Chapter II: Excavations (1)

The history of the actual excavations properly commences with the first expedition sent out to dig, but there is one scholar who, although he did not excavate on any large scale, was the first to bring cuneiform inscriptions to Europe and on this account deserves special mention.

C. J. Rich, born in 1787 at Dijon, was from the early age of nine attracted to the study of Oriental languages, and in course of time made himself master of Hebrew, Persian, Aramaic and Arabic, while he is said to have attempted to read Chinese Hieroglyphics at the phenomenal age of fourteen. In 1803 he became a Cadet in the East India Company’s service, his military post being subsequently exchanged for a civil appointment. After visiting Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor and other countries, he returned to Bombay, but was, before the age of twenty-four, appointed the East India Company’s resident at Baghdad. In 1811 he visited the ruins of Babylon, an account of which is to be found in his “Memoir on the ruins of Babylon,” while his visit to Nineveh is recorded in his “_Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan and on the site of ancient Nineveh, with Journal of a voyage down the Tigris to Baghdad, and an account of a visit to Shiraz and Persepolis_.” It is moreover to Rich that we owe our first accurate plans of both Nineveh and Babylon. In the course of his travels, he made large collections consisting chiefly of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Aramaic and Syriac manuscripts, a number of Greek and oriental coins, and also many antiquities from Babylon and Nineveh, including the first cuneiform tablets seen in Europe: his collections were acquired by the Trustees of the British Museum, after his death from cholera in 1820.

But as the pioneer in the actual field of excavation, M. Botta, the French Consul at Mosul, occupied the first place in point of time. In the year 1842, on the advice of Mohl, he began the exploration of the Mound of Kouyunjik, one of the two mounds which mark the site of the city of Nineveh, but meeting with scant success, he transferred his attention in 1843 to the Mound of Khorsabad (the town of Chosroes) some miles north of Mosul, where he laid bare the ruins of a palace which proved to be that of Sargon, king of Assyria (722-705 B.C.) and the father of Sennacherib. In the year 1851 the French Assembly voted the money for an expedition to Babylonia, and also for another expedition to Assyria, the object of which was to complete the excavations which had been commenced with so much promise at Khorsabad: this expedition was directed by Victor Place who at the same time succeeded Botta as French Consular agent at Mosul. During the years 1851-1855 Place completed the excavation of Sargon’s palace, and also laid bare the surrounding buildings and rooms, carrying his work right up to the wall of the town; Khorsabad was found to contain the ruins of a whole fortified town, which had remained entombed for some 2500 years: the town was named Dûr-Sharru-ukîn after its founder Sargon. The four corners of the city walls were oriented towards the four cardinal points, the walls themselves being pierced by eight enormous gates, each of which was named after an Assyrian deity. The palace had been built on a terraced mound 45 feet high, which was made of crude or unbaked bricks, and was protected by a casing-wall of large square stones. The palace contained wide halls, adorned with sculptures, winged bulls and the like. The floors of the various chambers consisted generally of stamped clay, and were no doubt hidden from view by elaborate rugs, sometimes, however, tiles or blocks of marble concealed the unsightly clay.

The walls were of great thickness, i.e. from 9-1/2 to 16 feet, while in one place they measured as much as 25-1/2 feet. The inner walls of the less important chambers were only covered with a white plaster surrounded by black lines, the so-called women’s apartments, on the other hand, being decorated with frescoes and white or black arabesques. Marble statues were unearthed in the harem court, and the remains of a ziggurat or stage-tower—a characteristic feature in Mesopotamian temples—were brought to light. Place’s excavations were not so productive of large sculptures and monuments as those of Botta had been, but they were particularly fruitful as regards smaller objects of glass, stone, clay, and metal.

The first Englishman to enter the field was Layard who in 1845, only two years after Botta’s first expedition, commenced excavating the ruined mounds of Nimrûd. Nimrûd, which proved to be the ancient Calah, was built on a rectangular plateau just as Khorsabad had been, and the exploration of its site yielded a rich harvest of new materials for the reconstruction of the history of the past. Ashur-naṣir-pal, king of Assyria (885-860), following the example of Shalmaneser I (about 1300), removed the seat of government from Ashur forty miles northwards, to Calah, where he built a palace for himself, the excavation of which was one of Layard’s greatest triumphs. This palace occupied the north-western portion of the mound and was in part restored by Sargon; to the north of this palace of Ashur-naṣir-pal lay the site of the temple of Ninib or Adar, the god of war. Shalmaneser II (860-825) the successor of Ashur-naṣir-pal, also built a palace at Calah, on the south-east of that of his predecessor; this palace, known as the central palace, was almost entirely rebuilt by Tiglath-Pileser III, the Biblical Pul (745-727 B.C.).

_PLATE II_

2. KOUYUNJIK AND NEBI YÛNUS FROM MOSUL

3. NIMRÛD (CALAH)

4. KHORSABAD]

At the south-west corner, the palace of Esarhaddon (681-668) was excavated, in the construction of which, that king utilized the materials of the older palaces in the most unscrupulous fashion, but the building was found to have been much damaged by fire. North of Esarhaddon’s palace and south of that of Ashur-naṣir-pal, lay the comparatively small palace of Adad-nirari III (812-783 B.C.), and in the south-east corner of the parallelogram the insignificant remains of the palace of Ashur-etil-ilâni (about 625) one of the last of Assyria’s monarchs were brought to light.

Thus Layard discovered and excavated the remains of some seven royal palaces at Nimrûd; of these seven that of Ashur-naṣir-pal was by far the most important from the archæological and historical standpoint.

Wall bas-reliefs, human-headed winged lions and bulls (cf. Pl. XXV), obelisks, bronze bowls, iron reaping-hooks and spear-heads, carved ivory panels and mirrors, a “silver-plated” sceptre-head, and a variety of bells are a few among the many valuable finds at Nimrûd, each of which makes its contribution, be it small or be it great, to the restoration of a page of human history and cultural evolution.

But undoubtedly the most impressive monuments yielded by Assyrian excavations are the gigantic winged bulls and lions which were stationed at the royal palace gates. The removal of these monsters of oriental antiquity was an even more difficult task than their excavation, and taxed the inventive powers of both French and English explorers to the utmost.

Those excavated by the French at Khorsabad were embarked piecemeal for Paris, the parts into which they had been sawn, with a view to facilitating their transit, being fitted together again in the Louvre, the museum which they now adorn. Layard however adopted a different method in effecting the transport of the winged bulls from Nimrûd to London, by means of which he successfully brought them over intact without breaking them up in any way; the extraordinary difficulties involved in this feat give us a vivid conception of the similar difficulties which the Assyrians must have had to overcome in the removal of these solid stone masses from the quarry to the entrances of the palaces, and in the exact adjustment of them in their specific places. Layard gives us a detailed description[20] of the plan he devised for the removal of some of these unwieldy monsters, of which thirteen pairs had already been discovered. His first efforts were directed towards two of the smaller colossi. The first and greatest problem to be solved was how to lower them without risk of their falling and so being broken. The sculptures were first of all wrapped in mats or felt to mitigate the effect of any misfortune that might befall them, either through the ropes giving way or cutting the soft stone. Heavy wooden rollers had been procured from the mountains; these were placed upon sleepers laid parallel to the sculpture, and it only now remained to lower the winged creature on to the rollers; this was effected by means of ropes skilfully applied, the descent of the gradually sinking monument being checked by thick beams which supported it in its fall and were gradually withdrawn as the occasion required. As the bull approached the rollers the beams had to be entirely removed, the whole of the weight and strain thus being on the cables and ropes, which stretched until finally they reached breaking point, and the bull fell some four feet or more to the ground, but fortunately without being damaged. A trench of about 200 feet in length, 15 feet wide, and in some places 20 feet deep, having been duly made through which the bull might proceed on the rollers to the edge of the mound—this course was necessary owing to the impossibility of lifting such a massive weight—the giant animal was slowly pulled by a large number of Arabs to the end of the trench and down the slope of the mound, where it was lowered on to a specially-constructed cart, which had been a nine days’ wonder to the natives ever since its appearance. The cart itself was fitted with two strong axles which had been used by Botta in the removal of sculptures from Khorsabad. “Each wheel was formed of three solid pieces, nearly a foot thick, from the trunk of a mulberry tree, bound together by iron hoops. Across the axles were laid three beams, and above them several cross-beams, all of the same wood. A pole was fixed to one axle to which were also attached iron rings for ropes to enable men as well as buffaloes to draw the cart. The wheels were provided with movable hooks for the same purpose.” The mulberry wood used had of course to be procured in the mountains, there being no wood of the required substance or size in the Mesopotamian valley. Buffaloes were first harnessed to the pole, while a number of men tugged at the ropes attached to the wheels and the movable hooks, but the buffaloes appear to have soon struck, and they were consequently taken out, the whole of the work now being done by three hundred Arabs. At length, after multitudinous efforts, the bull arrived at the river where it was landed on a specially-prepared platform from which it might slide on to a raft. Thus much for the obstacles to be surmounted in the mere removal of these enormous blocks of stone by an excavator of the nineteenth century, from which we may form a small and very inadequate estimate of the indomitable zeal and invincible energy of the Assyrians some twenty-six or twenty-seven centuries ago in quarrying, carving, transporting and fixing the guardian genii.

_PLATE III_

EXCAVATIONS AT NIMRÛD (CALAH) IN ASHUR-NAṢIR-PAL’S PALACE]

Calah (Nimrûd) was the capital of Assyria for 220 years (885-668), but at the close of that period she had to yield her pre-eminence to Nineveh, which Sennacherib rebuilt and which was the capital of the empire from his time till the end of the chapter, i.e. till about 630 B.C. Sennacherib naturally built a palace at his new capital, Nineveh, and the discovery and excavation of this palace are also due to the indefatigable efforts of the late Sir Henry Layard and his assistant Hormuzd Rassam. This palace of Sennacherib occupied the south-west corner of the northern of the two groups of mounds known as Kouyunjik which mark the site of ancient Nineveh, Ashur-bani-pal’s (668-626 B.C.) palace being located immediately to the north of it. Unfortunately Sennacherib’s palace suffered from fire when the Medes took the city in 606 B.C. in consequence of which most of his wall bas-reliefs are greatly marred. The complete excavation of this palace was the great triumph of Layard’s second campaign (1849-1851), and the bas-reliefs taken from the walls of its seventy or more halls and chambers now form, in spite of their comparatively bad state of preservation, one of the most priceless possessions of the British Museum. But one more epoch-making discovery in the annals of Mesopotamian excavations must be attributed to this world-renowned excavator.

One day Layard discovered two chambers connected with each other, and after removing the débris, he found that “to the height of a foot or more from the floor they were entirely filled with cuneiform tablets of baked clay, some entire, but the greater part broken into many fragments.”

In point of fact he had chanced upon part of the library of Ashur-bani-pal, one of Assyria’s greatest kings; the library appears to have been stored partly in the northern palace, that of Ashur-bani-pal proper, and partly in the south-western palace built by Sennacherib; it was in the latter that the rooms referred to were found; the other half of this great library of the later Assyrian kings was subsequently unearthed by Rassam. The contents of these tablets, made of the finest clay and ranging from one to fifteen inches, are as varied as the tablets themselves. Some of them contain historical records, others astronomical reports, or mathematical calculations: there are also letters of a private and public character, but the majority of the tablets deal with astrology and medicine, both of which subjects were intimately connected in the mind of the Babylonian. Prayers, incantations, psalms and religious texts in general, formed a considerable part of this library, and as a large proportion of the “volumes” or tablets are not original works but copies from earlier Babylonian productions, the value of the library,—now known under the name of the “Kouyunjik collection,”—for the study of the religious and mythological conceptions of both the Babylonians and Assyrians is more than can be adequately estimated. Many of the tablets are bilingual, the ideographic Sumerian being provided with an Assyrian interlinear translation, and these, together with other tablets of the collection containing syllabaries in which the Sumerian value, the Assyrian name, and sometimes the Assyrian meaning of different signs are given, have been of the utmost use in the rediscovery of the languages of Mesopotamia. Layard also visited Babylonia, and began to excavate at Babylon and Nippur, but his Babylonian operations were not attended with the extraordinary success of his excavations at Nineveh and Calah.

In 1851 a French expedition was sent out to Babylonia under Fresnel and Jules Oppert: they secured various relics from the ruined mounds of Babylon, among which may be especially mentioned a fine collection of coloured-brick fragments, but unfortunately all was lost through a mishap on the Tigris in 1855.

In 1852 Rassam succeeded Layard in the field, and at once had to contend with difficulties resulting from Rawlinson’s concessions to Victor Place, to whom he had transferred the right of excavating what remained to be excavated at Kouyunjik, which from Rassam’s point of view fell within the sphere of British influence, and to which therefore British excavators had a prior claim. In 1853 Rassam commenced operations at Ḳalat Sherḳât, but apart from the discovery of two clay prisms inscribed with the annals of Tiglath-Pileser I (1100-1080 B.C.), the ancient Ashur did not yield much fruit on this occasion. At Calah, the scene of Layard’s brilliant triumphs, Rassam discovered E-zida, the temple of Nebo, the god who vied with Marduk for the first place in the Babylonian pantheon of later days, and whose name is commemorated in the names of several of the kings of the first Babylonian empire, as also in three of those of the second empire, the most familiar of whom is the Biblical Nebuchadnezzar; six large statues of the god were brought to light, two of which at all events are by their inscriptions shown to be contemporaneous with the Assyrian king Adad-nirari III (812-783); a stele of King Shamshi-Adad II (825-812 B.C.), and the remains of an inscribed obelisk of Ashur-naṣir-pal complete the list of his principal finds on this site. But his name will be for ever associated with Kouyunjik; his first efforts were productive of no very great results beyond the discovery of a limestone obelisk of Ashur-naṣir-pal covered with bas-reliefs, and now in the Assyrian Transept of the British Museum, and a female torso from the palace of Ashur-bêl-kala, king of Assyria about 1080 B.C. (cf. Pl. XXIV). Rassam however profited by Victor Place’s omission to make use of the permission accorded to him by Rawlinson to explore the northern part of Kouyunjik, but at the same time took the precaution of making his initial operations under the cover of night. His nocturnal labours were crowned with the greatest success which the excavators of those days could have—the discovery of a new palace—and after he was satisfied on this point, the digging was allowed to proceed during the daytime, as it is a recognized rule that the discoverer of a new palace has established his claim to the complete excavation of it, as against the rest of the world. The newly-discovered palace turned out to be that of Ashur-bani-pal, king of Assyria (668-626 B.C.), in whose reign Assyria attained the height of her power both at home and abroad, extending her sway even as far as Thebes, the capital of Upper Egypt, which was taken and sacked by this king in B.C. 666. But Ashur-bani-pal as well as being a great warrior, was also a great huntsman, and the bas-reliefs which he caused to be sculptured upon the walls of his palace at Kouyunjik, in commemoration of his exploits in the chase, are probably the masterpieces of Assyrian art. They thus testify not only to the sportsmanship of this king, but also to the encouragement which he gave to art, while Rassam’s further discovery of the other half of Ashur-bani-pal’s library has shown that king to have been an even greater patron of literature than there had hitherto been reason to suppose.

_PLATE IV_

“FISH-GOD,” KOUYUNJIK

ENTRANCE PASSAGE, KOUYUNJIK]

In the spring of 1854, funds failed and Rassam was in consequence obliged to return, but shortly afterwards he accepted a political appointment at Aden. The meanwhile, work had already been commenced in Babylonia by W. K. Loftus who carried on small excavations at Warka, the ancient Erech, the ruins of which are the largest in Babylonia, but though many interesting antiquities were unearthed, none of them are of an epoch-making character, the slipper-shaped coffins belonging to the Parthian period, being perhaps the best known. Owing to the fact that Erech has been occupied during the greater part of its history, i.e. some 5000 years, it is not a fruitful mine for early antiquities. Senkereh (Larsa) on the other hand, which has been identified with the Ellasar of Genesis xiv. 1, seems to have remained more or less unoccupied after the Persian period, and hence it is a better site for the exploration and study of the earlier history of Southern Mesopotamia. Inscribed bricks from Senkereh show that Khammurabi (the Amraphel of Genesis xiv.?), and the most famous king of the first dynasty of Babylon, repaired the ancient temple-tower there, as also did his Neo-Babylonian successor, Nabonidus, some fourteen centuries later, while the famous Nebuchadnezzar of Old Testament fame had also not neglected it in his works of restoration. The lower strata of the mound showed that Ur-Engur, King of Ur, whose reign may probably be assigned to the latter part of the third millennium B.C., had also made his presence felt in this ancient city of Larsa. Subsequently Larsa shared the fate of other early Babylonian cities, and was used as a cemetery: the tablets found near the coffins apparently belong to a much earlier date, and were probably found by the grave-diggers to whom their altered position is to be ascribed. Excavations were also conducted at the same time at Tell Sifr, which resulted in the discovery of about a hundred so-called case-tablets (i.e. tablets protected by a clay cover or envelope), belonging to the time of the first dynasty of Babylon, which in their turn led to the discovery of a hitherto unknown king of this dynasty, Samsu-iluna, the successor of Khammurabi.

When Loftus was excavating at Warka at the beginning of 1854, J. E. Taylor, the Vice-Consul at Basra, undertook excavations on behalf of the British Museum at Muḳeyyer, the site of the ancient city of Ur. He commenced operations on what appeared at the time, and what ultimately turned out to be, the principal building of the city, the temple of the Moon-god Sin, in the four corners of which he discovered four clay cylinders, and also another barrel-shaped cylinder the inscription of which is of even greater importance than those of the corner-cylinders. We learn that Ur-Engur, King of Ur, built the temple, that his son Dungi repaired it, and that Nabonidus the last King of Babylon restored it some two thousand years later. These foundation-cylinders of Nabonidus proved of great historical interest, the inscription on each of them concluding with a prayer for Bêl-shar-uṣur, the King’s son and heir, the Belshazzar of Daniel v., who was in command of Babylon at the time of the capture of the city by Cyrus. Taylor also conducted excavations on other Babylonian sites, the most important of which was Abû Shahrein, the ancient Eridu whose god Ea was one of the most illustrious as well as one of the most time-honoured gods in Babylonia. Its ruins are smaller than those of Ur, but they contain the remains of a temple-tower, consisting of two storeys, which Taylor laid bare. From the inscribed bricks recovered, the identification of this site with the ancient Eridu was established.

Towards the end of the year 1854, Sir Henry Rawlinson commenced excavating Birs-Nimrûd, the Borsippa of antiquity; he commenced digging at the four corners of what ultimately proved to be the famous E-zida, the temple of Nebo, in search of clay cylinders such as had been found at the corners of other Babylonian buildings; he recovered two such foundation-cylinders which turned out to be duplicates, together with fragmentary parts of other cylinders, all of which had been deposited there by Nebuchadnezzar.

Soon after Rassam’s return from Assyria in the year 1854, Loftus entered the service of the Trustees of the British Museum, and was sent out to continue the excavation of Kouyunjik. Loftus ably followed up the work of his predecessor; new reliefs were brought to light, the most celebrated of which perhaps is that of Ashur-bani-pal and his queen reclining at meat in the garden (cf. Pl. XXI), but again though the spirit was willing, the funds were weak, and Loftus had to abandon all hope of completing the excavation of the palace of Assyria’s most famous king.

The abundant harvest, yielded by these numerous excavations in Mesopotamia, and stored away in the Museums, afforded a supply of material copious enough to occupy the intellectual acumen of the savants for some time to come, while the general public whose interest in these archæological expeditions depended on the tangible results forthcoming, were inclined to await the decipherment and publication of the accumulated mass of clay tablets, monuments and stelæ already to hand, before furnishing the necessary funds for any fresh expeditions, and it was not till 1873 that George Smith, the able assistant of Sir Henry Rawlinson, whose discovery of the Babylonian account of the Deluge had alike won for him great fame, and also kindled again the enthusiasm of the public in the cause of excavation, was enabled, thanks to the munificence of the proprietors of the “Daily Telegraph,” to personally conduct an expedition to Mesopotamia. In the January of that year Smith set out for Mosul, but on his arrival, he found to his dismay that the requisite firmân had not as yet been granted by the Turkish Government, and he accordingly journeyed southward, examining the ruined mounds of Nimrûd and Ḳalat Sherḳât on the way. In northern Babylonia he spent but a short time which he employed in visiting the sites of Babylon, Borsippa (Birs-Nimrûd) and other ancient ruins, but by the beginning of April, he obtained the necessary permission to excavate in Assyria, and accordingly returned at once to Mosul. His attention was first of all directed to Nimrûd, the scene of so many of Layard’s triumphs, but his predecessors in the field had reaped their harvest to the full, and the gleanings which remained were poor and meagre.

In the following month he transferred the seat of his operations to Kouyunjik, with a view to discovering the remainder of Ashur-bani-pal’s library. The work was far from easy owing to the complete state of confusion in which the ruins then were, partly owing to the work of earlier excavators, partly owing to the builders of the bridge at Mosul who had made use of the remains of Assyria’s ancient buildings for the construction of the bridge, and partly owing to the instability of some of Layard’s tunnels, which had the meanwhile collapsed. Here too, the harvest was past and the summer of Assyrian excavations was ended, but the object which the “Daily Telegraph” proprietors had in view was realized in the discovery of another fragment of the Babylonian account of the Deluge, which proved to fill in the chief lacuna in the story. Smith had entertained the hope that this all-important discovery would be an inducement to his financiers to grant an additional sum for the continuation of the work, but they declined. Smith accordingly had reluctantly to set his face westward and return to London, but before the year was out he was on his way back to the Orient, the Trustees of the British Museum having voted £1000 for another expedition thither. He arrived at Mosul on New Year’s Day 1874, and recommenced his quest for tablets, but the time at his disposal was short, his firmân expiring in the ensuing March; this notwithstanding, in the three months spent at Kouyunjik on these two expeditions, he brought to light some three thousand tablets dealing with a variety of different subjects, and providing invaluable material for the student of Babylonian and Assyrian astronomy, theology and chronology. To him is due not only the rediscovery of the Babylonian story of the Flood, but also of portions of the Creation legends, and of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero of Babylonian folk-lore, while to the student of Old Testament History, his discovery of Sargon’s own account of his campaign against the city of Ashdod recorded in the twentieth chapter of Isaiah is of paramount importance. In the spring of 1876 Smith conducted his third and last expedition to Assyria, under the auspices of the British Museum, the value of whose collections he had already so greatly enhanced. But he arrived to find the cholera rampant all over the country, and confusion and disorder reigned everywhere. To excavate under such circumstances was an impossibility, but Smith spared no effort in his futile endeavour to overcome the impossible, boldly facing all dangers and difficulties, but he ultimately succumbed to the disastrous effects of climate and exposure, and died at Aleppo in August 1876, a martyr to the cause of science. George Smith was not only an excavator, but also a scholar, and his scholastic achievements are the more praise-worthy, when it is recollected that he was practically a self-educated man, who by dint of his extraordinary perseverance and indomitable will succeeded where other men of perhaps greater ability failed, and who on that account alone is entitled to the prominent place which he occupies in the annals of Assyriology.

Soon after the death of George Smith in 1876, the Trustees of the British Museum requested Rassam to resume his long-abandoned labours in Assyria, and after some unavoidable delay, operations were commenced in January 1878. The work was greatly facilitated by the presence of Sir Henry Layard as British special representative at Constantinople, for the latter having always been on friendly terms with the Turkish Government, was consequently able to secure concessions which might well have been denied to anyone else. Rassam’s marching orders were sufficiently explicit, he was sent out to continue the excavation of Nineveh, but his heart was bent on the discovery of palaces and temples rather than on the comparatively unexciting task of searching for tablets, the importance or non-importance of which could never be determined off-hand, without a detailed study of the contents. His ambition was satisfied shortly after his arrival: a year before his resumption of the work of Assyrian exploration two portions of a bronze door-panel covered with figures and cuneiform characters had been sent to him by a friend, and immediately on his return to Assyria he made enquiries as to where these pieces of worked metal had been unearthed. He soon discovered that they formed part of a large bronze door-panel discovered quite accidentally by a peasant in a mound, some fifteen miles east of Mosul, called Balâwât. Accordingly, his immediate desire was to discover the remainder of this unique monument of ancient metallurgy, and with that end in view he determined to explore the Balâwât mound. He discovered that the site had been used as a cemetery by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, and was consequently outside the limits of his firmân, but disregarding the risk of a collision with the authorities and the still more imminent risk of inciting the native population to open resistance, for no people civilized or uncivilized are in the habit of passively acquiescing in the disinterment of their dead, he determined to hazard everything in pursuit of his prize. Success attended his efforts, and very soon after the cutting of the first trenches, fragments of bronze plates similar to those which had previously come to light, were unearthed. In the course of a short time, the remaining panels were duly restored to the light of day: these panels had once upon a time decorated the wooden gates of a large building, to which they were affixed. The scenes portrayed thereon represent incidents in the life and campaigns of Shalmaneser II (860-825 B.C.), the successor of Ashur-naṣir-pal, and the first Assyrian king who is known to have come into immediate contact with Israel. In the course of his excavation of the mound, he came across the ruins of a small temple, and a large coffer made of marble containing two tablets made of the same material and bearing inscriptions of Ashur-naṣir-pal. Rassam’s work at Kouyunjik and Nimrûd was also far from fruitless, though Nimrûd certainly failed to yield a harvest in any way comparable to that of bygone days, a few bas-reliefs, a number of clay tablets and some enamelled tiles practically comprising all that Nimrûd contributed to the study of Assyrian antiquity on this occasion. So too at Kouyunjik, clay inscriptions were the chief and indeed practically the only fruits of the excavations carried on by Rassam during his four expeditions (1878-1882). The most epoch-making of these inscriptions consisted in a ten-sided baked clay prism containing the annals of Ashur-bani-pal, and four barrel-shaped cylinders inscribed with an account of Sennacherib’s various campaigns. Rassam further attempted the complete exploration of Nebi Yûnus, the second large mound which marks the site or part of the site of ancient Nineveh, but he did not meet with the success which his indefatigable efforts deserved, owing to the innate factiousness and aptitude for intrigue which lie dormant in the Oriental breast even at the best of times, and which on this occasion so far from being dormant, showed themselves in all their pristine vigour, the result of which was the cessation of Rassam’s labours, and the final dissipation of all his hopes.

_PLATE V_

DOORWAY AT TELLÔ, ERECTED BY GUDEA; ON THE LEFT A LATER BUILDING OF SELEUCID PERIOD]

SOUTH-EASTERN FAÇADE OF UR-NINÂ’S BUILDING AT TELLÔ]

Meanwhile excavations were also going on in Babylonia, excavations moreover which were destined to usher in a new era of Babylonian exploration, and which proved of incalculable value both to the archæologist, and also to the student of early art. In the spring of 1877, some few months before Rassam’s return to Assyria after an interval of a quarter of a century, Ernest de Sarzec, the French Vice-Consul at Basra, started tentative operations at the ruined mounds of Tellô, whither his attention had been directed by J. Asfar, a native Christian, and formerly a dealer in antiquities. Tellô had already won for itself a name as a site likely to repay the labour entailed in its methodical excavation, in consequence of the discovery of inscribed cones and bricks in its ruins, and needless to say, it has more than lived up to its early reputation, for of all the ancient sites of Babylonian civilization, Tellô has yielded by far the richest harvest of material for the reconstruction of Sumerian history, and the systematic study of Sumerian art and culture. It would be impossible here to chronicle all the far-reaching results of De Sarzec’s immortal work, and we must therefore content ourselves with a notice of the more important of his discoveries. On his very first visit to Tellô he was fortunate enough to find a portion of a dolerite statue lying at the foot of one of the mounds, from which he correctly inferred that the statue itself must have originally occupied a position in some large building, the ruins of which he assumed to be lying concealed within the mound in question. He accordingly commenced excavating the mound, and very shortly discovered that it contained a building of no small dimensions, erected upon a large platform of crude, or sun-dried bricks: the objects which he unearthed comprised a large statue of dolerite bearing an inscription of Gudea, priest-king of Lagash about 2450 B.C., inscribed door-sockets, sculptures and vases, copper statuettes of a votive character, and last but most important of all, the first fragments of the Vulture stele of Eannatum, one of the most famous works of early Babylonian art, both in regard to its antiquity and also in regard to the manner in which it illustrates not only the artistic but also the military operations of the Sumerians at this remote period (cf. Pl. XII). In his next two campaigns (1880-81) he systematically excavated the building in the mound generally known as “A,” in the course of which he discovered some nine or ten dolerite statues, numerous statuettes, and a stone vase of Narâm-Sin, son of Shar-Gâni-sharri of Agade, who probably lived some few centuries before Gudea. The building itself, which in the main belongs to the Parthian-period, but in which part of the old palace of Gudea had been incorporated is briefly discussed on page 149. But as Prof. Hilprecht[21] truly says, the dolerite statues of Gudea “will always remain the principal discovery connected with De Sarzec’s name,” famous alike for the animation and life with which they are inspired, and also for the skill and dexterity which these early Babylonians display in their treatment of the hardest stones. Among other valuable or rather invaluable finds may be mentioned the well-known silver vase of Entemena (cf. Fig. 45), the carved mace-head of Mesilim, an enormous copper spear-head, and some bas-reliefs of Ur-Ninâ, the founder of the First Dynasty of Lagash. In mound “B,” De Sarzec’s excavations not only laid bare the building of Ur-Ninâ (cf. Pl. V) but also revealed the remains of a yet earlier structure lying beneath the edifice of this ancient ruler, and resting on a pavement some 16 feet below Ur-Ninâ’s platform. Copper statuettes and stone bas-reliefs of a most archaic character were also brought to light on this occasion.

In 1889 De Sarzec left Babylonia, not to return till 1894, when he renewed his excavations in mound “B.” Two wells and a watercourse of Eannatum’s time were discovered, while among the small relics of this long-forgotten age were various pieces of shell carved with pictures of trees and animals. It would be altogether impossible to over-estimate the debt which both the historian of early Babylonia, and the student of early Mesopotamian art owe to the work of that distinguished excavator; if to Layard, Botta, and Place is due the opening up of the book of Assyria’s ancient history, and the breaking of the seals that had kept that book closed for so long a period, to De Sarzec we owe the recovery of an even earlier page in the history of human life and progress. The last quarter of the 19th century which embraced the period of De Sarzec’s extraordinary activity in the archæological field (the first of his expeditions being conducted in 1877 and the last in 1900) will remain for all time memorable for the epoch-making discoveries in Babylonia, discoveries which posterity will for ever associate with the name of the illustrious French excavator.

_PLATE VI_

REMAINS OF A STELE IN A BUILDING UNDER THAT OF UR-NINÂ]

THE WELL OF EANNATUM]

The meanwhile Rassam, had used to the utmost the facilities granted to him under the generous terms of the 1878 firmân, and had covered as much ground and visited as many sites as possible, though whether science would have gained more by the systematic exploration of a few mounds than by the ransacking of many is a question which would probably have to be answered in the affirmative. In 1879, he commenced operations in Babylonia, the ruined mounds of Babylon and Borsippa being the first to receive his attention. On his arrival he found a number of Arabs busily engaged in extracting building material from the Babil mound, and in the course of their digging they came upon four wells, some 140 feet deep, and made of blocks of red granite, each block being about 3 feet high, and fitted to the adjoining block with an extraordinary degree of precision. From the general appearance of the mound as well as from the magnitude of the ruined walls which it covered, Rassam came to the conclusion arrived at by Rich nearly a century before, and accepted by Hilprecht some years later, that to Babil we must look for the world-renowned hanging gardens of Diodorus and Pliny.

Rassam’s trenches on the Ḳasr mound were attended with no important results, but his work at the Jumjuma mound in the South,—so called from the name of the modern village now situated there,—yielded a rich harvest of tablets, mostly of a commercial character. Borsippa in like manner responded to the appeal made to it by the spade of Rassam, many tablets being recovered, while a large part of the renowned temple of E-zida, dedicated to the god Nebo, once again saw the light of day: among the smaller relics, the recovery of a bronze step of the famous Nebuchadnezzar is deserving of special mention, and also a baked clay cylinder of the time of Antiochus Soter 270 B.C., the latter being, according to Hilprecht, “the last royal document composed in the Old Babylonian writing and language.” But perhaps Rassam’s most valuable contribution to Assyriology was the identification of the site of ancient Sippar. Many unsuccessful attempts had previously been made to locate this city, so frequently mentioned in the cuneiform inscriptions, and already George Smith had tentatively suggested the mound of Abû Habba, located about thirty miles north of the City of Babylon, as its possible site, but to Rassam we owe the actual identification of the site of this old centre of the worship of Shamash the Sun-god in the Babylonian plain. The ruins of Abû Habba are low but extensive, the longest of the ancient city-walls measuring some 1400 yards, while on the western side the remains of an old ziggurat, or temple-tower are still to be seen. Rassam’s excavations on this site were abundantly successful, the most important of his discoveries in the ancient building with which he was principally concerned, being the famous stone tablet of Nabû-aplu-iddina, king of Babylonia, about 870 B.C. The inscription which records the restoration of the temple of the Sun-god by that king is surmounted on the obverse side by a magnificent bas-relief representing the worship of the Sun-god (cf. Pl. XIV and p. 205). The recovery of this remarkable tablet, apart from the value attaching to it as a work of art and a historical document, meant further the identification of one of the earliest sites of Mesopotamian civilization, and the rediscovery of the time-honoured shrine of Shamash. Among the other inscriptions unearthed on this occasion, the large clay cylinders of Nabonidus (555-538 B.C.), the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, are of paramount importance. Allusion has already been made to the tradition recorded by Nabonidus on his cylinder regarding the date of Shar-Gâni-sharri of Agade, and his son Narâm-Sin, and also to the archæological evidence calculated to diminish the historical value of Nabonidus’ record (cf. p. 5). Rassam reconnoitred many other sites in Babylonia, notably that of Tellô, from which he recovered a few objects, including a number of tablets and two gate-sockets inscribed with the name of Gudea, during his swift and somewhat stealthy visit in the early part of 1879. But the three great triumphs of the excavator whose long career came to its natural end in 1910, were the identification of Sippar’s long-forgotten site, the discovery of the bronze gates at Balâwât, and last but far from least, the unearthing of Ashur-bani-pal’s northern palace at Nineveh, and the disclosure of the priceless relics of art and literature which it was found to contain.

Meanwhile other nations besides the French and the English were preparing themselves for the work so remarkably commenced, and so full of promise for the future. Germany was slow to move, but thanks to the munificence of Mr. L. Simon, an expedition was sent out to the Orient in the autumn of 1886, under the auspices of the Royal Prussian Museums of Berlin, and under the directorship of B. Moritz, R. Koldewey and L. Meyer. But in spite of the tardiness of German activity in the field of exploration, it must never be forgotten that to Friedrich Delitzsch belongs the unique honour and glory of having placed Assyriology upon a scientific basis, and in a real sense that distinguished scholar may be regarded as the father of that science. At the same time Delitzsch’s predecessor Schrader deserves a special mention, as being the first to lecture in Germany on this subject, and to whose lectures Delitzsch and other scholars doubtless owed much. The 1886 expedition commenced operations early in 1887 at the ruins of El-Hibba and Surghul, two mounds situated close to each other to the north-east of Tellô, which resulted in the discovery of buildings innumerable, mostly of a private character; the small relics yielded by the German excavations on these two sites were for the most part considerably damaged by fire which had played much havoc in both places.

But the chief point of interest in regard to the excavations at El-Hibba and Surghul was the discovery of a number of early graves. Many of the bodies had been burnt, from which Koldewey inferred that cremation[22] was one of the ways in which the Sumerians of antiquity disposed of their dead. Many of the inscriptions recovered were published by the lately deceased Dr. Messerschmidt. The tablets in question include texts belonging both to first and second Dynasties of Lagash (Tellô). One of the tablets unearthed at Surghul and written by Gudea, the most famous ruler of the Second Dynasty of Lagash, showed that both El-Hibba and Surghul acknowledged Gudea as their suzerain-overlord.

At about the same time, the excavating spirit in America was also gradually fanning itself into life, and to-day America is doing more archæological work than any other country in the world.

The ancient city of Nippur had long been known as one of the most famous centres of Babylonian religion, and of the worship of the great god En-lil, and it was accordingly to this city that the Americans first directed their attention, and it was here that they made those epoch-making discoveries which have won for them so prominent a place in the history of Mesopotamian excavation, and that in spite of all the controversies which have arisen out of those discoveries. The Americans had indeed sent out an expedition to Babylonia as early as 1884 under the directorship of Dr. W. Hayes Ward of the New York “Independent,” but the object for which it was sent was general exploration rather than for actual excavation. The first expedition (1888-89) to Nippur, which was organized chiefly by Prof. J. P. Peters, who was supported by Dr. Wm. Pepper, Provost Harrison, Messrs. E. W. Clay, C. H. Clark, W. W. Frazier, and others, was chiefly tentative in character, and served rather to show the magnitude of the work to be accomplished than to achieve any definite and practical results. Peters was the director of the first and second (1889-90) expeditions, while Prof. R. F. Harper and Prof. H. V. Hilprecht were appointed Assyriologists to the first expedition, Mr. Field being the architect. The first expedition was engaged in excavating for two months and nine days, while the second excavated for three months and eleven days. Dr. Haynes was the field-director of the third expedition (1893-96), and remained at the mounds of Nippur for nearly three years without a break. The fourth expedition (1898-1900) was conducted by Hilprecht as scientific director, Haynes as field-director, and Messrs. C. S. Fisher and H. V. Geere as architects, and during the last campaign excavations were carried on for some sixteen months, and led to many important discoveries.

The first expedition, as stated, was of a preparatory character, and consequently its results cannot be estimated merely by the number of discoveries actually made. During the short two months in which the excavators continued operations, a large building characterized by enormous buttresses and two round towers was brought to light. The building—without doubt a fortress—is of comparatively late date, belonging to the Parthian period, and was built upon the ancient temple of En-lil and its staged tower.

Bint-el-Amir, the mound which contained the ruins of this renowned temple, was conical in shape and covered a surface of more than eight acres.[23] A scientific examination of a mound of such gigantic proportions was in itself no light task, while the exploration of the buried temple was a work of pioneering, none of the large Babylonian temples having as yet been completely excavated.

The excavation of this temple proved that the stage-tower “did not occupy the central part of the temple-court,” and though it was undoubtedly the most conspicuous feature of the temple-area, it was not actually the temple itself: the latter is to be found in a large building adjacent to the stage-tower. This building is at all events as early as the time of the Shar-Gâni-sharri and his son Narâm-Sin. The stage-tower, which probably never had more than three stages, owed its latest form to Ur-Engur, king of Ur (_circ._ 2400), though Ashur-bani-pal, King of Assyria nearly two thousand years after, had occasion to repair and restore it. The bricks of Ashur-bani-pal, which are intermingled with those of Ur-Engur, bear the stamped inscription, “To Bel, the King of the lands, his King, Ashur-bani-pal, his favourite shepherd, the powerful King, King of the four quarters of the earth, built E-kur, his beloved temple, with baked bricks.” Four feet behind the facing-wall of Ur-Engur, large bricks characteristic of Narâm-Sin’s time were discovered, while the bricks of which the innermost core of the tower was formed belong to the pre-Sargonic and early Sumerian days.[24]

The extreme antiquity of the lower strata in this mound may be gauged from the fact that Haynes in descending into the pre-Sargonic period below the pavement of Narâm-Sin, penetrated through some thirty feet of ruins before he arrived at the virgin soil.

_PLATE VII_

(_From C. S. Fisher’s “Excavations at Nippur,” by permission_)]

One of the most interesting discoveries in the early strata was a vaulted drain (cf. Fig. 15 and p. 170) which purports to be the earliest Babylonian arch known, while a large number of terra-cotta pipes as well as a terra-cotta drain were also brought to light. The smaller objects include votive stelæ (cf. Fig. 25), tablets, cylinder-seals and terra-cotta vases (cf. Figs. 92, 93). But a large number of relics contained in the strata above the level of Narâm-Sin were found to be pre-Sargonic in spite of their position in the mound. They included door-sockets, fragments of vases, slabs, statues, and more than fifty brick-stamps, bearing an inscription of Sargon or Narâm-Sin.

But the discovery and partial excavation of the Temple “Library”[25] or “archive” at Nippur have produced the most far-reaching and epoch-making results, for thereby literally thousands of tablets have been unearthed, affording an amount of new material for Assyriological study seldom paralleled in the history of Babylonian exploration.

The greater part of the excavated material[26] is scientific or literary in character. The majority of the tablets are unbaked, and have consequently suffered from the detrimental effects of time, climate and other influences, among which may be particularly mentioned the havoc wrought by the invading Elamites during the third millennium B.C. In consequence of this, the decipherer’s task is much more arduous than it would otherwise have been, but in spite of the vandalism of the Elamites and the work of destruction which they sought to, and to some extent did accomplish, the archæologist probably owes the preservation of these tablets to their burial in the ruined débris of which they formed a part. These unbaked clay tablets seem to have been generally arranged on shelves made of clay and about 1-1/2 feet wide, while they contain every variety of “literature,” treating of astronomy, astrology, mathematics, geography, history, medicine, grammar and religion. One of the tablets gives us valuable information regarding the temple itself; the name of the great hall of the temple was Emakh, and though En-lil and his consort were without doubt the principal deities of the place, there were some twenty-four shrines dedicated to other gods, just as was the case in E-sagila, the great Temple of Marduk at Babylon, recently excavated by the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft.

The late Assyrian, neo-Babylonian and Persian periods are also well represented in the enormous accumulation of cuneiform tablets recovered from this site, among the most interesting of which are the “Murashû Tablets,” seven hundred or more of which were unearthed in a ruined building some twenty feet below the surface. The care with which these tablets had been made, and the numerous seal-impressions which they bore, at once attracted Hilprecht’s attention. They proved to belong to the business archives of Murashû Sons, brokers and bankers at Nippur, who flourished in the time of the Persian kings, Artaxerxes I (464-424 B.C.) and Darius II (423-405 B.C.). But apart from ordinary banking business, the firm acted as an agent for the Persian kings. Apparently the kings of Persia were in the habit of farming out the taxes like the Roman emperors of later days, and Murashû Sons undertook to levy the king’s taxes from their Babylonian subjects in Nippur and elsewhere. The interest of these tablets is not however confined to the information which they afford us in regard to the mode of conducting business at that period; but they are of even greater value for the insight which they give us into the ordinary life of the people.