets used by earlier civilizations still survive. In the buried city of Nippur, American explorers have recently found in one room, more than seven hundred of them, the business records of a rich firm of merchants, Ulurashu Sons. These documents are dated in the reigns of Artaxerxes I. (465-425 B.C.) and Darius II. (423-405 B.C.). The tables are of various sizes, some resembling the ordinary cake of soap of commerce. They are covered with cuneiform characters, clear and distinct as when the bookkeeper of Ulurashu inscribed them, twenty-five hundred years ago. Among them is this guarantee for twenty years that an emerald is so well set that it will not fall out:— "Bel-ahiddina and Bel-shumu, sons of Bel, and Hatin, son of Bazuza, spoke unto Belnadinshumu, son of Morashu, as follows: 'As concerns the gold ring set with an emerald, we guarantee that for twenty years the emerald will not fall out of ring. If it should fall out before the expiration of twenty years, Bel-ahiddina (and the two others) shall pay to Belnadinshumu an indemnity of ten mant of silver.'" Then follow the names of seven witnesses and of an official who is described as "the scribe of the Concordance of Proper Names." The document concludes with the thumb-nail marks of the contracting parties. There are also leases of various kinds and contracts for the sale of sun-dried bricks and other merchandise, and for the loan of seed corn and oxen for plowing.