Part VI

This was Sir Austen Henry Layard, who was knighted for his services to archeology and to diplomacy. ^[1] During a prolonged series of travels in the east, Layard had, as early as 1840, visited the mounds near Mosul and indulged the hope of some day carrying on excavations in that region.

It was not, however, until the autumn of 1845 that, with the help of a small fund placed at his disposal by Sir Stratford Canning, the British ambassador at Constantinople, he was enabled to begin excavations on a small scale at the mound Nimrud, which he selected because it was sufficiently removed from Mosul to enable him to carry on his work without attracting too much attention.

All that he had hoped to do with the small sum at his disposal was to furnish the proof of the existence of buildings and antiquities beneath the mound, and then to rely upon the interest aroused to secure further grants as well as an official finnan from the Turkish Government.

PLATE V

Fig. 1, Winged Bull with Human Face from Sargon's Palace (Khorsabad)

Fig. 2, Attemted restoration of Sargon's Palace

On the very first day of the excavations a fortunate chance revealed two rooms lined with limestone slabs, one in the southwest corner of the mound, the other near the middle of the west side. The rooms, therefore, belonged to two different buildings, both, as it subsequently turned out, royal palaces. Gradually increasing his force of laborers, he carried on his work amidst many difficulties, owing to the opposition of the pasha of Mosul and lack of sufficient financial support.

Through funds granted him by the authorities of the British Museum, he was, however, enabled to carry on his work energetically until the summer of 1847. By that time he had not only unearthed many of the rooms in no less than five palaces at Nimrud, but he had been equally successful in the extensive mound Kouyunjik, opposite Mosul, where he unearthed a palace of enormous dimensions, erected by King Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.).

At Nimrud the chief work was done on the so called north-west palace which was the joint work of Ashur-Rasirpal III (883-859 B.C.) and of Sargon II (721-706 B.C.) . As at Khorsabad, so the palaces at Nimrud and subsequently at Kouyunjik yielded an astonishingly large number of rooms covered with bas-reliefs, besides the huge winged bulls or winged lions with human heads that stood at the entrances to the halls. T

he bas reliefs showed the same large variety of scenes as those found at Khorsabad. In the palace of King Ashur nasirpal at Nimrud, or to give the ancient name Calah, the monarch had his artists picture his military expeditions in detail. Most vividly the army is portrayed crossing a river, or in the midst of the fray and on the victorious return march. The hunting expeditions of the monarch were likewise represented in a long series of sculptures.

In a palace occupying the central part of the mound, erected by Shalmaneser III (858-824 B.C.) and Tiglathpileser IV (745-727 B.C.) a particularly striking monument was discovered, which still forms one of the show pieces of the British Museum. This was a completely preserved obelisk of hard, black stone, covered with five rows of sculptures, running around the four sides of the stone, while the balance of the monument was covered with closely written cuneiform inscriptions.

The monument was set up by King Shalmaneser III in commemoration of his exploits during thirtyone years of his reign prepared, therefore by the king himself a few years before his death, and perhaps irf realization of the fact that his reign was approaching its close. The scenes portrayed represent the king receiving tribute from the nations conquered by him. Each of the five sections represents a different people as indicated by the inscription over the heads of the groups.

It can well be imagined how deeply the general interest in Assyrian discoveries was aroused when a large selection of the monuments, including two of the colossal winged figures, arrived at the British Museum. This interest was still further increased by the publication of Layard's fascinating narrative ^[2] in which, despite the fact that he was unable to read the inscriptions discovered by him, he succeeded, by virtue of his ingenuity, in piecing together an interpretation of the bas-reliefs, and aided by Sir Henry Rawlinson's readings, of the names of the royal builders of the palaces, could convey some idea of the historical facts revealed by the monuments. 

PLATE VI

Obelisk of King Shalmaneser III of Assyria (858-824 B. C.)

Though obliged to cover up again many of the monuments and inscriptions which he could not transport, he made drawings of the sculptures ^[3] as best he could and copied the inscriptions, ^[4] and in this way placed a large amount of valuable material, which would otherwise have been hopelessly lost, at the disposal of students. The direct result of the great interest awakened by Layard's marvellous discoveries was the organization of a far better equipped second expedition, enabling him to spend the years 1849-1851 at Nimrud and Kouyunjik. Already in his first expedition he had chosen a native Christian, Hormuzd Bassam, whose brother was the English vice consul at Mosul, as his companion.

Kassam, who was destined to win considerable renown by his own work as an explorer, accompanied Layard, on his second expedition likewise, and on Layard's departure in 1852, continued the excavations till 1854. A skilful artist, F. Cooper, was also appointed a member of the party, for the purpose of making careful drawings of everything that could not be removed. Work was undertaken simultaneously at the two mounds, Kouyunjik and Nimrud.

The more important discoveries this time were made at the former site. The palace of Sennacherib was thoroughly explored, revealing some hundreds of sculptured bas-reliefs, illustrating the campaigns and hunting expeditions of this ruler.

A still more extensive palace, built by the greatest of all Assyrian rulers, Ashurbanapal (668-626 B.C.), whose name was distorted by Greek writers to Sardanapalus and who appears in the Old Testament as Asnapper (Ezra 4, 10). Apart from the usual bas-reliefs and huge winged bulls and a large number of inscriptions, including cylinders furnishing the details of his many campaigns, Layard found in this palace two rooms filled with many thousand fragments of clay tablets which proved to be a royal library collected by the king with the avowed purpose of storing in his palace the literary productions of Babylonia, as well as the official archives letters and reports of the Assyrian empire.

Subsequent supplementary excavations increased the number of tablets to about 30,000, which now constitute one of the most valuable treasures of the British Museum. These clay tablets form our main source of Babylonian literature, since a large proportion of the texts represent copies made by Ashurbanapal's scribes of originals from the temple archives of the great centres in the south, notably Babylon and Borsippa.

The most extensive branch of literature represented in the collection was formed by the divination compends of the Babylonian priests covering handbooks of divination in connection with the examination of livers of sacrificial sheep as a means of forecasting the future, astrological handbooks, collections of birth omens, of animal omens, of dreams, and of miscellaneous divination texts based on phenomena observed in rivers, occurrences in houses, streets and cities.

Another large division of the collection is formed by the incantation texts, detailing the formulae, the symbolical rites and medicinal prescriptions to drive the demons of disease out of the bodies of victims or to counteract the influence of witches and sorcerers. Incantations lead on the one hand to medical texts of a purer type, more or less divorced from sacred formulae, and on the other hand to prayers, hymns, and penitential rituals.

Myths and legends are represented, including creation stories, as well as an extensive epic recounting the achievements of a national hero, Gilgamesh, whose exploits are brought into connection with all kinds of tales that had an independent origin.

Partly of Babylonian origin, and partly representing additions made by Assyrian scribes is the text book literature, ^[5] consisting of elaborate sign lists of various kinds, compiled as a means of instruction for the young aspirants to the priesthood, grammatical paradigms, exercises in the legal formula used in commercial and legal documents, commentaries to texts, and school editions of literary productions.

PLATE VII

Fig. 1, King Sennacherib (705-681 B. C.) in his Charioit (Kouyunjik)

Fig. 2, Carrying material across a stream (Kouyunjik)

Though the great im portance of this find was immediately recognized by Layard, it was only when Sir Henry Eawlinson, Edwin Norris, and George Smith, the latter an assistant in the British Museum, began to classify, edit and study the texts of the library that its real character was determined. Today, some sixty years after the finding of the library, its study is still far from being exhausted. ^[6]

At Nimrud, Layard's chief discoveries consisted in unearthing the remains of a stage tower and of two small temples erected by Ashurnasirpal III (883-859 B.C.) built of sun dried bricks, covered with plaster. In both temples, clay images of deities, bas-reliefs and inscribed slabs, were found. One of these slabs measured almost twentytwo feet, and was covered with closely written cuneiform characters. Through this inscription and through a large monolith of Ashurnasirpal found in the second temple, we have an almost exhaustive record of the exploits of this ruler which means a history of the times in which he lived.

A large statue of the king was also found in one of the temples. Continuing the excavations in the palace of this king at Nimrud, Layard was fortunate enough, in the course of the second expedition, to come across a large number of objects in copper and bronze, shields, helmets, swords, daggers, twelve large cauldrons filled with smaller vessels and miscellaneous objects, a variety of iron instruments, hammers, saws, spears, a number of beautifully embossed bronze plates, and more the like.

The epigraphical material was also considerably enriched by the accompanying inscriptions on the sculptured bas-reliefs, on slabs, cylinders and on tablets which, when they came to be deciphered, added largely to our knowledge of the events of the last three centuries before the fall of Nineveh in 606 B.C., and which were the most glorious in the eventful history of Assyria.

Over one hundred boxes of antiquities were shipped, in 1851, to England, and arrived safely at the British Museum. In a second popular volume, ^[7] Layard gave a fascinating account of his discoveries, and to the first series of illustrations from the monuments he added a second set of drawings which were made by F. Cooper. ^[8]

The decipherment of cuneiform inscriptions had by this time made sufficient progress to enable Layard, by utilizing the results obtained, chiefly through Sir Henry Rawlinson and Edward Hincks, to give some account of the historical data to be gleaned from the monuments. He could also, as a result of his more thorough study of the numerous buildings unearthed by him at Nimrud and Kouyunjik, illustrate the relationship of the various royal builders to one another, showing how portions of one edifice were restored or enlarged by some successor, and how, in some cases, material used in the construction of one palace was transferred and made to do service in building the walls or forming supports for another.

The amount of work achieved by Layard during his second expedition, which lasted only two years, was enormous. Numerous other mounds, both in the north and south, were superficially searched for antiquities which definitely established the ancient origin of the cities buried beneath them.

At some places, indeed, such as Kaleh Shergat the site of the ancient city of Ashur Arban and Sherif Khan, most striking antiquities and inscribed monuments were discovered, while the work done by him at Niffer, in the south the site of ancient Nippur yielded sufficient results to furnish a clue to the American explorers who were to undertake the more thorough excavation of the mounds at that place some thirty years later.

PLATE VIII

Fig. 1, Lion Hunt from the palace of King Ashurbanapal (668-626 B.C.)

Fig. 2, Hunting wild horses

The excavations so far had been conducted on Assyrian soil, and as a result the three chief cities of Assyria were partially unearthed, the old capital, Ashur (on the site of Kaleh-Shergat), Calah (on the site of Nimrud), originally founded by Shalmaneser I (c. 1300 B.C.) and which Ashurnasirpal III (883-859 B.C.) again made the capital, and Nineveh (on the site of Kouyunjik), which had been made the capital in the reign of Ashur-bel-kala (c. 1100 B.C.), and again became the official seat of government when Shalmaneser III (858-824 B.C.) occupied the throne, and remained so until the fall of the Assyrian Empire in 606 B.C. To these there is to be added Dur Sharrukin (on the site of Khorsabad), a creation of Sargon II (721-706 B.C.), and which served as an outpost for Nineveh. In addition, a number of other Assyrian towns were definitely identified and shown to contain treasures which warranted more systematic excavations.

Turning now to the mounds of the south, the credit of having been the first to conduct excavations for a continuous period, albeit a short one, on a site of an ancient Babylonian city belongs to the Englishman William Kennett Loftus, who, in 1850, and again in 1853-1854, spent some time in opening trenches in a series of extensive mounds at Warka, which proved to be the site of ancient Uruk (or Erech), one of the oldest as well as one of the most important political and religious centres in the Euphrates Valley.

At first, as was to be expected, the latter period of the city was revealed, the chief finds being a number of slipper shaped coffins covered with an enamel glaze, which belonged to the Persian period, ^[9] i.e., to the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. T

he city was still in existence though it had lost much of its importance, and through the odor of its time-honored sanctity had become a favorite place of burial. Loftus, however, succeeded in penetrating to the earlier layers which revealed the existence of a temple of large dimensions to which as at qther sites a stage tower, or zikkurat, was, as was usual, attached.

In another portion of one of the mounds an extensive edifice was found which had all the characteristic features of a royal palace, with wall decorations of glazed tiles, pointing to a work of the neo-Babylonian period, while the inscriptions, chiefly business documents on small clay tablets, likewise indicated the continued existence of the city until the overthrow of the neo-Babylonian dynasty through Cyrus in 539 B.C.

By a curious chance, this first Babylonian mound, or rather series of mounds, for there are several distinct ones, also happens to be the scene of the most recent excavations, for in November, 1912, the German Oriental Society, some sixty years after Loftus' arrival at Warka, began systematic excavations which have revealed details of the great temple E-anna, "the heavenly house", in honor of the goddess Nana (or Ishtar) whose seat of worship was in ancient Uruk.

Besides some surface scratchings at Babylon, Niffer, Tell Sif r and other mounds, Loftus also spent some time at a mound Senkereh, about fifteen miles to the south of Warka where he almost immediately came upon remains of a temple and of a stage-tower which belonged to a high antiquity, as was subsequently ascertained from the inscriptions of various kinds, barrel shaped clay cylinders with historical data, inscribed bricks used in the construction of the edifices, and large numbers of clay tablets representing business and legal documents. Senkereh stands on the site of an ancient city, Larsa, identical with the Biblical Ellasar (Gen. 14, 1) and the seat of the worship of the sun god, whose temple and stage-tower at the place were objects of veneration through all periods of Babylonian history.

PLATE IX

Fig. 1, Omen tablet from Ashurbanapa's library
Fig. 2, Syllabary from Ashurbanapa's library

At Tell Sifr, still further to the south, although excavations were carried on by Loftus for a few days only, large quantities of inscribed tablets and a collection of miscellaneous bronze and copper utensils, such as daggers, hatchets, knives, vases, cauldrons and mirrors were found and together with many other antiquities sent to England to still further enrich the British Museum. ^[10]

At the same time that the second French expedition was engaged in continuing Botta's work at Khorsabad and Kouyunjik, ^[11] Fulgence Fresnel was placed by the French government in charge of excavations to be carried on at the site of the ancient city of Babylon.

Fresnel was accompanied by Jules Oppert, a young scholar destined soon to become one of the leading Assyriologists of his day, and Felix Thomas, an architect, who was to study the construction of the buildings and to make all the drawings in connection with the excavations. In the middle of July, 1852, work was begun at one of the large mounds, known as Kasr, which was afterwards extended to two other mounds, Babil and Amran Ibn'Ali, forming part of the complex beneath which Babylon lay buried. ^[12]

The results, owing to the enormous mass of rubbish of which these mounds consisted, were rather disappointing. Numerous brick stamps were found containing the name of Nebuchad nezzar II (604-561 B.C.), and which showed that the large edifice beneath Kasr ^[13] was the famous palace of that ruler.

Quantities of fragments of glazed tiles with animals and decorative designs were also unearthed, but nothing that could compare in interest or sensational importance to what was being found at the same time by Place and Layard at the mounds in the north. Nor were the results more striking at the other mounds, to which Fresnel and Oppert directed themselves. Some progress was made in our knowledge of the topography of Babylon, though some of the theories brought forward by Oppert ^[14] turned out to be erroneous.

Other mounds near Babylon, such as Birs Nimrud (the site of ancient Borsippa) and el-Ohemir (the site of Kish), were explored by this expedition which appears to have been pursued by ill luck, for even the antiquities gathered during the almost two years of continuous work were lost on the rafts that were to carry them to Basra.

An Englishman, J. E. Taylor, who was the Vice Consul at Basra was more successful in excavations conducted by him for a short period at Mugheir, ^[15] considerably to the south of Babylon and which proved to be the site of the famous TJr, whence, according to Biblical tradition, Abraham set out on his wanderings which brought him to Palestine.

In contrast to the massive character of the mounds at Warka, where large portions of walls are still visible, and to Birs Nimrud and Akerkuf, where the ruins of the old stage-towers rise above the rubbish, those at Mugheir are comparatively low which made the work of excavation much easier. It was not long, therefore, before Taylor had penetrated into the interior of a massive building which proved to be the great temple to Sin, the moon god, the centre of whose cult. was at Ur.

He could trace the character of the edifice and follow the course of its walls for a considerable portion. The most prominent feature was as usual the stage-tower of which two stories, one placed above the other, could be traced. In a corner of the tower Taylor found a perfectly preserved clay cylinder of which duplicates were found in the other three corners, a plan that proved to have been commonly followed in the case of other edifices in Babylonia as well as Assyria.

The construction of the temple could be traced back through the inscribed bricks found at various levels to the Ur dynasty, which flourished in the third millennium before this era. Taylor was also the first to come across graves of the early Babylonian period when the coffins were much smaller in shape than the slipper-shaped receptacles for the corpse in the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods. ^[16] The shapes varied from a narrow but deep bathtub variety into which the body must have been forced in a semi upright position, to large dish covers beneath which the body was placed, alternating again with two large jars, holding the body and cemented at the place of contact.

Such discoveries threw a new and important light upon the customs of the people, as did also the many specimens of pottery and all kinds of utensils which Taylor unearthed besides a considerable number of the usual business and legal documents belonging to both the earlier and the later periods of Babylonian history.

Despite the comparatively short time spent at Mug-heir, Taylor largely enriched our knowledge of early Babylonian history; and he was equally successful in determining the great antiquity of the city buried under a mound, Abu Shahrain, still further to the south and in identifying the mounds that rise more abruptly from the plains than elsewhere as the site of the city of Eridu which, as is now known, once lay at or very near the head of the Persian Gulf. He was soon able to determine the location of the conventional stage-tower at the northern end of the mound and which still rose in parts to a height of about seventy feet.

As at Mugheir, the tower appeared to consist of only two stages, one superimposed on the other, with an inclined plane leading from one to the other ; and he was furthermore able to conclude with tolerable certainty that the tower was crowned by a small chapel or chamber in which presumably the statue of the deity, Ea, the patron deity of Eridu, or some symbol of the god stood.

This would be in accord with Herodotus, ^[17] from whose description of the stage-tower at Babylon we may conclude that at the top of these towers there was a shrine with a symbol or image of the god or goddess to whom the tower was dedicated. In contrast to all other edifices discovered beneath the mounds of the south before and since Taylor's days, which are built of baked or unbaked bricks, the structures at Abu Shahrain showed the employment of a considerable amount of sandstone, granite and marble which, since the Euphrates Valley is entirely devoid of stone, must have been brought to Eridu by way of the Persian Gulf.

Taylor also used his sojourn in this most southern district to examine other mounds and make tentative excavations there so that until the advent of the French explorer, de Sarzec, some twenty years later, it was to Taylor that we owed the most valuable part of our knowledge of the mounds in the south.

Before taking up the account of de Sarzec's extraordinary activity, a few words need to be said of Sir Henry Rawlinson's brief but successful investigations at Birs Nimrud, the site of the ancient city of Borsippa. The striking appearance of the ruin of a stage-tower rising high above the mounds at that place ^[18] was no doubt a factor in giving rise to the current tradition in the region that this ruin was the Tower of Babel. The tradition was correct in so far as the Biblical legend was based on the general custom, as we have seen, of erecting high towers in connection with the temples of Babylonia and Assyria.

Borsippa, moreover, lay close to Babylon, so close, indeed, that the two cities at times appeared to form a single complex. Rawlinson, whose many sided activity as decipherer, explorer and editor of cuneiform texts makes him on the whole the most prominent figure in the history of Assyriology, was most anxious to try his luck at Birs Nimrud, especially after the rather negative results of the French expedition to Babylon and surrounding sites, and which had i dampened the enthusiasm aroused by the discoveries of Botta, Place and Layard.

While arranging as British resident and consul general at Baghdad for the expeditions of Lof tus and Taylor and for the continuation of the work in the north under Hormuzd Rassam, who, after Layard's departure in 1852, was placed in charge, Rawlinson himself was given the opportunity of spending two months, in the fall of 1854, at the mounds of Babylon and Borsippa. Profiting by the experience and knowledge gained through the course of the excavations, he first made a careful study of the exposed portions of the tower at Birs Nimrud with a view to determine its general construction and extent, the number of its stages and an estimate of the depth of the lowest layer.

Assuming that at the four corners of the huge construction, foundation clay cylinders with dedicatory inscriptions would be found in situ, he on the basis of his measurements began to remove the bricks at one of the exposed angles of the third stage and within an hour a perfect cylinder was brought out by one of the workmen at the very spot where Rawlinson had told the workmen to search for it. A second one was found at another corner, and subsequently the fragments of a third. ^[19] The Inscription proved that Rawlinson had discovered the famous tower of Borsippa which bore the name of E-ur-imin-an-ki, "House of the seven divisions of heaven and earth," indicating that the tower symbolized the entire universe, connecting the earth, as it were, with the heavens.

Rawlinson also determined that the tower at least in the form given to it by the restoration through Nebuchadnezzar II, at the beginning of the sixth century, B.C., consisted of seven stages, as symbolized in the name, one superimposed upon the other and receding in circumference as one proceeded from stage to stage. The lowest stage, according to Rawlinson's measurements, was 272 feet square and about 26 feet high.

Many fragments of the bricks showed remains of glazing in different colors, black, blue and red being recognizable. The number of stages varies in the case of the towers so far excavated, from two to seven, the number in earliest days being usually four, with the tendency to increase the height as we pass down the centuries. The main purpose was to build a high mass in imitation of a mountain, with a winding balustrade as a means of reaching the top, where the shrine of the deity to whom the tower was dedicated, stood.

It will be seen that as a result of the work done at the mounds in the north and south from the year 1842 to 1855 by the splendid series of explorers, Botta, Place, Layard, Rassam, Fresnel, Oppert, Loftus, Taylor, and Rawlinson, an enormous mass of material had been unearthed, many edifices, chiefly temples, towers and palaces, had been discovered, and in some cases quite thoroughly excavated. The general character of these constructions had been determined and in the case of Assyrian palaces, many of the details had also been ascertained.

The art of the time was illustrated by numerous monuments, dating from various periods, valuable historical and votive inscriptions, clay tablets representing business and legal documents of various periods and, above all, the extensive library archives gathered in his palace by the greatest of Assyrian kings had been brought to light.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

See his autobiographical narrative, Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana and Babylonia (2d ed., London, 1894), 2 vols.

[2]:

Nineveh and its Remains (London, 1849).

[3]:

He published, in 1849, a first series of Monuments of Nineveh from Drawings Made on the Spot (100 plates).

[4]:

In 1851 there appeared a volume by him of Inscriptions in the Cuneiform Character from Assyrian Monuments, consisting of 98 plates. Considering that he was unable to read the inscriptions, his copies are remarkably good a monument to his skill and patience.

[5]:

See Jastrow, "The Textbook Literature of Babylonia" (Biblical World, vol. ix, pp. 248-268).

[6]:

A most valuable publication is Bezbld 's monumental Catalogue of the Cuneiform Tablets in the Kouyunjik Collection of the British Museum (London, 1889-1899) in five large volumes, the introduction to which furnishes an excellent, general account of the royal library.

[7]:

Discoveries among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (London, 1853).

[8]:

The Monuments of Nineveh, 2d series, 71 plates (London, 1853)

[9]:

See Plate XV for specimens of such coffins from Nippur, and Plate XL, Fi& 1, for coffins of older periods.

[10]:

The results of his labors were embodied by Lof tus in his Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana (London, 1857).

[11]:

Above p. 15, seq.

[12]:

The fourth mound, Djumdjuma, was not touched by this expedition.

[13]:

The name signifies "castle," and thus embodies a tradition of the royal residence which stood there.

[14]:

Expedition Scientifique en Mesopotamie (Paris, 1859-1863), 2 vols. The first volume contains the reports of the journey and its results; the second, by Oppert, is devoted to setting forth the method of the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions.

[15]:

More properly Mukayyar, meaning the mound "covered with bitumen".

[16]:

Above, p. 25, note 29.

[17]:

Book I, 181.

[18]:

See p. 23 and Plate XXXIX. The name of the stage-tower at Borsippa was E-ur-imin-an-ki, "House of the seven divisions of heaven and earth" ; that at Babylon was E-temen-an-ki, "House of foundation of heaven and earth". In both names there is evidence of a close association of earth with heaven, implied also in the Bib lical tale that is intended as a protest against these religious "sky scrapers."

[19]:

Rawlinson 's account of his work will be found in an article On the Birs Nimrud or the Great Temple of Borsippa (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xviii (1861), pp. 1-34).