Prof. Daria Montanari

daria.montanari@uniroma1.it

Near Eastern Archaeology

Global Humanities

Department of Oriental Studies

LESSON 3: History of Excavations and Method 1

Paul Émile Botta 19th-century French naturalist,diplomat, and archaeologist. His discoveriesat the royal city of Khorsabad beginning in 1843mark him as the world’s first Assyriologist. Thedramatic sculptural panels and colossal statueshe unearthed are now on display in the Louvre.Austen Henry Layard 19th-century Britisharchaeologist. One of the giants of Assyriology,Layard made major discoveries at both Nimrudand Nineveh. At Nimrud, he unearthedalmost two miles of sculptural reliefs depictingbattles and the hunt together with colossal statuesof bulls and lions that guarded the palace’sportals. At Nineveh, he uncovered the royallibrary of Ashurbanipal, totaling 24,000 tablets.Both sets of discoveries now enrich London’sBritish Museum.

Thomas Victor Place 19th-century Frencharchaeologist. Place dug at Khorsabad andsystematically uncovered remains of thepalace of Sargon.

The Conditions of pre - World War I Excavations

Paule-Émile Botta – Khorsabad 1843-1844

Dur Sharrukin

Dur Sharrukin (Khorsabad)

Dur Sharrukin (Khorsabad)

Dur Sharrukin (Khorsabad)

The entrance to an Assyrian temple at Kalhu(Nimrud) at the time of its exploration by Layard.(Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1853)

Excavating in the interior of the mound at Kuyunjikwhere ancient Nineveh once stood. As native laborers send a basket of debris up to the surface, a god—half

man, half scaly fish—acts as overseer. (Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1853)

Austin Henry Layard – Nimrud 1845-1847

(Mossul)

Nimrud (Mossul) – Palace of Assurnasirpal II, North-Western Palace

Nimrud (Mossul) – Palace of Assurnasirpal II, North-Western Palace

Nimrud (Mossul) – Palace of Assurnasirpal II, North-Western Palace

Austin Henry Layard

Nineveh (Quyunjiq) – Palace of Sennacherib, South-Western Palace

Henry Creswicke Rawlinson 19th-centuryEnglish adventurer and philologist. At great riskto his life, Rawlinson scaled the cliff at Behistunto inspect and copy its 1,200-line inscription,transcribing the characters by hand orusing papier-mâché “squeezes” obtained by aKurdish boy who acted as his death-defyingassistant. Rawlinson then succeeded in decipheringthe Old Persian portion of the inscription,paving the way for cuneiform’s fulldecipherment. Stored in the British Museum,the historic squeezes were later nibbled awayby mice.

Claudius James Rich 18th- and 19th-centuryEnglish diplomat, explorer, linguist, and archaeologist.Rich was the first to survey and scientificallyexcavate the remains of Babylon. Hismemoirs, published in 1813 and 1818, awakenedpublic interest among other Europeans.In 1820 he also explored the ruins of Nineveh.

Hormuzd Rassam 19th-century Chaldaeanarchaeologist. An assistant to Austen HenryLayard (see above), Rassam excavated fromNineveh the Creation and Deluge tablets laterdeciphered by George Smith (see below), aswell as the lion-hunt relief from the palace ofAshurbanipal.

George Smith 19th-century English philologist.A bank-note engraver by trade who was lateremployed by the British Museum to piecetogether broken cuneiform tablets, Smithtaught himself to read the script. One day hechanced upon a cuneiform story that resembledthe biblical story of the Great Flood.Sponsored by the London Daily Telegraph tosearch for the rest of the story at Nineveh, hefound the tablet’s missing 17 lines. Later, hefound and translated the remains of an Akkadianstory of the Creation.

Herman Volrath Hilprecht 19th- and 20thcenturyGerman philologist. Hilprecht servedas curator of the Mesopotamian collection ofthe University of Pennsylvania Museum andparticipated in its excavations at Nippur, wheresome 30,000 cuneiform tablets were discoveredthat documented Sumerian civilization.

Excavations in Mesopotamia: The Second Period

It was the French representative at Mosul who in 1842 had successfully inaugurated the resurrection of

the palaces and temples of Assyria; and it was another French representative at Basra who thirty - fi ve

years later made a no less far - reaching discovery in the mounds of Chaldea, which opened the second

great period in the history of Assyrian and Babylonian exploration – the period of methodical

excavations in the ruins of Babylonia proper. (Hilprecht 1903 : 216)

Ernest de Sarzac 19th-century French archaeologist.De Sarzac’s excavations at Telloh providedphysical evidence for the existence of apre-Babylonian civilization. His discoveries,including a portrait statue of Gudea and theStele of the Vultures, became the first works ofSumerian art seen in Europe. They are now inthe collection of the Louvre.

William Kennet Loftus 20th-century American geologist and archaeologist. Loftus dug at ancient Uruk, the largest archaeological site in what was once Sumer.

J. E. Taylor 19th-century British diplomat and archaeologist. Taylor became the first archaeologist to excavate a Sumerian ruin. Tunneling into the ziggurat at Tell Muqayyar, Taylorfound an inscription that, when deciphered, proved the city was ancient Ur.

John P. Peters 19th-century American philologist.While professor of Hebrew at the Universityof Pennsylvania, Peters in 1887 initiatedthe first American archaeological expedition to Iraq, an expedition based at the site of theSumerian city of Nippur.

Robert Koldewey 19th- and 20th-centuryGerman archaeologist. A leader in bringingGermany into the field of Mesopotamianarchaeology, Koldewey dug at Babylon for 14seasons, applying a keen eye to the stratigraphyof the site and the information it could be madeto disclose.

Walter Andrae 19th-century German archaeologist.With the assistance of Julius Jordan andArnold Noldeke, Andrae excavated the royalcity of Ashur. Then, through his talent as anartist, he recaptured its original splendor in aseries of drawings and paintings.

Walter Andrae – Assur 1903

Gudea and the temple at Telloh/ancient Girsu

Seating diorite statue of Gudea,

prince of Lagash, with an

architectural plan, c. 2120 BC

(neo-Sumerian period).

Excavated Temple at

Girsu/Telloh, Courtyard A of

Palace in Telloh (ancient Girsu),

Iraq

This sculpture belongs to a series ofdiorite statues commissioned by Gudea,who devoted his energies to rebuildingthe great temples of Lagash and installingstatues of himself in them. Manyinscribed with his name and divinededications survive. Here, Gudea isdepicted in the seated pose of a rulerbefore his subjects, his hands folded in atraditional gesture of greeting and prayer.

Zimri-Lim palace at Mari