【正文】
d wastes. Our earliest archeological records of central water supply and wastewater disposal date back about 5000 years, to Nippur of Sumeria. In the ruins of Nippur there is an arched drain with the stones set in full voussoir position, each stone being a wedge tapering downward into place. Water was drawn from wells and extensive system of drainage conveyed the wastes from the palaces and residential districts of the city. The earliest recorded knowledge of water treatment is in the Sanskrit medical lore and Egyptian Wall inscri ptions. Sanskrit writings dating about 2021 . tell how to purify foul water by boiling in copper vessels,exposing to sunlight, filtering through charcoal, and cooling in an earthen vessel. The earliest known apparatus for clarifying liquids was pictureed on Egyptian walls in the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries . The first picture represents the siphoning of either water of settled wine. A second picture shows the use of wick siphons in an Egyptian kitchen. The first engineering report on water supply and treatment was made in . 98 by Sextus Julius Frontinus, watermissioner of Rome. He produced two books on the water supply of Rome. In these he described a settling reservoir at the head of one of the aqueducts.