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Excavations at Nimrud. 1949–1950

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

M. E. L. Mallowan
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Extract

It was on the 18th March, 1949, that we set to work on the mound of Nimrud, high up on its western flanks. Our party was composed of twenty-two skilled men from Qala'at Sharqat, who later on were joined by one hundred and twenty labourers from the neighbourhood. For many days and nights it had rained heavily, and between us and the river Tigris, a mile to the west, there lay a great sheet of water through which the men had waded from the village of Nimrud, where the shaikh had given them lodging for the night. From where we were working we had a clear view of the green plains of Assyria stretching northwards towards Nineveh and southwards towards Assur: to the east, over more undulating ground, we could see the mountains of Kurdistan and of Persia.

A hundred years had passed since Austen Henry Layard had laboured on this spot: our men were well aware of the prizes he had found and of how much more might still await discovery; for to the trained eye it was clear that, in spite of the vast amount of soil which had been removed from the Assyrian Palaces in the preceding century and subsequently thrown back into them, an immense amount of uncharted ground still awaited exploration. And it was not only the prospect of finding hidden treasure that attracted us. On every aspect of Assyrian life questions had been raised to which Nimrud might supply an answer. The pickmen themselves had about them an air of excitement and expectancy and, as the third generation of trained workers in the field, a sense of their historic mission.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1950 , pp. 147 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1950

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References

page 149 note 1 For the history of archaeological discovery in the Tigris-Euphrates valley, see Seton Lloyd, Foundations in the Dust, and A. Parrot, Archéologie mésopotamienne. E. A. Wallis Budge, The Rise and Progress of Assyriology, an older book, is still of absorbing interest.

page 150 note 1 See I.L.N., May 31st, 1947, and September 11th, 1948.

page 150 note 2 Antiquity. No. 96 December, 1950. Jarmo. By R. and L. Braidwood.

page 156 note 1 Andrae, W., Das Wiedererstandene Assur, 136, fGoogle Scholar.

page 158 note 1 In 1949 we discovered a fragment of an inscribed plano-convex limestone tablet which referred to the restoration of the city wall by that king. See Mr. Wiseman's catalogue in the subsequent article, ND.201.

page 159 note 1 I am well aware of the arguments which will be advanced against this opinion: the comparative lack of sanitation in antiquity which resulted in infant mortality, sickness and pestilence and, as the Babylonians put it, caused the god “to eat men”. The decimation of man from these causes can hardly have been proportionately greater than the vast loss of life which arises every day on the roads from that engine of death, the motor car. Nor can I imagine any greater squalor than the overcrowding in towns, streets, railway carriages and offices at the present day, not to mention the ill-ventilated and strangulating fashions in men's clothing.

page 162 note 1 I am indebted to Mr. C. J. Gadd for giving me this information, and to Mr. R. D. Barnett for the reference to Langdon and the number of the tablet discovered by Rawlinson, now in the British Museum.

page 169 note 1 See O.I.P. XL. Khorsabad, Pt. II, Citadel and Town, Plate 70, illustrating plan of the residence of Sinaḫusur. Geometric frescoes from the Palace are shown on Plate 91.

page 170 note 1 This Palace ware is closely related to a finely made ceramic discovered at T.Gemmeh, in Palestine, by Flinders Petrie, who, with his natural acumen, identified it as “Assyrian”. A date between 750 and 700 B.C. would appear to accord with the archaeological evidence in Palestine.

page 170 note 2 For the most recent discussion of this ware see Dunbabin, T. J. in J.H.S. LXVIII, 1948, p. 59Google Scholar.

page 172 note 1 The argument would not be so strong if this rate of interest were a penalty for breach of contract. The normal rate was 25 per cent.; silver was at all times a valuable commodity in Assyria.

page 173 note 1 For other instances of this practice, see Frazer, J. G., The Golden Bough (abridged edition, p. 79)Google Scholar.