The Archaeology of Mesopotamia: From the Old Stone Age to the Persian Conquest

254 Pages·51.881 MB·English

by  Lloyd S.

SETON LLOYD
The
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SETON LLOYD
The Archaeology
Mesopotamia
of
From the Old Stone Age
to the Persian Conquest
REVISED EDITION
with 174 illustrations
THAMES AND HUDSON
Anycopyofthisbookissuedbythepubhsherasa
paperbackissoldsubjecttothecondition thatitshall
notbywayoftradeorotherwisebelent,re-sold, hired
outorotherwisecirculated,withoutthepublisher's
priorconsent,inanyformofbindingorcoverotherthan
thatinwhichitispubHshedandwithoutasimilar
conditionincludingthesewordsbeingimposedona
subsequentpurchaser.
©
1978and 1984ThamesandHudsonLtd,London
FirstpubHshedintheUSAin 1978
byThamesandHudsonInc., 500FifthAvenue,
NewYork,NewYork loi10
Firstpaperbackedition 1980
Revisededition 1984
LibraryofCongressCatalogCardNumber84-50036
AllRightsReserved. Nopartofthispublicationmaybe
reproducedortransmittedinanyformorbyanymeans,
electronicormechanical,includingphotocopy,
recording,oranyinformationstorageandretrieval
system,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthepublisher.
PrintedandboundintheGermanDemocraticRepublic
Contents
Prefacetothe First Edition 9
Prefacetothe Revised Edition
1
1 The Land and its Rivers 12
The Two Regions
The Coastline
The Rivers
Climate and Irrigation
Salinization
Northern Iraq
2 The Twilight of Neolithic Man 21
The Old Stone Age
Garrod and Solecki
American Excavators in Kurdistan
The State of Neolithic Research
Jordan and the Levant; Anatolia; Iran
The Iraq-Jarmo Project
3 The Threshold of Written History 37
The Sequence of Discoveries
Al 'Ubaid; Warka; Eridu; Khafaje
The 'Ubaid Period
Architecture; Religion; Pottery and Small
Objects; The Cemetery
The Uruk Period
Warka; The Anu Area; The Eanna Precinct;
Tell 'Uqair
Buildings of theJemdet Nasr Period
Warka; Khafaje
The Protoliterate Period
The First Writing; Sculpture; Cylinder-seals;
Pottery
SuMERiAN Antecedents
4 Pre-literate Peoples of Northern 65
Mesopotamia
Excavations in the North
Arpachiyah; Tepe Gawra; Kiiyiinjik; Hassuna;
Other Hassuna Sites; Samarra and Sawwan
Architecture
The Pre-HalafPeriod; The Samarra Period; The
HalafPeriod; The 'Ubaid Period; The 'Gawra'
Period; Tell Brak
Pottery
Pre-Halaf; Tell Halaf; Northern 'Ubaid; Post-
'Ubaid
Burials
The 'Gawra' Period
Small Objects
Figurines; Seals
Foreign Relations
Susiana
5 The Early Sumerian Dynasties 88
The King-list
The Earliest Written Texts
Archaeological Phases
The 'Flood'
Early Dynastic Sites
Khafaje; Tell Asmar; Tell Agrab; Ur-of-the-
Chaldees; Al 'Ubaid; Kish; Lagash; Nippur;
Ashur and Mari; Shuaira
Variants in Terminology
6 Pre-Sargonid Art and Architecture 111
Sculpture
Statues; ReliefCarving
Architecture
Building Methods; Temples; Palaces
Cylinder-seals
Metallurgy and Composite Craftsmanship
Inlaid Ornament; Composite Objects
Pottery
7 The Dynasty of Akkad and the Sumerian 135
Revival
Semites in Mesopotamia
Sargon and his Successors
Archaeology
Buildings; Tell Asmar; Khafaje and Brak;
Sculpture; Cylinder-seals; Gasur
GUTIANS AND LaGASH
De Sarzec; Telloh; Gudea; Al-Hiba
The Third Dynasty of Ur
Buildings at Ur; The Ziggurat; The Terrace;
The Mausoleum; Temples and Sculpture
8 The 2nd Millennium BC 157
Conflicting States
Buildings of the Isin-Larsa Period
Private Houses
The Palace at Mari
Mural Paintings
Tell Rimah
Sculpture
The Kassites
Mitanni (Nuzi)
The Middle Assyrian Period
City ofAshur; Fortifications; Temples and
Palaces; Some Finds at Ashur; Building
Practices
9 The Late Assyrian Period 187
Imperial History
Early Excavations in Assyrian Cities
Nimrud (Kalhu)
Khorsabad
Nineveh
American Excavations at Khorsabad
Building Construction
Late Assyrian Sculpture
British Return to Nimrud
The Nimrud Ivories
10 Babylon: The Last Mesopotamian 222
Monarchy
A Dynastic Revival
The German Excavation
The City
Buildings
Postscript
Notes on the Text 233
Bibliography 239
Photographic Acknowledgments 245
Index 246
To the memory ofHenri Frankfort
Preface to the First Edition
Anyone already familiar with thesubjectof;his book may well be
disconcertedatfirstbytheextravagantclaimimpHcitinitstitle,and
justifiably feel that it calls for some immediate quahfication.
Throughout Mesopotamia, archaeological excavations have been
in progress almost continuously for more than lOO years, and the
literature which their results have engendered is by now sufficient
to fill a fair-sized library. From field reports and typological
analyses, to epigraphical commentaries and stylistic art studies,
every facet is represented ofa complex and far-reaching enquiry.
Indeed, onehasobserved withoutsurprisethatarecentlypublished
bibliographycouldlistover5,000relevantbooksandarticles. Since
it would then clearly be impossible to summarize even the central
themes ofall these writings, the purpose ofthe conspectus which
followshasbeenconfinedtoonespecificaspectoftheresearchwith
which it is concerned, and other minor Hmitations have been
imposedonitscoverage. Thisselectiveprocesshasinfactprimarily
been made possible by a conspicuous duality in the categories of
evidence provided by excavationsin a country where writing was
invented at an extremely early age.
The function ofarchaeology has been rather arbitrarily defined
by one writer as 'a way oflearning about the past through things
instead of words' a ludicrous over-simplification in the case of
:
Egypt or Mesopotamia, where a significant proportion of the
'things' found by excavators have themselves been written
documents. Ontheotherhand,thepurposewhichthesedocuments
have served, far from being restricted to the recovery ofnarrative
history, has embraced the much wider task ofre-creating in detail
the anatomy ofancient civilization. To this remarkable achieve-
ment the written texts have largely contributed, by perfecting the
recorded patterns of social or economic organization and of
intellectual development in literate ages. Yet, where excavations
are concerned, it is the vestigial remains ofthe physical setting in
which the documents themselves were written that has completed
the revelation of evolving humanity and its adaptation to
environmental influences. In a word, our astonishingly wide
knowledge of Mesopotamian civilization in 'historical' times is
derived in almost equal proportions from two different sources:
ancient literature on the one hand and, on the other, the study of
material remains. It should also be remembered that these
'historical' ages were preceded by a long era of illiteracy, a
formativeperiodinhumandevelopmentofwhichourincreasingly
explicitunderstandinghasbeenderivedexclusivelyfromtheresults
of'spade archaeology'.
Preface to theFirstEdition
As may already have been inferred from these observations, it is
w^ith the material remains and with the progress of excavations
which have revealed them that this book is intended to be
concerned, rather than with the philological contribution. Other
limitationshavebeenimposeduponitforavarietyofreasons.Ihave
dealt at length with the pioneer activities ofearly Mesopotamian
explorersinanotherbook{FoundationsintheDust,rev.edn,London
1980), and therefore Ihavenot wished here to becomeinvolvedin
anecdotal accounts ofprimitive digging in Victorian times. I have
preferred that my point ofdeparture should coincide with the first
introduction of discipline and method into archaeological
procedure. Thisiswellknowntohavetakenplaceattheturnofthe
19th century, and something further should be said about it.
In Mesopotamia, the beginnings of systematic excavation and
proper recording must be credited to the two German scholars,
Robert Koldewey and Walter Andrae, whose work at Babylon
beganin 1899. Themethodwhichtheyrapidlyperfectedoftracing
mud-brick walls, enabled them to expose and study the buildings
and fortifications in a manner which had never before been
attempted. In 1903 Andrae transferred his activities to the old
Assyrian capital at Ashur, whose ruins he proceeded to explore in
the same ingenious manner. Both excavators continued to deal in
this way with buildings immediately beneath the surface; but
Andrae went further. Finding that one particular temple showed
signs ofhaving been repeatedly rebuilt at successive epochs in the
historyofthecity, hewasabletoexamine theremainsateachlevel
in turn, down to an earliest shrine which he attributed to the
Sumerians apeopleaboutwhomalmostnothingwasthenknown.
:
But ofeven greater importance was the fact that, in doing so, he
mastered the art of 'stratified' excavation: a practice whose
understanding became the key to effective research in all
Mesopotamian settings. In the third decade ofthe present century,
when 'professional' archaeologists ofother nationalities began to
arrive in Iraq, these German methods were adopted by them to
great advantage. Needless to say, they have been elaborated and
improved upon as time has gone by; but they can still be seen to
have provided the basis for a developing technique ofexcavation,
withoutwhichthediscoveriesrecordedinthisbookcouldnothave
been made.
Preface to the Revised Edition
These introductory paragraphs to the First Edition were written
at a time, late in the 1970s, when the excavation of major sites
in southern Iraq seemed temporarily to have lost impetus. Work
among the ruins of great cities in the alluvial plain had become
almost prohibitively expensive owing to the increased cost of
manual labour, and interest seemed likely for the present to be
concentrated on more manageable prehistoric settlements in the
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