اراضي الشرق الادنى

06 '0312_

ABSTRACT

0 ARCHAEOLOGY IN NEAR EASTERN LANDS

by

Dragomir Obradovid

Chairman: Carl Coffman,

HERITAGE ROOM James White Library

ANDREWS UNIVERSITY Berrien Springs, MI 49104 Digitized by the Center for Adventist Research

ABSTRACT OF GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH

Project

Andrews University

Archaeology 'and Hi story of Antiquity

Title: ARCHAEOLOGY IN NEAR EASTERN LANDS

Name of researcher: Dragomir Obradovid

Name and degree of faculty adviser: William H. Shea, Ph.D.

Date completed: December 1982

Importance of the Study

The following outline and guide for a survey study to

Archaeology in Near Eastern Lands designed for undergraduate students

has grown out of the author's own needs. The area of concentration

has proven to be so vast that it has been felt some outline, which

would break down the massive scope of Near Eastern Archaeology into

teaching units, would facilitate the presentation of the materials of

the course for both student and teacher. It was the purpose of the

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Digitized by the Center for Adventist Research

present study to stimulate interest of an undergraduate student in

acquiring basic knowledge of Near Eastern Archaeology.

Methodology

The plan was primarily to examine the general scholarly

literature of the archaeology in Near Eastern lands on a survey basis

in order to establish some kind of text for use in the classroom as

a guide. The major portion of the project, then, involves examination

and analysis of the Mesopotamian area and a brief look at selected

sites in the land of the pharaohs - Egypt.

Division and Scope of the Study

O This survey study outline is designed to meet the needs of a one-semester course, meeting three times a week for a total of three

semester hours of lower division credit.

There is a total of seven chapters of varying length, divided,

for purposes of convenience, into three main sections, each scope

indicated as follows:

Part One - The Origin and Development of Archaeology

Part Two - A Survey of Significant Sites and Finds in

Mesopotamian Area

Part Three - In the Land of Pharaohs

Archaeology in Near Eastern Lands should make the beginning,

rather than the end, of an interest in the subject.

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ANDREWS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES

ARCHAEOLOGY IN NEAR EASTERN LANDS

A PROJECT PRESENTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT

OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE MASTER OF ARTS

BY DRAGOMIR OBRADOVI t

DECEMBER 1982

HERITAGE ROOM James White Library

ANDREWS UNIVERSITY Berrien Springs, MI 49104

S9s


Copyright 1982, Dragomir Obradovid

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Chairman: M. rogram Carl Coffman, Jr. Date approved

ARCHAEOLOGY IN NEAR EASTERN LANDS

A Project Presented in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts

by Dragomir Obradovid

APPROVAL BY:

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0 TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS INTRODUCTION 1

PART I. THE ORIGINS AND GROWTH OF ARCHAEOLOGY Chapter

ARCHAEOLOGY - A KEY TO THE PAST . 4 What is Archaeology? The Birth of Near Eastern Archaeology The Discovery of the Archaeological Keys

C-) The Purpose of Archaeology The Sources of Information PART II. A STUDY OF SIGNIFICANT SITES AND FINDS IN MESOPOTAMIAN AREA

MESOPOTAMIA - THE LAND BETWEEN THE RIVERS . . . . 12 Civilization Began in Mesopotamia The Development of Mesopotamian Archaeology Early Travellers and Diplomats The First Excavators

ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES IN ASSYRIA 22 Archaelogical Sites Individually Considered Khorsabad Nimrud Nineveh Ashur Nuzi Mari Haran Carchemish

ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES IN BABYLONIA 42 Nippur Ur of the Chaldees O Uruk

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Kish The Greatness that was Babylon The City of Babylon A Brief History of the City To 605 B.C. From 605 B.C. to the Present Herodotus on Babylon The City: Herodotus and Supporting Data Conclusion

ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES IN PERSIA 71 Ecbatana Susa ' Pasargade Persepolis Behistun

PART III. IN THE LAND OF THE PHARAOHS THE LAND OF THE EGYPTIANS 84

Natural Features and Geography The Two Egypts The Egypt of Antiquity History of Egyptian Archaeology DISCOVERIES IN THE LAND OF THE PHARAOHS 95

Tell el-Amarna The Amarna Tablets and the Invasion of Canaan The Merneptah Stele Thebes Aramaic Papyri from Elephantine APPENDIX 112 BIBLIOGRAPHY 120

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure The Ruins of Babylon 66 The Rosetta Stone 113 Darius Inscription at Behistun 114 The Pioneers of Near Eastern Archaeology . 115 The Black Obelisk 116 The Merneptah Stele 117 Tell el-Amarna Tablets 118 British Museum Amarna Tablets . . 119

Map Mesopotamia 11 Nineveh and Its Environs Seventh Century B.C. . 28 Babylon 52 Tablet with Babylonian World Map 53 Babylon and Its Environs Sixth Century B C 63 Ancient Egypt 83


INTRODUCTION

The interest for the study of archaeology of ancient Near

East has been the desire of the writer for many years. Archaeology

in Near Eastern lands remains a theme of unending fascination. The

ancient Near East teemed with the life of rich and complex

civilizations that show both change and continuity in how people

lived in that part of our planet across a span of several thousand

years. The study of the physical remains and of the innumerable

inscriptions from the ancient Near Eastern world is itself a complex

and many sided task.

The spade of archaeologist has thrown much light on the

ancient past allowing us to reconstruct to a large extent the history

of antiquity. Hundreds of scholars engaged in this field of scientific

endeavor have worked in the ruined cities of the Orient. They have

dug up ruins and towns, deciphered dead languages and scripts,

copied innumerable ancient texts, and written thousands of books and

articles setting forth the results of their archeological work.

Numerous full-length works have dealt with individual

countries or areas, but there is no brief treatment that introduces

the student to archaeological work in the lands of ancient Near

East within the confines of one brief volume.

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The basic material presented in this study is intended to

furnish a simple and usable text for the instruction of college

students who have had no previous training in archaeology of

ancient Near East.

Archaeology in Near Eastern Lands should mark the

beginning, rather than the end, of an interest in the subject.

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PART ONE

THE ORIGINS AND GROW 11-1 OF ARCHAEOLOGY

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CHAPTER I

ARCHAEOLOGY - A KEY TO THE PAST

What is Archaeology?

Like the names of most sciences, the term Archaeology is

derived from the language of the fathers of Western thought, the

ancient Greeks. According to the Century Dictionary, archaeology,

Greek apxaloAoyla (archaios, old, and logos, knowledge or study), 1

is "the science of antiquities," but the term has come to signify

much more than that. It is the scientific study of material remains

of past human life and activities, the study and historical

interpretation of all the material remains that vanished civilizations

have left in the ground, an examination of ancient things men made and

did, in order that their whole way of life may be understood.

Reducing to a single sentence, archaeology may be simply defined as the

systematic study of antiquities as a means of reconstructing the past.

The Birth of Near Eastern Archaeoloa

Near. Eastern Archaeology; in general may be said to have been

born only a little more than a century and a half ago when the

1 Agnes Allen, The Story of Archaeology, (London: Faber and

Faber, 1956), p. 15.

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where the earliest civilizations had flourished - the valley of the

Nile and of the Euphrates and Tigris. Its visible ruins have been

explored, numerous cities, tombs, monuments, temples, and palaces,

buried by the debris and sand of many centuries, have been unearthed.

Strange scripts, used by the ancients, but forgotten for long ages,

have been deciphdred, and long-lost languages recovered. A great

work of excavation and surface exploration has been carried on in

peaceful competition by scholars belonging to many different

countries.

The exploration of the Near East began in Egypt, the land that

has fulfilled the dream of all archaeologists, because it possesses a

O great number of impressive ruins above ground, and through its dry climate has preserved much of the ancient perishable material buried

for many years.

The Discovery of the Archaeological Keys

Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, quite apart from its

military and political importance, had important and long-term

consequences for Egyptian archaeology. The invasion force included

120 scholars and artists w-ose purpose was to look at and record

the topography and monuments of Egypt and in this event is a very

clear beginning for Egyptian archaeology.. In 1799 one of Napoleon's

officers, by name Boussard, and quite by chance, unearthed at

Rashid, near Alexandria, a black basalt stone - the stone now famous

as the Rosetta Stone.


The Rosetta Stolle, containing a decree issued in honor of king

Ptolemy V in 196 B.C., is inscribed in three languages and scripts,

(1) Hieroglyphic Egyptian, the most ancient form of script used in

Egypt, (2) demotic Egyptian, the people's script that came into use

several centuries before the Christian Eta, and (3) Greek. After this

stone had become known and its hieroglyphics had been published,

scholars in different countries worked on their decipherment.

Several attempts were made by different men, but they did not go

beyond the correct decipherment of a few signs. It was Jean Francois

Champollion (1790-1832) who revealed to an astonished scholarly world

in 1822 that he had succeeded in deciphering the script of the ancient

Egyptians. This trilingual inscription provided the key to the

multitude of hieroglyphic inscriptions on the monuments of ancient

Egypt. When the French withdrew from Egypt in 1801, the collection

fell into British hands and the Rosetta stone and all the other

antiquities ended,up in the British Museum in London. 1

Archaeology's second impetus came in the mid-century, 1835,

when Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, an English officer attached to a

military mission with the Persian army, copied and deciphered another

famous trilingual inscription of a king of Persia, high up on the

Behistun (Bsitun) Rock, near Kermanshah. The inscription itself was

an imperial proclamation of Darius I of Persia (522-486 B.C.), who

employed this method of announcing his victories and achievements to

all the world - a most spectacular and enduring means of publicity.

1 James J. Hester, Introduction to Archaeology (New York:

Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982), p. 10. O Digitized by the Center for Adventist Research

0 These inscriptions were trilingual, being written in (1) Old Persian, (2) Elamite, (3) Akkadian (Babylonian). Each was written in cuneiform

characters. Rawlinson copied the Old Persian and Akkadian inscriptions

under very dangerous conditions.

Quite apart from the decipherment, the sheer difficulties of

copying the inscription have become a legend. It is carved in a rock

face 150 meters above the ground and is virtually inaccessible. To

insure that his inscription would not be defeaced by later generations,

Darius evidently had the ascent to the inscription sheared off after

the work was completed. To have produced a complete copy of the

inscription was in itself a very considerable achievement, but by 1846

he was also able to publish a complete translation of it. This new-

found key to the language made possible the reading of the great 1

Assyro-Babylonian monuments and other literary remains of Mesopotamia.

These two great achievements opened up the historical records

and religious literature of the most ancient civilizations, and for

the first time, enabled scholars to throw light on some part of man's

past by the careful piecing together of evidence. From individual

discoveries, archaeologists hope better to understand culture and how

it developed. Sir Leonard Woolley, a brilliant excavator, puts the

matter succintly,

The importance of our archaeological material is that it throws light on the history of men lik9 ourselves, on a civilization which is bound up with that of today.

1 C.W. Ceram, The March of Archaeology (New York: Alfred A.

Knopf, 1958), p. 204. 2 Sir Leonar Woolley, Digging up the Past (Baltimore:

Penguin Books, 1963), p. 15.


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The Purpose of Archaeology

Archaeology today uses all modern scientific methods to

recover the material remains and meaning of the past, of ancient man

and his environment. In the fullest use of the term, those remains

include all kinds of ancient written documents as well as the objects

of everyday life from epochs and cultures that were without writing.

In endeavoring to reconstruct the past of ancient peoples, the

archaeologist will seek first to understand their environment.

Geographical, geological, and climatic factors will loom large in a

consideration of this nature. He will try to answer such questions as

was their life affected by nearness to great trade routes on land or

sea? Was the nation protected by natural barriers or were they sources

of inconvenience or disunity? Were natural resources abundant or

scarce, and what kinds were available? What bearing did the climate of

the area have upon water supply, clothing, or diet?

Secondly, the archaeologist must find out about the people

themselves. The type of houses they built, the forms of government or

social organization they constructed, the religious practices in which

they engaged, the tools they used, the art they portrayed, and by

interpretation of material finds, the very outlook on life which they

possessed - are all included in a well-rounded discussion of a people 1

of another area.

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1 Glyn Daniel, The Origins and Growth of Archaeology (New York:

Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1968), p. 12.


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The Sources of Information The archaeologist obtains his information from material

objects left behind by the people of those far-off days. They are to

be found in the ruined towns, graves, and inscriptions of the people.

Among the most significant of the finds in an excavation are

the written records, letters, coins, receipts, census lists, contracts,

and literary pieces. These may be written on stone, broken pottery,

clay tablets, leather or papyrus, parchments, etc. Material like

this has been found in caves, wrapped around mummies, laying about

in ruined buildings, or cast out on a rubbish heap. Inscriptions in

stone are likely to be found anywhere, and they may even consist of

scratches on the rock, painted on the wall of tombs, or marked in

carbon on a coffin or a wall. Although this type of written material

lacks popular appeal, it is possibly the most important of all the

information that can be recovered from an ancient civilization, for

it records the names of people and races and gives detailed information 1

of events, laws, and customs.

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1 Glyn Daniel, . A Hundred and Fifty Years of Archaeology

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 25.


PART TWO A STUDY OF SIGNIFICANT SITES AND FINDS IN MESOPOTAMEAN AREA

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CHAPTER II

MESOPOTAMIA THE LAND BETWEEN THE RIVERS

The word Mesopotamia is derived from the Greek expression MeaoTroTapia, meaning "the Land Between the Rivers." A term taken over from the Hebrew plim niN ('cram naharayim) meaning high place of two rivers, the land around and between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. James H. Breasted named this region "the Ferile Crescent." The name Mesopotamia became known in Europe as a result of the translation of the Bible (Gen. 24:10).

In the language of the Greek historian Polybius (ca. 208-126 B.C.) and of the geographer Strabo (first century A.D.) Mesopotamia was the land extending southward from the Armenian highlands to modern

1 Baghdad. In modern use, the name Mesopotamia applies to the entire

Tigris-Euphrates region from the mountains of Kurdistan in the north and the marshes of the river delta in the south, between the steppes and deserts in the west and the mountain slopes of Iran in the east. As early as Sargon I or Naram-Sin ca. 2350 B.C. Lower Mesopotamia was known as "Sumer and Akkad," Sumer being the territory north of Persian

1 Martin A. Beek, Atlas of Mesopotamia (London: Nelson, 1962), p. y.

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Gulf, and Akkad being the region around modern Baghdad. Later, when

the city-state of Babylon rose to prominence, Lower Mesopotamia became

known as "Babylonia." Modern Iraq occupies most of the territory of

ancient Mesopotamia, which streched some 1000 km. north and south and

500 km. east and west.

The great Rivers, Euphrates and Tigris, have their sources in

the mountains of Armenia in eastern Turkey, on opposite sides of the

same range of mountains about 30 km. apart. After breaking through

the last hills, the courses differ widely in direction and character.

The Euphrates is on the whole much more quiet and permits navigation

much further upstream. It flows along in majestic dignity, and

receiving many tributaries on its way while still in the mountains,

proceeds first in a westerly direction as though making directly for

the Mediterranean Sea but turns suddenly to the southeast, after which

it receives only a few tributaries until it is joined by the Tigris in

the extreem south. In this lower part of Mesopotamia some 85 km.

south of the present Baghdad, there once stood beside the Euphrates

a city which bore the proud name Bab-ilu. Although the history of the

lower valley by no means began with this city, Babylon was so prominent

in many later periods that its name is attached permanently to the

region, and plain is known most familiarly as Babylonia.

Quite different is the course of the Tigris. When it leaves

the mountains it flows swiftly east and then southeast parallel to the

Zagros ranges, passing near Nineveh, Calah, and Ashur - all three

capitals of successive Assyrian empire. At one point the rivers are

four hundred and thirty-five kilometers apart, then they converge and


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near Baghdad flow only forty kilometers apart. Before entering the

Persian. Gulf, the two rivers unite at Kurna, southwest of Basra, and

together pour their waters as one river, Shatt-el-Arab ("Arabic River")

into the Persian Gulf. Both rivers flood annually in the spring. The

Tigris is 1,750 6. long and is about forty meters wide at Baghdad.

The Euphrates meanders over a 2,600 km. path to the Persian Gulf. In

the middle section the river is some two hundred and fifty meters

across.

Through the centuries, both the Tigris and the Euphrates have

changed their courses. Aerial photography helps the modern

archaeologist to trace abandoned riverbeds and to note how great cities

were first bypassed by the river and then abandoned by a people that 1

needed water for subsistence.

Civilization Began in Mesopotamia

Some time before 3,500 B.C. the Age of Civilization began in

the lower Tigris-Euphrates Valley, later known as Babylonia. The

southern part of Babylonia - at the head of the gulf - was called

Sumer, whereas the northern part of Babylonia, occupied by the earlier

settlers - around modern Baghdad - was called Akkad.

Sumer and Akkad together did not occupy an extensive territory,

but the fertility of the soil in this region made possible the support

of a large population. The plain was dotted with cities, agriculture,

trade, and industry were thriving, a knowledge of metal-working and

1 Marcel Brion, The World of Archaeology (New York: The

Macmillan Company, 1962), p. 111.


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writing was common, and monumental works of architecture were being

constructed.

In this age the city-state was the largest political division,

and each city-state constituted an independent nation. The principal

cities were Ur, Lagat', Erech (Uruk), Eridu, Nippur, Sippar, Umma, and

Akkad, but there were many others. They were often at war with one 1

another.

At the end of the third millennium B.C. a wave of Semitic

invaders, the Amorites, conquered all of Sumer and Akkad. The most

important of the Amorite kings, the famous Hammurabi (c. 1950 B.C.),

made the city of Babylon his capital, and the old territory of Sumer

and Akkad was henceforth called Babylonia.

Under Hammurabi the civilization of the lower Tigris-Euphrates

Valley reached its peak. Politically, the whole area was unified.

The city of Babylon was not only the capital of this great realm, it

was also a center of cultural life. In the time of Hammurabi the

economic and social structure, technology, art, literature, religion,

intellectual outlook, laws, and the system of writing all were derived

from Sumerian origins. That being the case, these peoples deserve

much archaeological attention to see what yet can be learned about 2

the origins of civilization.

1 David and Joan Oates, The Rise of Civilization (Phaidon:

Elsevier, 1976), pp. 119-121. 2 Glyn Daniel, The First Civilizations: The Archaeology of

Their Origin (London: Thames and Hudson, 1968), pp. 70-72.


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The Development of Mesopotamian Archaeology

One of archaeology's finest achievements is the knowledge of

the civilizations that, during the tousand of years, came to birth and

flowered in the lands watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates.

The first true evidence for work that resembles archaeological

research comes from the city of Ur of the Chaldees in the sixth century

B.C. There, Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, excavated beneath

the temple of Shamash at Sippar and established a museum to house his

collection, which included a foundation stone laid by Naram-Sin, the

son of Sargon of Akkad, almost two thousand years previously.

Mesopotamia is the land of proud cities such as Nineveh,

Babylon and many others. These famous cities of the past have sunk

back into the earth and been buried beneath it, and most of them from

tells - slight humps in the ground barely distinguishable from the 1

surrounding plain.

Early Travellers and Diplomats

These heaps of ruins have attracted the attention of

travellers. One of the first was BENJAMIN BAR JONA of Tudela, a learned rabbi, from the kingdom of Navarre in Spain. Leaving home

about A.D. 1160, he travelled through Palestine, visited Mosul

opposite ancient Nineveh, and went southward to the site of Babylon.

1 Andre Parot, Discovering Buried Worlds (New York:

Philosophical Library, 1955), pp. 66-67.


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He also saw the ruin of Birs Nimrud, ancient Borsippa, and believed

it to be the Tower of Babel.

After Benjamin of Tudela many others visited Mesopotamian

Valley and described what they saw. One of the most important was an

Italian nobleman, PIETRO DELLA VALLE, who visited Babylon in 1616 and

Ur in 1625. He also took away with him some square bricks on which

were writing in certain unknown characters and these, together with

copies of cuneiform inscriptions which he had made at Persepolis, were

of the first examples of cuneiform to reach Europe.

The Danish scholar, CARSTEN NIEBUHR published his account of

his travels in Copenhagen in 1788. He is much more precise in his

statements about Nineveh and Babylon than previous travellers. He 1

also made copies of Persepolis inscriptions in 1765.

The ABBE DE BEUCHAMP, papal vicar-general at Baghdad from

1780 to 1790 was the first to make a proper examination of the

trenches dug by the builders of Hillah in search of Babylonian bricks

collecting them together with other small antiquities which he brought

back to France. His accurate accounts were published in 1785 and

1790 in French.

So the end of the eighteenth century is reached with

Mesopotamia's great heritage of antiquities still safely bosomed in

her mounds, and their history only subject to conventional curiosity

among Europeans. Enthusiasm was particularly great in Britain, and

the East India Company ordered their Resident in Basrah to obtain

1 C.W. Ceram, The March of Archaeology (New York: Alfred A.

Knopf, 1958), p. 180.


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specimens of the inscribed bricks which the Abbe had seen at Babylon

and to send them, carefully packed, to London.

The first mentioned explorer and surveyor of Babylonian and

Assyrian ruins and rivers was CLAUDIUS JAMES RICH (1787-1820). At the

age of sixteen he became resident of the company in Baghdad. A

gifted liguist Rich possessed an extraordinary gift for Oriental

languages and was fluent in Turkish and Arabic. In his travels through

the region he visited the mound of Hillah (Babylon), Qouyunjiq

(Nineveh), and others. At Qouyunjiq he made some slight excavations,

and recorded many inscriptions. He died of Cholera Morbus, in Shiraz,

October 5, 1821 at the age of thirty-five, but his informative memoirs

on Babylon, Nineveh and other Mesopotamian tells, and the collection

of antiquities he accumulated for the British Museum aroused an 1

interest for excavation in Mesopotamia.

The First Excavators In 1842 the French government created a vice-consulate at

Mosul on Upper Tigris, opposite the site of ancient Nineveh, and

appointed to the position PAUL EMILE BOTTA (1805-1870), who had served

as French consul at Alexandria in Egypt.

Botta's mission was made in part archaeological. When in

December 1842 he began digging in the mound of Qouyunjiq, the site

of ancient Nineveh, it was the start of the history of excavation in

Mesopotamia. After three months of fruitless digging, in March 1843,

1 C.W. Ceram, Hands on the Past (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

1966), p. 223.


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he transfered his activities to a large mound on the River Khosr

called Khorsabad, twenty-three kilometers to the norhteast. Here he

discovered a palace filled with interesting inscribed bas-reliefs

made of alabaster, as well as a city with its 10-hectare (25-acre)

complex. Under the covers of the palace and under the city gates

were many inscribed cylinders of clay. The site proved to be the

palace and the city of Sargon II (722-705 B.C.), as his new capital.

He named it Dur-Sharukin, or Sargonsburg. After two successful years,

Botta sent his extensive finds to the Louvre in Paris.

After this important beginning had been made in Mesopotamian

archaeology, there was an imediate outbreak of international rivalry, 1

which did, however, stimulated research.

One of the great British pioneers was AUSTEN HENRY LAYARD

(1817-1894). He began to excavate in 1845 at Nimrud, thirty kilometers

south of Nineveh on the Tigris, the mound of the city which is called

Calah in the Bible (Gen. 10 .:12) and Kalhu in Assyrian literature. Layard's efforts were crowned with success in 1846 when he

found the famous black Obelisk of King Shalmaneser III (859-825 B.C.),

who had erected this stele of victory in his palace to commemorate the

leading military events of his government. Sculpured on all four sides,

it shows twenty small bas-reliefs, and above, below, and between them

210 lines of cuneiform inscription, containing the interesting passage

above the second series of. reliefs,

1 Percy S. Handcock, Mesopotamian Archaeology (London:

Macmillan and Company, 1912), p. 43.


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"I received the tribute of Jehu, son of Omri, silver, gold, a golden 1

bowl, a golden vase . . . ." He partially explored palaces of Ashurbanipal I (Sennacherib's grandson), Adadnirari III, and

Esarhaddon at Calah. The excavations of Layard and his successors

also brought to light on this site of Nineveh one of the most

significant finds ever made, Ashurbanipal library consisting of 2

his collection of more than 20,000 clay tablets with cuneiform texts.

This library contained every variety of Babylonian and Assyrian

literature, including dictionaries and grammatical exercises, it was

one of the most important archaeological discoveries ever made.

His assistant Hormuzd Rassam came back in 1879 for a brief

excavation, at which time he unearthed a large collection of business

documents and the famous Cyrus Cylinder with Cyrus' account of his

conquest of Babylon.

As these excavations progressed, others were stimulated to

make minor explorations. In 1854, Sir Henry C. Rawlinson (1810-1895)

decipherer of cuneiform - examined the great ziggurat at Birs Nimrud

and found some important inscriptions dating to the reign of

Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 B.C.).

Also during this decade the Deutsche Oriental Gesellschaft

(German Oriental Society), had been formed in Berlin for the purpose

of excavation. In 1899 this society began the excavation of the great

1 James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 2nd. ed.

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 281. 2 Sir E.A. Wallis Budge, The Rise and Progress of Assyriology

(London: Martin Hopkinson and Company, Ltd., 1925), p. 82.


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mound which covered the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon. The

work was committed to the direction of Dr. ROBERT KOLDEWEY (1855-1925),

who carried it steadily forward until the Great War. Koldewey laid

bare on Babylon a number of the great works of king Nebuchadnezzar -

the magnificient walls with which he surrounded Babylon, and the palace 1

and temples with which he adorned it.

Under Koldewey's general direction, during the season of

1912-13, Dr. JULIUS JORDAN dug at ancient Uruk (Erech) modern Warka,

uncovering much of the great temple of Ishtar, part of the city wall,

many houses, and tablets.

An excavation at Ur, and at Tell el-Obeid was carried by Sir

C}) LEONARD WOOLLEY (1880-1960), who uncovered the temple of the moon-god

- pavements and walls - built by Nebuchadnezzar, and walls and

ziggurat constructed by kings of Ur, also he discovered a deposit 2

of jewerly and a statue of one of the rules of Lagash.

1 Anne Terry White, Lost Worlds: The Romance of Archaeology

(New York: Random House, 1941), pp. 224-227. 2 Charles Burney, The Ancient Near East (Ithaca: Cornell

University, 1977), pp. 86-90.


CHAPTER III

ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES IN

ASSYRIA

Assyria is the name of ancient country whose inhabitants were

called Assyrians. The name was variously represented in other

languages. The Hebrew manuscripts give ITN and 11tH, Akkadian assur,

Egyptian 'Iswr, and Phoenician 'sr. The English spelling is a

transliteration of the Greek 'Aaao6p.

Assyria proper was the country on the upper Tigris in the upper

Mesopotamian plain, bounded on the north and east by Urartu (modern

Armenia), on the west by the Syrian Desert, and on the south by the 1

Jebel Hamrin and Babylonia. The most fertile and densely populated

part of Assyria lay east of the central river Tigris. Assyria was

sometimes applied to those territories which were subject to the

control of its kings dwelling at Nineveh, Assur, and Calah, the

principal cities. At the height of its power, Assyria was for about

300 years (from 933 until shortly before 612 B.C.) the most powerful

nation on the earth. During this time the Assyrian empire covered 2

Media and south Anatolia, Cilicia, Syria, Egypt, Elam and Babylonia.

1 Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq (London: George Allen and

Unwin Ltd., 1964), pp. 20.21. 2 Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead

Civilization (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 166.

22


23

The Assyrians were Semites like the Babylonians and Arameans,

and spoke the Assyrian dialect of Akkadian, a language closely related

to Babylonian. They also used cuneiform script of the Babylonians

with some local modifications in the shape of characters.

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century began the era

of the great expeditions, French, British, American and German. The

French started in 1842 in Nineveh, the British in 1847 in Khorsabad,

the Germans in Ashur from 1902 to 1914, the Americans in Nuzi (1923-34)

and some others.

After almost of 150 years of digging in the soil of Mesopotamia

there is still a lot to be done. The Iraq department of Antiquities

has records of over 6,500 tells in the country, well over 6,000 of

them are waiting the spade of archaeologists. Limits of this paper's

length and writer's time only a few sites have been selected.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES INDIVIDUALLY CONSIDERED

KHORSABAD

Khorsabad ("Town of Khosroes") was known in antiquity as

Dur-Sharukin ("Sargonsburg"), the residence of the Assyrian king

Sargon II (722-705 B.C.), who called the new capital after himself.

The town of Khorsabad was situated about 20 km. northeast of Nineveh,

on the left bank of the little river known as the Khosar which also

flows through Nineveh.


24

The first excavation at Khorsabad was carried by Paul Emile

Botta the French consul at Mosul who attempted excavation at Qouyunjiq (Kuyunjik, Nineveh). On the first day of his work at Khorsabad he

immediately came upon the remains of walls covered with the large bas

reliefs and cuneiform inscriptions from the palace of Sargon II.

Reliefs from Khorsabad depict Assyrian warriors, including Sargon

himself, with bow and arrow, sword, and club. Khorsabad inscriptions

record the annals of Sargon in which he claimed for the fall of

Samaria and the deportation of its inhabitants. Of this he says,

I besieged and captured, carrying of 27,290 of the people who dwelt therein. Fifty chariots I gathered from among them, I caused others to take their portion, .I set my officers over them and imposed upon them the tribute of the former king.'

In 1929 excavations at Khorsabad were resumed by Edward

Chiera under the auspicies of the Oriental Institute of the University

of Chicago. The remains of Sargon's palace were re-examined and an

important text was discovered known as "King list." This list has

been important in the establishment of the chronology of the Assyrian

monarchs. After Sargon's death in 705 B.C., Senacherib moved the

capital back to Nineveh.

1 Jack Finegan, Light from the Ancient Past (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 209.


25

NIMRUD The Akkadian name for Assyrian city founded by Assur, a

follower of Nimrud (Gen. 10:11-12) is Kalhu and in Hebrew is t12 n.

If Sumerian etymology is accepted Ka-fah meaning "Holy Gate" - a

parallel to ka-dingir-ra = bab-ili, "gate of God" - is possible.

In later antiquity the city was known by its present name Nimrud.

Nimrud is located 40 km. south of modern Mosul and ancient

Nineveh on the eastern bank of the river Tigris, at the point where

the Great Zab River joins the Tigris. The Assyrian king

Ashurnasirpal II (884-859 B.C.) states that Calah was built by

Shalmaneser I (1274-1244 B.C.) and subsequently restored by

Ashurnasirpal. The inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II

mention their attacks on Israel and Judah launched from this Assyrian

military capital. Together with Nineveh, Assur, and Khorsabad, Calah 1

was one of four most important cities of Assyria. In 613 B.C. Calah

fell to the Medes and the Babylonians.

Excavations at the site were carried out by Henry Layard, the

pioneer of Asssyrian archaeology, between 1845 and 1850, the British

School of Archaeology in Iraq 1949-63 under the direction of M.E.L.

Mallowan, and the Iraqi government and Polish expeditions 1970-6.

The excavators have uncovered palaces built by Ashurnasirpal III,

1 M.E.L. Mallowan, Twenty-five Years of Mesopotamian Discovery

(London: The British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 1956), p. 45.

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26

Tiglath-pileser III, and Esarhaddon, and temples dedicated to Ninurta

and Nabu.

Layard's most significant discovery may well have been the

Black Obelisk (a kind of victory monument of Shalmaneser III) which 1

originally stood in the main square of Calah. It was a four-sided

pillar of black marble, 1,95 meter high, and tapering at the top. It

had twenty small bas-reliefs - five panels on each side - showing the

subject princes from five different countries bringing tribute to the

king. Above, below, and between the reliefs were 210 lines of

cuneiform inscription which briefly tell the story of the monarch's

achievements in war and peace during the first thirty-one years of

his reign. On the Obelisk Shalmaneser says,

In the eighteenth year of my rule, I crossed the Euphrates for the sixteenth time.. Hazael of Damascus (Imerisu) put his trust upon his numerous army and called up his troops in great number, making the mountain Senir (Sa-ni-ru), a mountain facing the Lebanon, to his fortress. I fought with him and inflicted a defeat upon him, killing with the sword 16,000 of his experienced soldiers. I took away from him 1,121 chariots, 470 riding horses as well as his camp.... I marched as far as mountains of Ba i li-ra'si which is at the side of the sea and erected there a stela with my image as king. At that time I received the tribute of the inhabitants of Tyre, Sidon, and of Jehu, son of Omri (la-u-a mar Hu-um-ri-i). 2

1 George Smith, Assyrian Discoveries (New York: Scribner,

1975), p. 10. 2 James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 2nd ed.

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 280.


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27

Layard realized the value of the Black Obelisk, therefore

carefully packed it and sent it to Rawlinson who carefully copied

all inscriptions, then sent it on to London, where it is now one of

the choicest possessions of the British Museum.

In 1951 Mallowan discovered a banquet stele now in the

Museum of Antiquity of Mosul. The king is depicted surrounded by

the symbols of his gods. The inscription notes the completition of

the palace and its surrounding parks and describes the celebration

banquet. From all parts of the empire guests arrived - 69,574 in

all - to celebrate for ten days. During that time they consumed

2,200 oxen, 16,000 sheep, 10,000 skins of wine, and 10,000 barrels 1

of beer.

NINEVEH The native name Ninua goes back to an earlier Hittite form

Ninuwa, a rendering of the earlier Sumerian name Nina, a name of the

goddess Ishtar written with a sign depicting a fish inside an 2

enclosure. The ;Greek writers call the city Nlyos, after the legendary hero by that name. The Hebrew name is ni.rn .

The city was situated on the eastern bank of the Tigris, at

the point where the Khosr joins the river, just opposite modern

Mosul 350 km. northwest of Baghdad.

1 M.E.L. Mallowan, Nimrud and Its Remains, vol. I (New York:

Dodd, Mead and Company, 1966), p. 59. 2 Henry Austen Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, vol. I

(New York: George P. Putnam, 1849), p. 181.


SCALE IN ENGLISH MILES 5 10 15 1

8 16 24 KILOMETERS

NINEVEH AND ITS ENVIRONS

SEVENTH CENTURY B.C. SCALE IN ENGLISH MILES 1/2 1 1 1/2

.8 1.6 2.4 KILOMETERS

1-16 City gates 16 A shurbanipol's Palace 17 Temple of Nabu

18 Temple of Ishtar

19 Sennache rib's Palace

Mosul (insert) ) is shown f or comparative

size of these two cities.

Toil Arpochiyo

(Khorsabod Dur Sharrukin Tell

cr r Bine

Outer Fortifications

9 To Arbela

\\\

Modern

\\\ 15

4111. 4MID

28

0

0

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29

The ruins of Nineveh are marked primarily by two large mounds,

Quyunjiq (also spelled Kuyunjik) and Nebi Yunus. Quyunjiq is

unoccupied and the site of most of the archaeological work at Nineveh,

while Nebi Yunus has a village on top, so little excavation can be

done there.

Nineveh always held a place of prominence during the long

history of the many Assyrian dynasties who ruled from it and several

other cities for more than two thousand years. Along with Nimrud and

Ashur it was intermittently the palace-city of Early, Middle, and the

late Assyrian kings: Shalmaneser I (1265-1236 B.C.), Tiglath-pileser I

1116-1078), Adadnirari II (912-892), Tukulti-ninurta II (891-885),

and Ashurnasirpal II (884-860). Its splendour equalled that of Ashur

and of Nimrud and was not outdone by another royal city until Sargon

II (722-706) built by Dur Sharrukin (Khorsabad), an entirely new 1

palace-city. However, Sennacherib (705-682) soon restored it to

first place among Assyrian cities, making it a city of great splendour

and beauty.

The noteworthy successors of Sennacherib at Nineveh were

Esarhaddon (680-669) and his eldest son Ashurbanipal (669-627 B.C.).

Esarhaddon's palace was discovered during the brief excavations of

Layard at Nebi-Yunus. Ashurbanipal conducted many military campaigns

with success but he is remebered mainly for his cultural interests,

particularly for his great library.

1 John P. Newman, The Thrones and Palaces of Babylon and

Nineveh (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1876), p. 277.

0


30

The fall of the great city of Nineveh occured in August

612 B.C. The Babylonian Chronicle (known as B.M. 21909) tells how a

combined force of Medes, Babylonians and Scythians laid siege to the

city, which fell as a result of the breaches madelin the defences by

the flooding rivers. Its spoils were divided among its conquerors.

Assyria with once mighty monarchs in once fabulous cities ceased to

exist.

Excavation was at first undertaken by Paul Emile Botta

(1842-3), but with little success, and he abandoned the site, went to

Khorsabad (16 km. to the north), the ancient Dur-Sharukin, and

excavated Sargon's palace city there, thinking that he had discovered 1

Nineveh. Austen Henry Layard, an Englishmen of Huguenot descent, was

among those whose interest and enthusiasm for Mesopotamian archaeology

had been inspired by Botta. He arrived at Mosul in 1845, sponsored by

a few friends he 'dug at Nimrud, ancient Calah, south of Mosul, along

the Tigris, also thinking that he was digging at old Nineveh. Both

men were mistaken. In the Spring of 1850 Layard and his assistant

Hormuzd Rassam turned their attention to Quyunjiq, to the very spot

that Botta had abandoned just a few years earlier. They made their

most significant find - temples and bas-reliefs from the palaces of

Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal, and thousand of clay tablets representing

the library of Ashurbanipal. They originally had been collected by

Sargon and his successors but primarily were the work of Ashurbanipal, who boasts that he was one of the few literate monarchs of antiquity.

1 Seton Lloyd, Ruined Cities of Iraq (London: Oxford

University Press, 1943), p. 37.


31

The majority of texts were originals collected in Babylonia or copied 1

in Nineveh by skilled scribes. They cover many genres of literature,

among which are the well-known epics of Enuma Elish (Babylonian

Creation account), and of Gilgamesh (Flood account). Legends, rituals,

religious literature of all kinds including hymns, prayers, and lists

of gods and temples, letters, historical texts of many kinds as well

as lexicographical and bilingual documents which have proved of great 2

use in furthering the understanding both of Akkadians and Sumerians.

The British Museum reopened excavations under G. Smith

(1873-6), E.A.W. Budge (1882-91), L.W. King (1903-5) and R. Cambell

Thompson (1927-32). The Iraqi Government has continued work at the

site (1963, 1966-74). The mound of Nebi Yunus covering the palace

of Esarhaddon has been as yet little excavated because it is still

inhabited.

Nineveh with its many reliefs and inscriptions, has done more

than any other Assyrian site to elucidate the ancient history of

Assyria and Babylonia, while the epics, histories, grammatical and

scientific texts and letters have made Assyrian literature better

known than that of any ancient Semitic peoples except the Hebrews.

O

1 Henry S. Robertson, Voices of the Past from Assyria and

Babylonia (London: George Bell and Sons, 1900), pp. 1-3. 2 Morris Jastrow, Jr. The Civilization of Babylonia and

Assyria (London: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1915), p. 34.


Q.;

32

ASHUR

Ashur was an early metropolis and first of the four capitals

of the mighty Assyrian empire. The city gave its name to the country 1

and empire, even as it took its own name from the national god Ashur.

The city of Ashur was located on the western bank of the Tigris above

its junction with the Little Zab River, about 100 km. south of

Nineveh in northern Iraq. Ashur (Tti) is first mentioned by name

on a cuneiform tablet from Nuzi written during the Old Akkadian period

(ca. 2350 B.C.). , Its modern name is Qala'at Sherqat. The first to excavate there was Austen Henry Layard, who in

1847 discovered on the western side of the mound a life-size black

basalt statue covered on three sides with a cuneiform inscription of

Shamaneser II. In 1853 Hormuzd Rassam uncovered two cylinders of

Tiglath-pileser I (1113-1074 B.C.) which not only told of erection

of the temple 700 years earlier but also told of reconstruction and

repair by himself and the same inscription mentioned the city by name.

The Deutsches Orient-Gesellschaft (German Oriental Society) under the

direction of Walter Andrae and Robert Koldewey excavated there from

1903 until the outbreak of the World War I in 1914. During those

years the excavators were able to plot the successive layers of the

city and study the plans of its palaces and temples.

1 A.T. Olmstead, History of Assyria (New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons, 1923), p. 1.

0


33

Andrae's excavations at Ashur have revealed to us the nature of

Assyrian law. Two large tablets and a number of fragments dating from

the time of Tigleth-pileser I gave us a corpus of law which is about

one-quarter the length of the better known code of Hammurabi. The

laws themselves may go back to the fifteenth century B.C. The

penalties of the Assyrian code are more severe than those of their 1

Babylonian counterparts.

Among the literary discoveries, the excavators of Ashur

recovered an Assyrian version of the Mesopotamian creation epic.

While the Marduk, the god of Babylon, is exalted in the Enuma Elish

as the supreme diety, the god of Ashur is the hero of the Assyrian

account.

Ashur suffered a fate similar to that of the other capitals

of the Assyrian empire. The city was captured by Cyaxeres the Mede

and Nabopolassar of Babylon in 614 B.C., two years before the fall of

Nineveh.

NUZI

The name is always written in cuneiform as Nu-zi, or Nu-zu-e.

The name Nuzi (Nuzu) was in use during the Hurrian occupation of the

city. In the Old Akkadian period the city bore the name of Gasur.

When the Hurrians took it over they changed its name to Nuzi.

1 Percy S. Handcock, Mesopotamian Archaeology (London:

Macmillan and Company, 1912), pp. 144-147.


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34

The remains of this small ancient city in Mesopotamia (Iraq)

were buried in the mound of Yorgan Tepe (also spelled Yorghan Tepe)

about 15 km. west of the modern town of Kirkuk in . northern Mesopotamia

near the foothills of southern Kurdistan. This city flourished in the

middle centuries of the second Millennium B.C.

Excavation were begun at this city in 1925 by a joint

expedition of the. American School of Oriental Research, the University

Museum (University of Pennsylvania), the Harvard Semitic Museum and the

Iraq Museum. Professor Edward Chiera was the director. In the palace

and private homes more than 5,000 cuneiform tablets were found,

written in a local Hurrian dialect of Akkadian. A smaller number of

tablets of the same type have been found at neighbouring Kirkuk

(ancient Arrapkha) and at Tell er-Rimah (ancient Karana), which lies 1

about 185 km. northwest of Nuzi. The tablets were discovered from

both private ana public archives of the fifteenth and fourteenth

centuries B.C. They are records of transactions of sale, loan,

exchange, marriage, adoption and divorce, legal documents and court

proceedings. In each case they are witnissed and sealed. Some of

them provide records that cover four to five generations of the same

family.

- A large group of documents deal with inheritance.

Throughout the ancient Near East an eldest son received a larger

inheritance share than his brothers, though the exact proportion

varied.

1 Edward Chiera and Ephraim A. Speiser, "A New Factor in

the History of the Ancient East," AASOR 6 (1924):75-90. O


35

Women are often entered into the negotiations of the Nuzi

documents. The right of daughter to inherit property is attested,

usually in the absence of sons, as in Babylonian contracts.

Among the Nuzi tablets there are many that relate to adoption.

A childless couple would adopt a free-born person or a slave to care

for them in old days, to provide a proper burial, and, eventually to

inherit the family property. At times a natural son is born to a

couple after they have adopted a child. Nuzi customs anticipated

this eventuality by decreeing that an adopted son would be 1

subordinate to a natural son in such instances.

Apart from adoption, the Nuzi texts mention three further

solutions for a childless marriage. The husband could remarry or

take a concubine or the wife could present her own slave-girl to

her husband.

Cyrus H. Gordon, The Living Past (New York: The John Day Company, 1941), p. 159.


36

MARI ki

Akkadian MA-RI- , Sumerian MA-ER. Inscriptions found

during the excavations at the site of numerous ancient sites of

Mesopotamia bore reference to an important city by the name of Mari.

Its modern name is Te11-Hariri.

The ancient city of Mari has now been identified with Tell

Hariri and is located in southeast Syria near Iraqi border, about

12 km. northwest of Abu Kemal on the right bank of the Euphrates.

In ancient times the river flowed past the edge of the city, but the

mound is now over two kilometers west of the Euphrates. Mari was

the only major city of the middle Euphrates and as such controlled

the trade routes.

The first campaign at Mari was carried by Andre Parrot under

the auspices of the Louvre Museum during the winter months of 1933-34.

Before that Mari was one of the innumerable ghost towns of the Near

East. Excavations at the sites of other ancient cities of Mesopotamia

had yielded inscriptions of various kinds bearing references to the

city of Mari. The old Sumerian King-list preserved the tradition that

Mari was the site of the tenth dynasty of Mesopotamia after the flood,

but of the six kings who reigned 136 years, we have the name of only

one completely preserved, which was found after six campaigns of

excavation at Mari.

1 Thorkild Jacobsen, The Sumerian King List (Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press, 1939), p. 102.


37

The most important finds were: an ancient temple dedicated to

Ishtar (goddess of love and war), a ziggurat or temple tower, and the

large royal palace. The palace is one of the finest and certainly the

best preserved of any so far found in the Near East. It boasts 300

rooms, halls, courts and corridors, covering more that six acres.

Besides the private quarters for the royal family, there are

administrative offices, a scribal school, quarters for visiting

dignitaries, a royal chapel, a throne room and a reception chamber.

Mari's most valuable discovery is doubtless the royal

archives. More than 20,000 cuneiform tablets, written in Akkadian

language have been discovered from various rooms of the palace.

They are written in a very beautiful cuneiform script, indicating that

the very best scribes of the day were used in the king's offices, and

that they took pride in their calligraphy. The tablets provide first-

hand historical information that Shamshi-adad I of Assyria and

Hammurabi of Babylon were for a time contemporaries.

The majority of documents are economic or administrative in nature,

dealing with the maintainance of the palace, official trade abroad,

and how goods and services were exchanged and the legal traditions

regulating such exchanges. Of a unique character are some of 1300

tablets containing lists of daily provisions for the palace, after

summarized by month. To date, only about 3000 of the Mari tablets

have been published. Their subject matter may be divided into 1

political-diplomatic, economic-administrative, legal, and literary.

1 Leo A. Oppenheim, Letters from Mesopotamia (Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 96-110.


38

HARAN The ancient name of the ancient city of Haran is the same as

its modern name, Haran. Its Hebrew name is inn and Greek xappay.

The name appears in Assyrian sources as Harran, in Akkadian as

Har-iranu, which means route, journey, caravan, or street. It may

have received this name because of its location on important ancient

crossroads between Babylonia and Syria, Egypt and Asia Minor.

Therefore it has never passed out of existence or been lost.

Haran was an important commercial center because of its

location. It was situated about 32 km. southeast of Urfa (Edessa),

Turkey, on the river Belikh, one of two tributaries of the Euphrates.

The site is mentioned frequently in cuneiform sources, especially the

Mari texts, during the third to the first Millennia B.C. and appears 1

in Hittite documents as well. Its continuous occupation confirmed

by archaeologists may be due to its strategic position at the cross-

roads of trade routes going between the major commercial centers of

that part of the world. It is mentioned in the prism inscription of

Tiglath-pileser I. It was a seat of worship of Sin, the moon-god,

from very ancient times. A temple was built there by Shalmaneser I .I.

Haran rebelled against Assyria and was sacked in 763 B.C. The city

was restored by Sargon II, and the temple repaired and refurnished by

Esarhaddon (675 B.C.) and by Ashurbanipal who was crowned here with

1 Jack Finegan, Light from the Ancient Past (Princeton:



39

the crown of Sin. At the temple repaired by Sargon II the mother of

Nabonidus was made the high pristess, and at the temple restored by

Ashurbanipal the daughter of Nabonidus was made the high pristess.

After the fall of Nineveh (612 B.C.) Haran became the last capital of

Assyria until its capture by Babylonians in 609 B.C.

Excavations begun in 1951 by the joint Anglo-Turkish

Expedition have recovered remains going back to the nineth century 1

B.C. Its modern population is very small but large-scale

excavations at Haran have not yet been possible.

In 1956 D.S. Rice excavated at Haran. The ruins of great

mosque are probably located at the site of the famous moon temple, as

indicated by the discovery of three inscribed stelae of Nabonidus

in this structure.

CARCHEMISH The Akkadian and Hittite form of the name is Kargamish,

Karkamish, or Gargamish. The Hebrew name is ttonn -o, and in Greek is xappEls or Kapxaucts. In Egyptian records from Thutmose III in

the 18th Dynasty to that of Ramses III in the 20th Dynasty the name

is attested as Krkmsh. Some sources suggest that the name means

"forth of the god Kemosh." The earliest occurence of the name is in

an adjectival form, namely, Kar-Kamishu, occurs on Babylonian

tablets of the first dynasty, assuring us that Carchemish existed as

a city at least as early as 2,000 B.C. Its modern name is Jerablus.

1 W.F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity

(Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1942), p. 179. O


0

C2)

40

Carchemish (Jerablus), an important Syro-Hittite city is

situated on the right bank of the upper Euphrates River about 100 km.

northeast of Aleppo, was for more than a thousand years the dominant 1

city of the upper Euphrates. The city came under Hittite influence,

and after the fall of Hittite empire (1200 B.C. .) became the most

important of the Hittite city-states, the Assyrians even regarded it

as the Hittite capital. In 609 B.C. Neco II of Egypt moved via

Megiddo to recapture the city, which was made a base from which his

army harassed the Babylonians. But 605 B.C. was a decisive year in

ancient Near Eastern history. Nebuchadnezzar II, crown prince of the

Neo-Babylonian empire, became commander-in-chief of the Babylonian

armies. His own court records detail subsequent events of that year

on the tablets of the Neo-Babylonian Chronicle (British Museum

Tablet no. 21946). In May-June of 605 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar II and his

Babylonian army fell upon the city in a surprise attack and utterly

defeated the Egyptians pursuing them to Hamath. Thereafter the city 2

declined rapidly.

Excavations were caried out at Carchemish for the British

Museum from 1876 to 1879 under the direction of Sir C.L. Woolley and

by T.E. Lawrence from 1912 to 1914 with great success. These have

brought to light many Hittite hieroglyphic inscriptions and

sculptured monuments. One of the cuneiform inscriptions found in the

1 Sir Charles Leonard Woolley, Carchemish, vol. I

(Oxford: The University Press, 1914), pp. 17-19. 2 D.J. Wiseman, Chronicles of Chaldean Kings (626-556 B.C.)

in the British Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1956), p. 25.


41

0 excavations containing the name Karkamis confirms the identification 1

of the ruins with Carchemish.

Excavations in 1912 and 1914 uncovered Hittite sculptures, a

lower palace area with an open palace (Bit-hilani), and evidence of

the battle and later Babylonian occupation.

The importance of Carchemish during and just after the

Amarna Age is becoming clarified by the royal Hittite archives found

at Ugarit. These texts show that for many administrational purposes,

vassal kingdoms in Syria (such as Ugarit) were subject to Carchemish

within the Hittite imperial system.

1 H.G. Guterbock, "Carchemish" Journal of Near Eastern Studies

0 13 (1954):110.


41

excavations containing the name Karkamis confirms the identification 1

of the ruins with Carchemish.

Excavations in 1912 and 1914 uncovered Hittite sculptures, a

lower palace area with an open palace (Bit-hilani), and evidence of

the battle and later Babylonian occupation.

The importance of Carchemish during and just after the

Amarna Age is becoming clarified by the royal Hittite archives found

at Ugarit. These texts show that for many administrational purposes,

vassal kingdoms in Syria (such as Ugarit) were subject to Carchemish

within the Hittite imperial system.

1 H.G. Guterbock, "Carchemish" Journal of Near Eastern Studies

13 (1954):110. o Digitized by the Center for Adventist Research

CHAPTER IV

ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES IN

BABYLONIA

Babylonia took its name from its capital city of Babylon.

It was also called Shinar in the Bible (Gen. 10:10) and later, "the

Land of the Chaldeans" or "Chaldea," a term used for the whole century

after the rise of the "Chaldean" dynasty. In earlier antiquity it

bore the name of Akkad.

This small flat country of Babylonia covered the territory of

about 20,000 square km. in southern Mesopotamia (modern south Iraq)

and was bounded on the east by the Persian (Elamite) hills, to the

west by Syrian desert, and to the south by the Persian Gulf. The

principal sites of Babylon, Warka, (Uruk or Erech), Nippur, Ur, Eridu 1

and Lagash, were all located on or near the Euphrates.

The inhabitants of Mesopotamia, from the time when their

liguistic affinities become clear, are referred to successively as

Sumerians, Babylonians, Hurrians, and Chaldeans. Apart from them a

series of invaders are known, such as the Guti, the Amorites, and the

Kassites, who succeeded at one' time or another in ruling over parts of

Mesopotamia.

1 Georges Contenau, Everyday Life in Babylonia and Assyria

(London: Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd., 1954), p. 27.

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The first recorded inhabitants of this region, Sumerians,

spoke the language that shows no affinities with any other known

language, ancient or modern. Several local Semitic dialects appear

from about 2800 B.C., the most influental being the Old Babylonian,

which became the diplomatic Lingua Franca of the whole ancient Near

East. With the rise of the Chaldeans about 626 B.C. Aramaic was

clearly influencing the local Neo-Babylonian dialect. The Babylonian

dialect continued in use, with the cuneiform script for religious 1

purposes at Babylon, until the first century A.D. It was in this

region where civilization began. They were the first to develop the

city-state, writing, and law codes, the use of the wheel and much more.

The history of Babylonia is a very interesting one and it will

be discussed together with the history of the greatest city that once

was - Babylon. In order to comprehend the rise of Sumerian culture

better, we shall first turn uor attention to Nippur.

NIPPUR Nippur, modern Niffar, is an ancient Mesopotamian city situated

150 km. south of Baghdad or 75 km. southeast of Babylon. The sections

of the ancient city were divided by Shatt-en-Nil (River Chebar).

Cuneiform tablets found at Nippar from the time of Artaxerxes I mention

this river by the name naru Kabaru, meaning "great river." It was

actually a cannal that branched off from the Euphrates near Babylon

and rejoined the main river near Uruk. The city was founded by the

1 H.W.F. Saggs, The Greatness that was Babylon (New York:

The New American Library, 1968), pp. 52-56.


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"Ubaid" people about 4000 B.C. Nippur was cultural and religious

center and one of the most important cities of the ancient Sumerians.

Here was the seat of Enlil, the chief god in the Sumerian pantheon,

and his temple the E-kur, the "Mountain House," was the leading 1

shrine of Sumer. In fact the Sumerian signs with which the name is ki

written, EN.L11, , mean simply the "place of Enlil." As late as the

7th century B.C., Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, restored the temple

of Enlil.

Excavations were conducted in Nippur by American expeditions

in 1890, 1893-96, 1899-1900 and every other year from 1949 through

1958.

In the autumn of 1949, the Americans resumed their excavations

in Nippur. On the site where the temple to Enlil has stood, they

found the remains of five temples, one built on the top of the other,

all built to the same ground plan. Here, on the most sacred spot in

the whole of Sumer, it was obvious that nothing might be altered but

only restored. In the shrine of supreme god, Enlil, stood the throne

from which the kingship derived its authority.

Excavators found some 30-40,000 tablets and fragments at

Nippur, and about 4,000 of these were inscribed with Sumerian works.

With the decline of Sumerian power, however, Nippur lost its prestige

and by the time of Hammurabi, Babylon became the dominanant city in

Mesopotamia.

1 Thomas Fish, "The Sumerian city Nippur in the Period of the

Third Dinasty of Ur," Iraq 5 (1938), p. 157.


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On the eastern side of the river the excavators found the

great temple area, ziggurat, or stage tower erected by the king of Ur.

One of the clay tablets from Nippur contains a map of the city, dated 1

to 1500 B.C. A small temple dedicated to unknown deity was also

discovered as well as large temple dedicated to the goddess Inanna

(Semitic Ishtar), and the houses of the scribal quarter of the city,

on the western banks of the river. Among the most important finds are

the votive inscriptions on vases, bowls, bricks, brick stamps, door

sockets, and tablets - all invaluable for the political history of

Sumer.

UR OF THE CHALDEES

The Assyrian-Babylonian name of Ur is uri and comes from

Sumerian urim. Ur is an ancient city in Lower Mesopotamia (present

Iraq), called "Ur of the Chaldees" in the Bible (Hebrew 1:0"Tttn Inn

'Ur kasdim. The main mound, called Tell el-Mugaiyar, meaning

"Mound of the Pitch," in the Arabic. Located in lower Iraq about 240

' km. southeast of old Babylon and about 240 km. northwest of the

Persian Gulf. The city was an important seat of the moon god sin,

and a center of culture, learning, and trade. Some of the kings

ruled over the whole country of the two rivers from this city.

Modern exploration of Ur began with the visit of W.K. Loftus

in 1850, on his way to Warka. In 1854 J.E. Taylor uncovered the

ziggurat and found cylinders of baked clay with cuneiform inscriptions

1 Percy S. Handcock, Mesopotamian Archaeology (London: .

Macmillan and Company, 1912), p. 76.


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2 which demostrated that Tell el-Muclaiyar was truly Ur. The work on

the ziggurat spread over many years.

The major excavator of Ur was Sir Leonard Woolley, who began

series of excavations in 1922. One of Woolley's fascinating

discoveries was evidence of a tremendous flood. He believes that

twenty-five centimeter layer of clean clay, deposited by a great flood

is the evidence of the great flood described in the ancient Sumerians

and Babylonians, and in the Bible. The flood that deposited the

twenty-five centimeter of clay on Ur, destroyed not only this city but

all others of that country as well as the whole world and that its

records in the old Mesopotamian literature from the basis of the Bible 2

story as found in the book of Genesis.

Twelve full seasons of work were dedicated to the site

between 1922 and 1934. Although much'of the old city still remains

untouched, systematic excavation was carried out in the most strategic

areas. The bulk of the work concerned the sacred area, harbors, city

walls, palaces, cemetries, and scatered residental areas. Deep

soundings were made in the royal cemetery and other areas to examine 3

the stratigraphy.

The great ziggurat of Ur, which became a prototype for the

1 H.F.W. Saggs, "Ur of the Chaldees: A Problem of Identification," Iraq 22 (1960):200.

2Sir Charles Leonard Woolley, Excavations at Ur (London:

Ernest Benn Limited, 1955), pp. 26-28. 3 Hans Baumann, In the Land of Ur (New York: Pantheon Books,

1969), pp. 71-73.


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construction of later Mesopotamian temple towers, cuneiform tablets

found in the schools, bills of lading, invoices, court cases, and

tax records, demonstrate the prosperity and social and economic

advancement of the community in the city of Ur.

URUK An ancient city of Mesopotamia known to the Sumerians as

k k k UNU (g), URU , IRI , and to the ancient Akkadians as Uruk, and to

the Hebrews as 1Th, and to the Greeks as opcX and to the modern

Arabs as Warka. It was one of the largest and most important cities

of Sumerian times.

The city is located about 6 km. east of the present course of

the Euphrates, 55 km. north of Tell el-Obeid, 65 km. northwest of

Ur and 240 km. south of Baghdad. It is now in the heart of a desert

region almost exactly in the middle of the land of Sumer.

Excavations show that the city has been one of the earliest

in the Mesopotamian valley. It is named in the Sumerian king list as

the seat of the second dynasty after the flood, one of whose kings

was Gilgamesh, who later became one of the great heroes of Sumerian

legend. Though the city continued in occupation during later periods,

it never surpassed its early importance. Its ruins, almost 10 km. in

circumference, compare in importance with those of Babylon. The

antiquity of the city is attested by (1) the number of names the city

bears in the inscriptions, (2) the mention of the city in a non-

Semitic creation story, and (3) reference in Strabo, Ptolemy, and

Pliny. Uruk's chief deity was An, in earliest days was the king of


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the Sumerian Pantheon. But Uruk's most beloved and celebrated deity

was the ambitious and agressive goddess of love, Inanna. According to

the Sumerian mythographers, it was Inanna who brought the "divine laws" 1

the ME's, from Eridu to Uruk, to make it Sumer's leading city.

Inanna, according to the theologians, married the god Dumuzi, to ensure

the fertility and prosperity of Sumer.

Earliest exploration of the site started in 1850 with W.K. 2

Loftus, but scientific excavations began at Uruk in 1912 by the

German Orient Society (Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft) expeditions under

the direction of Julius Jordan. Interupted by World War I and II the

work resumed in 1928-39 and 1954-60. The results are of outstanding 3

importance for the early history of Mesopotamia. The excavated

area yielded, in addition to the temples, the remains of the buildings,

city walls, ten kilometers in circumference and two ziggurats, from

the late fourth and early third Millennia B.C. The Mesopotamian

ziggurat is first found at Uruk. From the same general period came

many seals and seal impressions and number of cuneiform clay tablets

inscribed in a crude pictographic script, which is evidently the direct

forerunner of the cuneiform syllabary which was used throughout the

Fertile Crescent until Persian time. These were Uruk's greatest

contributions to the history of civilization.

1 Robert North, "Status of the Warka Excavation," Orientalia 26

(1957) :185-187. 2 Seton Lloyd, Foundations in the Dust (London: Oxford

University Press, 1949), p. 147. 3 Andrae Walter, "The Story of Uruk," Antiquity 10 (1936):109.


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KISH Kish, Hebrew w and Greek Kis, is the name of a city-state

located about 20 km. southeast of Babylon where, according to Sumerian

king list, the first dynasty after the flood ruled. To modern Arabs

the site of ancient Kish is known as Tell el-Ukheimer (also spelled

Uhaimir) because of the red color of the soil. After crossing the

Shatt en-Nil cannal one approaches the ruins of Kish. Once it

extended over an area of about 15 square kilometers, into eastern and

western Kish by the River Euphrates and was considered as one of the

largest and most important cities of Sumer and Akkad.

Historically Kish was in the ascendancy from about 3200 to

3000 B.C. and it was a rival to Uruk. The legendary Etana was a

ruler of Kish. In the story of Gilgamesh and Agga we are told that 1

Agga of Kish presented an ultimatum to Gilgamesh of Uruk.

In 1914 a French expedition under direction of H. de

Genouillac excavated Kish, discovering ziggurat and a temple. Work

was stopped during World War I but resumed in 1923 under a joint

expedition sponsored by Oxford University (Ashmolean Museum) and the

Field Museum of Chicago from 1922 to 1933. The scientific director

of excavation was Stephen Langdon, professor of Assyriology at

Oxford, with his colleagues, E. Mackay and L.C. Watelin serving as

field directors. The excavation has been regarded as one of the

1 Sidney Smith, Early History of Assyria (New York: E.P.

Dutton and Company, 1927), p. 31.


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outstanding romances of archaeology - "laborious in detail but 1

magnificient in planning and achievement."

The ancient ruins of Kish consist of two parts lying on either

side of an ancient river bed of the Euphrates, now dry. In the two

parts of the city there are three ziggurats, and in both are mounds

and towers representing huge temple areas.

The earlier site was at eastern Kish, and it is here that the

most complete excavations have been made. This eastern part of the

city is both larger and more impressive than the western. Its Sumerian

name means "The Mountain of the World." It has a huge cemetery, an

extensive temple area with two great towers, two ziggurats, and a 2

great palace of the early Sumerian kings.

The great ziggurat of Tell el-Ukheimer stands in western Kish.

The city walls, which many identify with the outer defences of Babylon

and which Nebuchadnezzar claims to have made, are so extensive and come

so close to Babylon, that even Herodotus appears to have confused them

with the walls of Babylon proper. At Kish the excavators found a well

preserved Babylonian temple of about 550 B.C., begun by Nebuchadnezzar

and continued by Nabonidus, but still unfinished. They also found a

bone stylus, which for the first time showed how cuneiform characters

were produced, along with boards of cuneiform tablets and other

objects of interest.

1 Sir J.A. Hammerton, Wonders of the Past (New York: Wise and

Company, 1941), p. 413. 2 Henry Field, The Field Museum - Oxford University Expedition

to Kish, Mesopotamia 1923-1929 (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1929), p. 3.


THE GREATNESS THAT WAS BABYLON

The City of Babylon

The name of Babylon has a magic ring in the ears of every

student of archaeology and ancient history. Its Hebrew name is "nn,

and Greek BaINAwv. These are renderings of the Babylonian Bab-ili, plural Bab-ilani, which in turn translates the earlier Sumerian name

Ka-dingir-ra, "gate of god." The Egyptians wrote the name B-bi-r,

(=Bbr or Bbl) and the Achaemenids Old Persian Babirush. Other common

names for the city in the Babylonian texts are Tin-tir(ki), "life of

the trees," explained by them as "seat of life" and eki "place of 1

canals.'!

Babylon is situated on the River Euphrates in central

Mesopotamia (in the land of Shinar, Gen. 10:10) some 75 km. south of

Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. The city stood in the center of a

magnificient plantation of palms and was provided with a permanent

water supply. Moreover, it enjoyed an exceptionally favorable

situation on the trade route and main highway from the Persian Gulf to

the Mediterranean. Its general situation in Babylonia has never been

in dispute. The precise site now is marked by the ruin-mounds of

Babil, Qasr, Merkes and Homera and the modern village

of Jumjummah about ten kilometers northeast of the town of Hillah.

Albert Champdor, Babylon (London: Elek Books, 1958), p. 125. O AOVENTIST SEWAGE CENTER 51 Jame White LIINetv

4NOREWS UNIVENSErf


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Tablet with Babylonian World Map


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On an old map of the world incised on a clay tablet now in the

British Museum (tablet No. 92687), Babylon quite naturally is placed 1

at the center of the universe.

A Brief History of the City

To 605 B.C.

In the Akkadian story of the creation, Babylon was built in

the beginning of time by the lesser celestial deities, as a dwelling-

place for the great gods. When the work was completed there was great

rejoicing, and Marduk, creator and Lord of heaven and Earth, addressed

the assembled gods:. "This is Babylon, the place that is your home, 2

make merry in its precints, occupy its broad (places)." The archaeological evidence does not take us further back in

the history of the city than about 1800 B.C. due to the high water

table on the site.

The earliest mention of Babylon dates to the Akkad period

(ca. 2500 B.C.) and occurs in the date formula of king Shar-kali-

Sharri which commemorates the construction of temples to the goddess

Anunitum and the god Aba in Ka-dingir-ra-ki. Both this and Babylonian

tradition affirm the city's ancient origin. The area surrounding the

city, particularly that southward to the Persian Gulf, has commonly

been called Babylonia, deriving its name from the city.

1 E. Unger, Babylon: Die heilige Stadt nach der Bescheribung

der Babylonier (Berlin: Verlag Walter de Gruyter and Company, 1970), p. 89.

2 J.B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Princeton:



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The foremost period in the city's history prior to 605 B.C.

developed when the Ur III kings appointed governors over the city.

The Amorite invasion then led to the founding of the first (Semitic)

Dynasty of Babylon under Sumu-Abum (1894 B.C.) who restored the city

walls. Under Hammurabi, the best known king of the dynasty, sixth in

this line (1792-1750 B.C.), and his successors, the town was enlarged

and it flourished as capital of their realm until its overthrow by

the Hittites about 1595 B.C. (The famous Law Code named after

Hammurabi was discovered in Susa in 1902 where it had been carried in

1160 B.C. by Shutruck-nanhunte, an Elamite king, following a victory

over Babylon. It was in Esagila, the great temple of the city, that

Hammurabi set up the copy of his laws as a report to Marduk of his

stewardship as king. The political importance of Babylon was lost

after the fall of that dynasty, but Babylon continued to be highly

respected as a cultural and religious center of the ancient world.

During the time of the Assyrian empire it became a vassal kingdom of

that empire but frequently rebelled against the yoke of its overlords .

Assyria became actively involved in Babylonian politics through the

intervention of Shalmaneser III in the 9th century B.C. A succession

of rules and intrigues followed, until the death of Ashurbanipal in

627 B.C. According to the contemporary Babylonian Chronicle (which is

now in British Museum), Babylon regained its independence during the

last years of Ashurbanipal. Kandalanu died in 627 B.C. leaving the

decline of the Assyrians and enabling Nabopolasar, a Chaldean, to

recover the city and establish a new dynasty, and to assume the kingship

in November of 626 B.C. In 614 B.C. the Medes joined the Chaldean


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alliance and with this added strength Nabopolassar captured

Nineveh in the moth of Ab (August) in 612 B.C. and so the great 1

empire of Assyria was ended.

Thus began the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which was to last less

than a century, but leave an indelible imprint upon the world,

particularly the Jewish people.

From 605 B.C. to the Present

The Neo-Babylonian Empire of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar

was the golden age for Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar, Nabopolassar's son,

became Neo-Babylonian's most famous king. He was in charge of an

army in one of the most decisive battles of the ancient world faught

at Carchemish in May-June 605 B.C. There, Nebuchadnezzar inflicted a

terrible defeat on Pharaoh Neco of Egypt, crushing Neco's hopes of

extending Egyptian influence eastward, and sending Neo-Babylonian

power to a zenith it retained for the next seventy-five years, when it

declined as quickly. James Mcqueen describes the fury of the

Babylonian assult,

Nebuchadnezzar took them completely by surprise when in late May or June he crossed the river near Carchemish. The Babylonian forces were inside the city before Egyptian resistance could be organized, and bitter hand to hand fighting took place in the streets as well as in the country round about. The city was set on fire during the struggle and the Egyptian army was annihilated. Isolated groups which fled before the battle really began were pursued to the south. Some were destroyed in the area of Hamath on the Orontes while the others managed to reach the coast before

1 D.J. Wiseman, Chronicles of. Chaldean Kings (London:

The Trustees of the British Museum, 1956), p. 9.

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being overtaken. Not a man escaped Nebuchadnezzar's fury.

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