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Rassam's Excavations at Borsippa and Kutha, 1879–82

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

J. E. Reade
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Extract

This paper makes available some of the main results of Hormuzd Rassam's excavations at Borsippa (Birs Nimrud and Ibrahim al-Khalil) and Kutha (Tell Ibrahim), supplementing the broad accounts in his own book Asshur and the Land of Nimrod and in his other publications. Further technical information on Rassam's expeditions, with full references to records that I have consulted in the British Museum central archive, may be found in my introduction to Erie Leichty's Catalogue of the Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum, Volume VI, pages xii–xxxiv. In compiling the account given here, I have had the benefit of advice from several scholars including, especially, Donald Bailey, John Curtis, and Irving Finkel. The drawings are by Ann Searight. There is a list of the objects illustrated, with additional discussion, at the end.

Hormuzd Rassam was born in Mosul in 1826. During much of 1845–54 he worked on the British excavations in Assyria and Babylonia, first as Henry Layard's assistant and then as agent of the British Museum under the nominal supervision of the consul, Henry Rawlinson, in Baghdad. He later continued to serve the British crown, and eventually settled in England. In 1878 he recommenced excavations in Mesopotamia on behalf of the British Museum. He worked under a permit which allowed him to export everything he found except duplicate objects, which were to be surrendered to the Ottomans; most of his finds are now therefore in the British Museum.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 48 , 1986 , pp. 105 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1986

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References

1 Notably TSBA 8 (1885), 172–97Google Scholar, and JTVI 14 (1881), 182–225 Google Scholar, and JTVI 17 (1884), 221–53Google Scholar.

2 Trenkwalder, H., Sumer 41 (1985), 101–4Google Scholar; Iraq 47 (1985), 219 Google Scholar.

3 Thompson, R. C., CT XII Google Scholar.

4 BM 33428: Lambert, W. G., in Hallo, W. W. (editor), Essays in Memory of E. A. Speiser, 124–30Google Scholar.

5 For example, BM 33340, which is a Nebuchadnezzar copy of a mid-eleventh century (Adad-apla-iddina) Ezida ration-list; BM 46543, a Neo-Babylonian Ezida copy of a Hammurapi original (L. W. King, The Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi, no. 59); BM 91081, which is actually shaped like an Old Babylonian stone foundation tablet and was copied from just such a monument of Sin-kashid, from Uruk, in Ezida ( Soll-berger, E. and Kupper, J.-R., Inscriptions royales sumériennes et akkadiennes, 231 Google Scholar, with a reference to another copy, BM 33344, made in 603 B.c.). Another candidate, a purchased tablet, is BM 26295, a Kandalanu copy (633 B.c.) of an eleventh century (Marduk-shapik-zeri) Ezida building inscription.

6 Die Tempel von Babylon und Borsippa, p. 55.

7 Seidl, U., BAM 4 (1968), 53 Google Scholar. I am now indebted to Dr E. Klengel of Berlin for the information that an original excavation photograph shows the Istanbul piece to be indeed identical with Koldewey's no. 21226 fragment from Borsippa.

8 Börker-Klähn, J., Altvorderasiatische Bildsielen und vergleichbare Felsreliefs, 1982, 216 Google Scholar, nos. 225, 226.

9 Pritchard, J. B., Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 1950, 317 Google Scholar.

10 MSL XVI, 73 Google Scholar, Source A; Hunger, H., Babylonische und assyrische Kolophone, 125 Google Scholar, no. 426. Hunger has other colophons mentioning Borsippa on pp. 50–5, 120–4, 133. Relatively unfamiliar texts that a seventh-century Assyrian expected he might find in the city are listed in CT XXII, 1 Google Scholar ( Ebeling, E., Neubabylonische Briefe, Munich 1949, p. 1 Google Scholar).

11 King, L. W., Babylonian Boundary-Stones, 111 Google Scholar, no. xxxi.

12 Ibid., 90, no. xxii; 116, no. xxxv; 90, no. xxiii. There are a dozen other kudurru pieces for which a Borsippa provenance is a possibility; see J. E. Reade, in Annual Review of the R.I.M. Project, forthcoming.

13 Whereas Seleucid dates on cuneiform texts can be converted into Julian years by reference to Parker, R. A. and Dubberstein, W. H.,Babylonian Chronology, 1956 Google Scholar edition, problems arise on coins where the Seleucid era years seem to have begun in the autumn, in accordance with the Macedonian arrangement of months. The question is discussed by Rider, G. Le, Suse sous les Séleucides et les Parthes, Paris 1965, 33–43 Google Scholar.

14 Reallexikon der Assyriologie I, 414–19Google Scholar.

15 BaM 11 (1980), 88–9Google Scholar.

16 BM 34035: Epping, J. and Strassmaier, J. N., ZA 6 (1891), 228 Google Scholar.

17 Religion 11 (1981), 56 Google Scholar.

18 Reallexikon der Assyriologie I, 414 Google Scholar, with citation of BM 38345, a cylinder fragment found about this time, which refers to an Assyrian king's work on the Gula Temple ( Borger, R., Die Inschriften Asarhaddons, 32 Google Scholar).

19 Sumer 41 (1985), 104 Google Scholar.

20 The iconography of Jupiter Dolichenus and of objects, usually about 1st–3rd century AD, which show eagles perched on the heads of stags or bulls, is discussed, with many further references, by Jeanne Peppers, Four Roman bronzes in the Museum, Getty, The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 8 (1980), 173–180 Google Scholar.