EXCAVATIONS AT TEL-EL-OBEID.—Remarkable discoveries made by the joint expedition of the British Museum and the University Museum of Philadelphia at Tel-el-Obeid, a site about four and a half miles from Ur, are described by Mr. C. L. Woolley, in the Times of January 19. A tablet has been found which records the foundation of a building discovered by Dr. Hall in 1919 beneath the remains of two later buildings-one a temple, dating probably from the Second Dynasty of Ur; the other a temple erected by Dungi, second king of the Third Dynasty (c. 2250 B.C.). From this tablet it appears that this building, which was entirely buried beneath the mud-brick terraced floor of the Second Dynasty temple, was the temple of the goddess Nin-Khursag; set up by King A-an-ni-pad-da of the First Dynasty of Ur. It is therefore the oldest dated document yet known, and, further, it confirms the existence of a dynasty hitherto regarded as mythical. In the list of kings of Sumer and Akkad drawn up soon after 2000 B.C., it is given as the third from the Flood, and dead reckoning would place it at about 4600 B.C., though Sumerian history, properly speaking, could not be carried beyond 3000 B.C. A remarkable feature of this temple is the lavish use of copper for decorative purposes in the form of friezes, reliefs, and statues of cattle, wall-facings, and sheathmgs of palm-logs and roof-beams. Yet flint was still in common use and copper was both costly and scarce.