1
THE AMATEUR ARCHAEOLOGISTS
Buried beneath the Iraqi deserts that straddle the muddy waters of the twin rivers Tigris and Euphrates lie the scattered remnants of ancient cities, temples, and palaces. For the observer looking across the plains, lying flat to the far horizon where the desert meets the sky, these ruins are reduced now to immense weathered mounds that rise above the barren landscape like giant sand dunes blown up by the wind of a thousand years.
Only occasionally a recognizable fragment of the past remains: perhaps a crumbling tower standing like a wind-torn skeleton, its baked mud bricks shed like scales, year by year, to fall abandoned upon the surrounding sand. Other imperious residues, their lower stages meticulously restored by archaeologists, have regained a semblance of their former power and grandeur.
With a few exceptions, and however enthusiastically they might be presented, the ruins of Mesopotamia are not as immediately impressive as those of many other ancient cultures—for example, Egypt or Mexico. Rather, they appear as forlorn and sad monuments to ancient pride, which, as year follows upon year, slowly, irrevocably dissolve back into the earth from which they arose. The demise of these great cities is in dramatic contrast with the pure arrogance that radiates from the statues of their ancient rulers, which now stand staring blindly across the galleries of our museums, forgotten kings of wasteland and broken bricks.
The overriding reason for the decay of these vast structures is simply that they were mainly constructed of highly perishable mud bricks, which, without constant maintenance, soon disintegrated under the extremes of climate endemic to the area. Yet, despite the inherent limitations of this building material, the ancient inhabitants of the area frequently built structures that were dramatic and awesome by any standard, then or now. Some of the staged temple towers—ziggurats—reached heights approaching those of modern tower blocks. The temple at the ancient city of Ur, for example, exceeded three hundred feet in height, that is, over thirty stories, the elevation of an average skyscraper, but built of mud bricks. To the ancient desert nomads who herded their sheep and goats across the dry plains, these immense towers in the distance must truly have marked the power centers—the earthly home of the gods—or, as the Old Testament prophets never seem tired of proclaiming, the site of all earthly evil, the home of those who competed with the gods.
Today, even though the deserts rule rather than great dynasties, remnants of the ancient culture persist with a surprising tenacity; from these ancient peoples comes, for example, our division of time. Why, we might ask, do we divide our hours and minutes into divisions of sixty? It is not because of any mathematical or astronomical necessity. The answer is simply that the ancient Mesopotamians did so, and we have continued the practice—several thousand years later—presumably because there has never been any great reason to change the habit.
Yet more has come to us across the thousands of years and miles that separate us from our past in the land between the twin rivers. Our children hear the tales of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, of a man who worked without payment for seven years only to gain the wrong woman in marriage, of Nimrod the hunter, of kings, of warriors with shining swords and burnished armor, and of diviners who lived in the temples of Babylon and Ur, cities of the desert plains.
The symbolism of Western religions, too, reveals much that has been transported to us from ancient Mesopotamia. The symbol of the equal-armed cross—the “Greek” or perhaps “Templar” cross—was common in the past, it is thought, as a symbol of the sun god Shamash, although, as we shall see, this cross may rather symbolize the Babylonian god Nabu, now Mercury. The statues of the ancient kings show them wearing crosses of this shape around their necks rather like one would wear a modern chivalric decoration.
Western mythology, as depicted in the Old Testament, also has its roots firmly embedded in the sandy plains and cities of Mesopotamia. Both the creation story and the record of the great flood have been found preserved in very early literature discovered by archaeologists. These predate, by a millennium or more, the records of the Hebrew scribes whose romanticized and garbled history forms so much of our sacred literature.
The traveler in the region today might have difficulty believing that any great cities could ever have survived in these regions—the site of the city of Nippur, for instance, is now but drifting sands, looking for all the world like part of the more desolate quarters of the great Arabian Desert. Nevertheless, it is clear that in the past these lands were very fertile and well husbanded, for they produced sufficient food and materials for the sustenance of thousands of communities in villages, towns, and cities whose remains are still scattered all over Mesopotamia; archaeologists have recorded the sites of more than six thousand city mounds, called tells, and they estimate that the original population of the area would have numbered in the millions. These remains, only a small number of which have been investigated, are testimony that there are many treasures awaiting future generations of excavators.
Amateur pioneering archaeologists risked their health and often their lives to uncover the buried empires of Sumer (or Shumer), Akkad, and Babylon, empires that once stretched from Oman on the Persian Gulf across southern Turkey, then down the Mediterranean coast to Egypt. Four of these pioneers stand out: the Englishmen Henry Creswicke Rawlinson and Austen Henry Layard, the Frenchman Paul-Émile Botta—to whom falls the honor of having uncovered the first Assyrian sculpture—and the native Kurd Hormuzd Rassam. During the mid to late nineteenth century, these men laid the foundations of Mesopotamian archaeology.
The political base for expeditions into the interior was Baghdad, during the nineteenth century merely a sleepy provincial capital of the indolent and decaying Turkish Empire. Early British diplomatic representatives based there had shown a dilettante’s desultory interest in those ancient sites that were readily accessible, but little more. It was to take a later successor to this post to begin the systematic work required to reveal the impressive remains that served to fuel British aspirations in the field of archaeology. This later diplomat was Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, who was destined to become the first to decipher the Assyrian language, now correctly called Akkadian. Rawlinson was appointed British resident (a government official) in Baghdad in 1843. However, it was not just chance that took him to this post; in fact, Rawlinson had turned down a lucrative Indian posting specifically to reside in Baghdad. He wished to continue a project that had already assumed a dominant position in his life: the task of deciphering ancient inscriptions he had found on the borders of Iraq and Iran. For archaeology, Rawlinson’s presence in Baghdad was to prove vital.
In 1827, as a young man, Rawlinson left England for India and the army. He had already discovered a fascination with languages during his Latin and Greek studies at school, so while serving in India, he took every opportunity to pursue his interest, learning Persian, Arabic, and Hindustani. Following a period of service as an army officer, in 1833 he joined the Intelligence Corps and was quickly sent to Persia as a member of a deputation to the shah. Within two years he was appointed military adviser to the shah’s brother. This post required him to reside in the southern Iranian town of Kermanshah. Some twenty-two miles to the east of Kermanshah in the mountain of Behistun, as Rawlinson was soon to discover, was a huge and enigmatic inscription carved far up a sheer cliff face. This inscription was a lasting monument to the hollowness of ancient imperial arrogance, for, despite the fact that it was carved in three ancient languages, it remained totally unintelligible because none of the languages could be translated; all three were unknown. Yet, to the ancient king who had ordered the inscription carved, these languages would have been the three greatest of his world—languages of such lineage, stability, and omnipotence that he could not have thought possible a time when they might be forgotten. Sadly, inevitably, that time was not more than one thousand years ahead.
Rawlinson recognized the importance of the texts and, beginning in 1835, began to visit the site regularly to obtain an exact copy of all three so that he could attempt a decipherment.
Much later, Rawlinson was to learn that the inscription had been carved by order of the Persian king Darius, who ruled in the fifth century BCE. His stonemasons had carved the text into a carefully prepared surface, which, after the work was complete, had been covered with a waterproof clear varnish. The inscription was trilingual, being written in ancient Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian. In the same way that the Rosetta Stone provided the key to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, this inscription at Behistun was eventually to enable the ancient writing of Assyria and Babylon to be translated. The script used for all three was the attractive yet curious triangular characters now called cuneiform—from the Latin cuneus, or wedge.
The task of copying the inscriptions was not without considerable personal risk. The ancient masons had, upon the completion of their work, cut away much of the surrounding stone, presumably in an attempt to prevent the inscription ever being defaced. As a result, of the three texts, only the Persian could immediately be reached. Rawlinson himself climbed high up on the rock face and, standing on the very small ledge, which was all that remained below it, laboriously transcribed the lines of cuneiform characters.
It was a task entailing considerable effort and no small amount of courage on the part of Rawlinson. The ledge he had to stand upon was only eighteen inches wide. Above him burned the summer sun, and below stretched a precipitous drop of four hundred feet to the ground.
While not a man to readily admit to fear, Rawlinson confessed in his journal that this task involved “considerable risk”—a conclusion that would appear to have been somewhat understated, “terrifying” being an adjective that comes more quickly to mind. Complicating matters further was the problem of how he should reach the upper portions of the text, which clearly could be approached only by means of a ladder. Unfortunately, a ladder of length sufficient to reach these upper characters proved highly unstable upon the narrow ledge, so Rawlinson was forced to resort to the frightening expedient of standing upon the very uppermost rung of a short ladder balanced precariously upon the very outside of the small rock ledge, steadying himself against the rock with one hand while copying the text with the other: “In this position,” he wrote in his journal, “I copied all the upper inscriptions and the interest of the occupation entirely did away with any sense of danger.”1
Thus occupied, Rawlinson continued visiting the mountain to add to his text from 1835 until 1837. By this date, when he was posted away from the area, he had succeeded in copying some two hundred lines of the Persian text. However, his departure from Persia meant that his studies on this inscription would have to wait for a number of years, until he could arrange his return to the area. His chance to return did not present itself until 1842, when he left the army and took up employment as the British resident in Baghdad, arriving there in December 1843. Early the next summer Rawlinson was again at the rock of Behistun. This time he was determined to complete a copy of all three inscriptions, whatever the personal risk.
Rawlinson began completing and revising his copy of the Persian inscription by again climbing on the narrow ledge and, as he had done before, transcribing the text into his notebooks, which, filled with such precariously and dangerously obtained copies, can be seen today in the British Museum. The short description appended to the exhibit fails to mention the sangfroid entailed in their production. When, however, Rawlinson came to attempt the Elamite portion of the text, a much greater difficulty presented itself, for only on the far side of this section of the inscription was there any form of ledge that might provide some semblance of support. But to reach this, a sheer precipice had to be crossed. Rawlinson’s first attempt to cross almost proved fatal. He had purchased a ladder with which to try to bridge the gap, and as the two upright shafts were of differing lengths—an oddity that would appear to render this ladder useless for normal work—he placed the longest shaft across the gap with the intention of making his way across upon the lower.
Unfortunately, this scheme was very nearly the cause of his death. The ladder, a product of some indigenous tradesman, differed from those of Rawlinson’s previous experience in not having its rungs firmly secured in their sockets. In fact, they were simply jammed in with no further attempt at nailing or binding, and consequently the moment Rawlinson stepped out into the middle of the precipice, the ladder fell apart, its pieces tumbling down the rocky side of the cliff to the desert far below. To the horror of his friends, who were watching from below, Rawlinson desperately clung to the single remaining shaft of timber before managing to clamber to safety. It is a tribute to his personal bravery that he did not let this narrow escape deter his efforts and persevered until he had managed to copy all of this section of text. He then turned his attention to the third and last section, the Akkadian.
If copying the other texts had seemed difficult, this one appeared impossible. It was above a sheer rock face with no apparent gaps or ledges that might give even a minimum of support. To all observers Rawlinson appeared defeated at last. He decided to seek advice. In the area lived a number of local tribesmen who spent their lives around the mountain, hunting the wild goats that roamed the region. These tribes-men were used to running nimbly from crag to crag in pursuit of game and so were well experienced in making their way about apparently impossible slopes. Rawlinson sought their opinion; they looked at the last section of text and unanimously proclaimed it impossible to reach.
Three years were to pass before Rawlinson managed to obtain his copy of the Akkadian text. A young Kurdish boy was to be the agent of his success. Having heard of the Englishman’s interest, in 1847 this young boy appeared at Rawlinson’s camp and offered to make an attempt to reach the Akkadian section of text. Rawlinson immediately offered him a substantial reward should he be successful. The next day, carrying a rope and pegs, the boy clambered by his fingers and toes across some twenty feet of apparently smooth rock at the very top of the precipice. Once across, he used the rope and pegs to build himself a swinging seat, from which he made a paper “squeeze” of the entire inscription.
By this time Rawlinson had gained a greater confidence in his decipherments of the Persian and Elamite scripts. He had begun publishing the texts, accompanied by translations, in the London-based Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. The first part of the Persian inscriptions appeared in 1846, the last in 1849. Shortly thereafter, following upon the successful attempt on the Akkadian inscription by the young Kurdish boy, Rawlinson was able to attempt a decipherment of this too, publishing his report in the same journal, beginning in 1851. Although we now know that this work contained many errors, the fact remains that the way had been opened. The Akkadian language could now be read with a satisfactory degree of comprehension.
And what of the vital paper squeeze? It was stored for some years behind a statue in the Assyrian gallery of the British Museum, where, it seems, it was largely eaten by mice.
Interest in these ancient sites was not limited to obsessive and eccentric Englishmen alone. In 1842, while Rawlinson was still serving in India, a Frenchman, Paul-Émile Botta, arrived in the northern Mesopotamian town of Mosul, where he had been posted as French consul. Because he had a keen interest in antiquities, he was, by December of that year, digging into the large mound of Kuyunjik, which lay across the Tigris River from Mosul. This huge mound, more than one mile in circumference and reaching almost one hundred feet in height, quite obviously hid some ruined site of importance.
It is now known that it covered the remains of ancient Nineveh—once the royal capital of Assyria—and contained the royal palace of King Ashurbanipal, who reigned from 668 to 627 BCE, and his father, Esarhaddon, 680 to 669 BCE. However, at the beginning, while Botta pursued his digging into the mound with some enthusiasm, he found nothing worthy of his efforts, nothing that would lead him to suspect the existence of the treasures that were eventually to be uncovered there. He continued unsuccessfully until, increasingly frustrated, he finally despaired of the site and decided, in early 1843, to act upon the advice of a villager from the north, who had insisted that many complete bricks bearing strange inscriptions could be easily picked up at his home village, Khorsabad. In consequence, Botta brought his digging at Kuyunjik to a halt and in March of that year transferred his attention to his informant’s village.
Almost immediately, even before Botta himself arrived on the site, his workmen found walls covered with the remains of reliefs and inscriptions. Botta, by now very short of time, rushed to the site and quickly sketched all the figures that the excavations had revealed. Then, upon his return to Mosul, he wrote the first of his detailed letters back to the authorities in France. These letters created a sensation. Botta had, in a very real sense, discovered an unknown civilization. The result was that the French government quickly advanced sufficient funds to enable Botta to continue with the excavation of the site.
As conscientious and dedicated as these early archaeologists were, their efforts were hardly scientific by today’s exacting standards. In fact, some critics of their methods claim that archaeology would have been better served had these amateurs never gained access to the field at all. The feeling of these critics is that it would have been better to have waited another quarter century or more until the science of archaeology had progressed sufficiently to cope with the variety of problems that became apparent during the early Mesopotamian excavations.
This kind of criticism is exaggerated and unfair. It was because of the early mistakes and the desire to do better that the science of archaeology grew. However, the anguish from which these criticisms arise is most understandable. It is certainly true that these early investigators destroyed more than they revealed, despite the early recognition of the major problems that confronted them. Botta, especially, was beset by them. Under the mound of Khorsabad lay the Assyrian palace of Dur Sharrukin, home of King Esarhaddon, father of Ashurbanipal. This palace had been destroyed by fire 2,500 or more years earlier. As a result, many of the sculptures and reliefs had been reduced to lime, and once they were exposed to the air, they rapidly began to crumble. Time after time a dramatic sculpture was exposed, but barely had Botta begun to draw a copy than it crumbled into dust, vanishing forever. For a time almost everything he discovered was destroyed in this way.
Botta, too, constantly faced other difficulties—disease, disputes with local landowners, and constant obstruction by the regional governor, who imagined, erroneously, that the archaeologist was seeking buried treasure. This pressure from the governor eventually forced Botta’s excavations to cease until he had finally received his vital fir-man from the imperial authorities in Istanbul. This was his official permit to dig anywhere he liked upon government land, without hindrance. His permit arrived, and in May 1844 Botta resumed work. His excavations continued until the end of the year, when he gathered together a large number of sculptures he had found and shipped them down the Tigris to the port of Basra, where, in 1846, a French naval ship carried them to France. They were placed on display in the Louvre, where they caused a sensation as the first objects from this “lost civilization” to be displayed anywhere in Europe. The other competitor in the field, the British Museum, was not to acquire such works until the following year.
In the summer of 1842, shortly after Botta had arrived in Mosul for the first time, he was visited by a young English traveler who shared the consul’s passion for antiquities (if not his opium), and Botta was happy to show him around several local sites where antiquities were to be found. This traveler, Austen Henry Layard, then continued his journey to Istanbul, where he served for some years as secretary to the British ambassador. While carrying out his official duties, Layard attempted to raise sufficient interest and money to begin his own archaeological research. He was fortunate in that Botta had retained a liking for him, so much so that, following the dramatic initial discoveries at Khorsabad leading to the dispatch to Paris that was to galvanize French officialdom into supporting his excavations, Botta forwarded instructions that Layard was to be allowed to read the dispatch as it was carried through Istanbul on its way to France. Quite naturally, reading this report of Botta’s discoveries served to fuel Layard’s enthusiasm for his own archaeological ambitions and increased his growing impatience and frustration; he still could not obtain the necessary financial support.
It was later that same year, December 1843, that Rawlinson arrived in Baghdad to take up his official post. While pursuing his own research he had familiarized himself with Botta’s discoveries and became increasingly concerned lest the French should gain a monopoly in the area. Accordingly, early in 1845 he contacted Layard, who was still in Istanbul, regarding the possibility of his initiating a season of archaeology. The result was that the English ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, about to depart on leave to the United Kingdom, decided to subsidize personally a short excavation by Layard.
Greatly excited by this prospect, Layard could barely wait, and as soon as the funds came into his hands he left immediately for Mosul, where he began digging at a site that he had long thought promising. This was at Nimrud, beside the Tigris, some five hours travel down-river. His excavations began in November 1845 and were almost immediately successful.
Layard uncovered several rooms containing inscribed marble slabs, as well as dramatic statues of two huge winged bulls, each over twice the height of a man. At this point, unfortunately, the pasha of Mosul intervened, forcing Layard, like Botta before him, to abandon the site temporarily. Unable to continue, Layard took the opportunity to travel south to Baghdad, where he spent Christmas with Rawlinson. Upon his return to Mosul in January 1846, Layard brought with him as an assistant Hormuzd Rassam, the brother of the British vice consul in Mosul. Rassam was to prove important to Layard. Not only did he demonstrate an ability to manage the often cantankerous teams of local laborers employed to dig into the mound, but he also had numerous local contacts upon whom he could call for assistance if necessary.
Layard’s official permission, his firman, eventually arrived from Istanbul, thus regularizing his situation in the face of the pasha’s obstruction. Additionally, he was granted the right to send all antiquities that he found back to the United Kingdom. Within a short time he had also been appointed the official agent for the British Museum and allocated funds to help toward the costs of excavation. Unfortunately, then and afterward, the amount sent was simply too little to allow excavation on the scale that the sites needed. Layard was thus, by virtue of this miserly financial support, encouraged to plunder rather than to excavate carefully, for, despite their very parsimonious outlay, the British authorities demanded dramatic discoveries at least on the scale of those produced by Botta. In acceding to this demand Layard was to draw to himself considerable criticism from later archaeologists.
Layard was bedeviled by the same problems as Botta: initially much that he found was destroyed by its exposure to the air. Time and time again in his writings he describes the sculptures and artifacts that he unearthed only to see them literally crumble to dust before his eyes. He writes of one incident that “a perfect helmet . . . was discovered. When the rubbish was cleared away it was perfect, but immediately fell to pieces. . . . Several helmets of other shapes, some with the arched crest, were also uncovered; but they fell to pieces as soon as exposed.”2
The excavation of the mound of Nimrud itself often proved difficult. Local conditions were harsh: some nights it rained so violently that water poured through Layard’s quarters, forcing him to spend the night huddled uncomfortably in a corner. In summer his huts became impossible to live in, swarming with insects, particularly sandflies, along with scorpions. Violent whirlwinds swept over the surrounding land, often causing great damage to his camp. On at least one occasion Layard returned from his excavation site to find that no trace of his quarters remained. A whirlwind had littered the wooden frames over hundreds of yards. All the tents had vanished, and his furniture lay scattered over the surrounding plains. These violent storms also occasionally struck the mound while excavation was in progress. In these cases, Layard writes, his only place of refuge was found by crawling under a large sculpture nearby. His workmen, though, having no such shelter, were forced to crouch down in their trenches, almost suffocated by the swirling clouds of dust and sand.
Work at Nimrud continued into 1847, by which time Layard had become keen to return to the United Kingdom. Before he departed, though, he staked a claim—by conducting a short excavation—to the huge mound of Kuyunjik, that “stern shapeless mound,” as he described it, “rising like a hill from the scorched plain,” and following this brief investigation, in June 1847 Layard and Hormuzd Rassam departed west.
In August 1847 the first of Layard’s discoveries, the carved slabs from Nimrud, were placed on display in the British Museum, where, like the Paris sculptures the year before, they created considerable public excitement and enthusiasm. Popular interest in ancient Mesopotamia ran high; it was fueled first by these displayed treasures and, two years later, by the publication of Layard’s book, Nineveh and Its Remains. This work caught the imagination of the British public and went through four editions in five months. As a result of this publicity, further funds were made available by the authorities of the British Museum, although, as before, they were barely sufficient for the task of excavation.
Despite his public success Layard was reluctant to return to the Middle East. Nevertheless, by the end of 1849, he and Rassam were again in Mosul preparing for another season’s excavation. By a chance encounter during his passage through Istanbul, Layard had managed to consolidate his concession at Kuyunjik, which site, being privately owned, was not in fact covered by the rights allocated in his official permit. The owner of the mound happened to be in Istanbul in the throes of some severe financial difficulties and was grateful when Layard offered assistance. In return Layard was given all rights of excavation on the mound.
Layard’s second expedition saw a shift away from an emphasis on dramatic sculptures and toward a greater concern with inscriptions. This reorientation had come about through the increased confidence with which these ancient texts could be read, a confidence that owed much to the work of Rawlinson, who had begun publishing his translations three years earlier, in 1846. In addition Rawlinson, armed with £3,000 of the British Museum’s money, in 1849 returned to Iraq, where he conducted excavations until 1855.
The result of this increased effort was that, with an increasing accuracy, the ancient history of Mesopotamia was being pieced together. This was to have important consequences not only in the field of history but also in that of religion. Much was being discovered that appeared to offer parallels to certain Old Testament stories, and this began to excite biblical scholars; simultaneously, a number of very strange texts were being unearthed, texts that spoke of magic, of astrology, and of other, often bizarre, forms of divination.
A sense that mystery and hidden occult practices were contained in these ancient texts began to seep out from the world of scholarship into the receptive minds of a public already intrigued by the strange world of the occult, as promulgated in the nineteenth century by such figures as Éliphas Lévi, Paul Christian, Papus, and Joséphin Péladan in France, along with Edward Bulwer-Lytton and later Madame Blavatsky with her Theosophical Society in Britain.
On his second expedition of 1849, Layard began excavating the mound of Kuyunjik and discovered beneath it one of the palaces used by a king mentioned in the Old Testament, Sennacherib, who invaded Israel around 700 BCE.3 This discovery of evidence establishing the existence of a biblical figure, together with relics and chronicles of his time, drew religious criticism firmly into the field of archaeology and was to entice into it those who sought above all to “prove” the truth of the Bible. In this palace was the first of the libraries that were to be discovered in the mound. Layard removed many thousands of inscribed cuneiform tablets, which were forwarded to the British Museum for translation.
As well as his concerns with Kuyunjik, Layard was simultaneously maintaining an excavation at Nimrud, farther south. Yet, despite his growing success in archaeology, he was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with life in the East. In April of 1851 he left again for the United Kingdom, vowing never to return to the deserts of Mesopotamia. He had had enough of the poor conditions and the constant problems.
Upon his return to the United Kingdom, Layard began a new career as a member of Parliament. In 1852 he was appointed undersecretary of state for foreign affairs. He also later served as ambassador to Madrid and then to Istanbul. In 1878, during his service in the latter post, he was knighted. Yet, true to his vow, he never returned to Mesopotamia.