and from the spectators, the portion of my person and the prepared chair that are below the table top. We thus both sit sidewise to the table, and face the same direction. I ask her to clean the slates; and just as she is finishing the second slate, I take the first one in my right hand and apparently place it under the table.

Now I have just raised the trap of the chair while she was cleaning the first slate; so, as I bring this slate below the table top, I slip it on the top shelf of the chair silently, quickly drawing out the prepared slate in its place, and lowering the side piece of the chair. I immediately bring the prepared slate up under the table, requesting her at the same time to place her slate under the table with her right hand. Upon her doing so, I immediately ask her to take her other hand and hold my slate also. I instantly withdraw my right hand. This all requires but a moment and she has soon forgotten that I placed one of the slates under the table.

Sometimes I take a small slate pencil and quickly place it on the slates, instantly withdrawing my hand. I now place my hands on the table top, and gradually turn, facing the table. I call on the spectators to come forward and watch the experiment, and the trick is practically done.

At the proper time I direct the lady to bring out the slates, which she does, producing the message. After the effect of this is over, I mentally read her question on the slip of concealed paper; then I direct her to produce the envelope, open it and verify all. After this I bring forward the crystal globe and answer the questions as before described.

After all is completed, I take the cover off the table and turn it over to the view of the spectators, that they may see that there is no trickery, but that the table is an ordinary one. I also offer my person for examination that they may be convinced that nothing is concealed about me. I have never yet had any one suspect the innocent looking chair.

I have performed many experiments in magic and sleight-ofhand, and I have seen the best work of this class in the country; and I can conscientiously assure the readers of this article that I have never seen one experiment of this class, the effect of which could in any way begin to compare with the effect of the experiments I have just described. This is especially true among the more intelligent class of persons, who may regard the very best work in magic as but the result of practice; but who insist on regarding this as something else; as something at least bordering on the occult, and as something very rare.

THE STATUE OF KING DAVID, AND WHAT IT

TEACHES.

BY EDGAR JAMES BANKS, PH. D.

Field Director of the Recent Babylonian Expedition of the University of

Chicago.

HE extensive group of the low mounds of Bismya, in Central Babylonia, are divided by the bed of an ancient canal, into two parts. Near the north-eastern edge of the city, from the center of the bed of this ancient canal, there rises a square shaped mound about thirty-five feet in height; in it were discovered the ruins of

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the temple of the ancient city of Adab. The temple therefore stood upon an island in the canal.

Early in the year 1904, after clearing the summit and the sides of the mound, a deep passage way about four feet wide and ten feet deep was discovered leading along the north-west side of the temple platform. While removing the dirt at the west corner there appeared the trunk of a large, headless, marble statue projecting from the clay of the platform in which it had been imbedded. The statue

T

was lying upon its back where it had fallen evidently during a sack of the city. The toes of its feet which were broken during the fall

TRENCH WHERE THE STATUE WAS DISCOVERED.

It was found in the foreground, while the head lay at the foot of
the projection at the further end of the trench.

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lay in fragments at its side. Search at the time failed to reveal the head; however, a month later, it was found at the opposite end of the trench about thirty yards away.

With the exception of places where an incrustation of saltpeter had formed, especially upon the head, the statue was perfectly preserved. It stands seventy-eight centimeters high; the measurement about the shoulders is sixty-four, and around the bottom of the skirt eighty-one centimeters. The feet are imbedded in the pedestal for strength. The lower half of the body is covered with an embroidered skirt of six folds, held together by a strap fastened behind; the upper part is nude. The arms are free from the body at the elbows, and the hands are clasped in front. Upon the right

upper arm is an inscription of three lines. The head and the face are both shaved; the almond-shaped eyes are represented by holes or sockets into which eyeballs of another material, probably of ivory, were inserted, and the nose forms nearly a straight line with the forehead. In general the statue, if proportionately short and stout, is well formed; the shoulders and back, and especially the feet, are remarkably well shaped.

The three lines of writing upon the right upper arm are of so

antiquated a form that when the statue was first discovered I was unable to recognize the characters, especially of the third line, in which, as sometimes happens in the very earliest inscriptions, the signs run together as if forming a single character. However, the

INSCRIPTION ON THE ARM OF THE STATUE OF DAVID.

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discovery of other inscriptions of a later date soon led to its decipherment. The three lines are pronounced in the Sumerian language and are translated as follows:

E-mach, (The temple) Emach.

Lugal Da-udu, King David.

Lugal Ud-nun-ki, King of Adab (Bismya).

The inscription, as brief as it is, contains a mass of information for which we were seeking. The first line mentions the name of the temple in whose ruins we were digging, and that name, with the exception of its appearance in the stele of Hammurabi, was until then unknown. Thus another and an important temple which we later learned was dedicated to the goddess, Ninharsag, was recovered. The second line contains information of a still more startling character. The statue is not that of a god, but of a king, and the name of the king was Da-udu, a name still perhaps as common as any other in the modern Orient, and which with the exception of the final vowel is still pronounced the same. Daud is the Oriental pronunciation of David. The long controversies and the theories as to the derivation of the name of the Biblical king David were now settled forever, for it is an old Sumerian name which was adopted by the later Semites. In the third line of the inscription is an equal