The Neo-Assyrian Empire, centered in northern Iraq and extending from Iran to Egypt -- the largest empire of its time -- collapsed after more than two centuries of dominance at the fall of its capital, Nineveh, in 612 B.C.E.
Deportees after the Assyrian siege of Lachish, Judea (701 B.C.E.). Detail from bas-relief removed from Sennacherib's 'Palace Without Rival,' Nineveh, Iraq, and now in The British Museum [Credit: The British Museum]
Despite a plethora of cuneiform textual documentation and archaeological excavations and field surveys, archaeologists and historians have been unable to explain the abruptness and finality of the historic empire's collapse.
Numerous theories about the collapse have been put forward since the city and its destruction levels were first excavated by archaeologists 180 years ago. But the mystery of how two small armies -- the Babylonians in the south and the Medes in the east -- were able to converge on Nineveh and completely destroy what was then the largest city in the world, without any reoccupation, has remained unsolved.
A team of researchers -- led by Ashish Sinha, California State University, Dominguez Hills, and using archival and archaeological data contributed by Harvey Weiss, professor of Near Eastern archaeology and environmental studies at Yale -- was able for the first time to determine the underlying cause for the collapse. By examining new precipitation records of the area, the team discovered an abrupt 60-year megadrought that so weakened the Assyrian state that Nineveh was overrun in three months and abandoned forever.
The layers of a stalagmite record the climate conditions of the time when they were created [Credit: Ashish Sinha]
Assyria was an agrarian society dependent on seasonal precipitation for cereal agriculture. To its south, the Babylonians relied on irrigation agriculture, so their resources, government, and society were not affected by the drought, explains Weiss.
The team analyzed stalagmites -- a type of speleothem that grows up from a cave floor and is formed by the deposit of minerals from water -- retrieved from Kuna Ba cave in northeast Iraq. The speleothems can provide a history of climate through the oxygen and uranium isotope ratios of infiltrating water that are preserved in its layers. Oxygen in rainwater comes in two main varieties: heavy and light. The ratio of heavy to light types of oxygen isotopes are extremely sensitive to variations in precipitation and temperature. Over time, uranium trapped in speleothems turns into thorium, allowing scientists to date the speleothem deposits.
Weiss and the research team synchronized these findings with archaeological and cuneiform records and were able to document the first paleoclimate data for the megadrought that affected the Assyrian heartland at the time of the empire's collapse, when its less drought-affected neighbors invaded. The team's research also revealed that this megadrought followed a high-rainfall period that facilitated the Assyrian empire's earlier growth and expansion.
"Now we have a historical and environmental dynamic between north and south and between rain-fed agriculture and irrigation-fed agriculture through which we can understand the historical process of how the Babylonians were able to defeat the Assyrians," said Weiss, adding that the total collapse of Assyria is still described by historians as the "mother of all catastrophes."
The Neo-Assyrian Empire rose during an unusual time of wet climate and collapsed soon after conditions swung to unusual dryness [Credit: Ashish Sinha]
Through the archaeology and history of the region, Weiss was able to piece together how the megadrought data were synchronous with Assyria's cessation of long-distance military campaigns and the construction of irrigation canals that were similar to its southern neighbors but restricted in their agricultural extent. Other texts noted that the Assyrians were worrying about their alliances with distant places, while also fearing internal intrigue, notes Weiss.
"This fits into a historical pattern that is not only structured through time and space, but a time and space that is filled with environmental change," says Weiss. "These societies experienced climatic changes that were of such magnitude they could not simply adapt to them," he adds.
With these new speleothem records, says Weiss, paleoclimatologists and archaeologists are now able to identify environmental changes in the global historical record that were unknown and inaccessible even 25 years ago. "History is no longer two-dimensional; the historical stage is now three-dimensional," said Weiss.
A research team led by the University of Tsukuba combined observations from ancient cuneiform tablets that mention unusual red skies with radioisotope data to identify solar storms that likely occurred around 679 to 655 BCE, prior to any previously datable events. This work may help modern astronomers predict future solar flares or coronal mass ejections that can damage satellite and terrestrial electronic devices.
Credit: Cambridge Alert
Humans have been looking to the skies for as long as we have been around. Some of the observations made by ancient Assyrian and Babylonian astrologers more than two millennia ago survive in the form of cuneiform records. These rectangular clay tablets were messages from professional scholars to kings who had commissioned astronomical observations for the purpose of discerning omens--including comets, meteors, and planetary motions.
Now, a team led by the University of Tsukuba has matched three of these ancient tablets that mention an unusual red glow in the sky with the carbon-14 concentrations in tree rings and demonstrate how they are evidence of solar magnetic storms.
These observations were made approximately 2,700 years ago in Babylon and the Assyrian city of Nineveh, both of which are mentioned contemporaneously in the Bible. For example, one tablet says, "red covers the sky," while another mentions a "red cloud." These were probably manifestations of what we call today stable auroral red arcs, consisting of light emitted by electrons in atmospheric oxygen atoms after being excited by intense magnetic fields.
While we usually think of aurorae as confined to northern latitudes, during periods of strong magnetic activity, as with a solar mass ejection, they may be observed much further south. Moreover, because of changes in the Earth's magnetic field over time, the Middle East was closer to the geomagnetic pole during this period in history.
"Although the exact dates of the observations are not known, we were able to narrow the range considerably by knowing when each astrologer was active," co-first author Yasuyuki Mitsuma says. Based on tree-ring samples, there was a rapid rise in radioactive carbon-14 in the environment during this time, which is associated with increased solar activity.
"These findings allow us to recreate the history of solar activity a century earlier than previously available records," explains Mitsuma. "This research can assist in our ability to predict future solar magnetic storms, which may damage satellites and other spacecraft."
Humankind first started farming in Mesopotamia about 11,500 years ago. Subsequently, the practices of cultivating crops and raising livestock emerged independently at perhaps a dozen other places around the world, in what archaeologists call the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution. It's one of the most thoroughly-studied episodes in prehistory - but a new paper in the Journal of Political Economy shows that most explanations for it don't agree with the evidence, and offers a new interpretation.
Cave painting of cow & horses, Lascaux, France [Credit: Alamy]
With farming came a vast expansion of the realm over which private property governed access to valued goods, replacing the forager social norms around sharing food upon acquisition. A common explanation is that farming increased labor productivity, which then encouraged the adoption of private property by providing incentives for the long-term investments required in a farming economy.
"But it's not what the data are telling us", says Santa Fe Institute economist Samuel Bowles, a co-author of the paper. "It is very unlikely that the number of calories acquired from a day's work at the advent of farming made it a better option than hunting and gathering and it could well have been quite a bit worse."
Prior studies, including those of human and animal bones, suggest that farming actually took an extreme nutritional toll on early adopters and their livestock. So why farm in the first place?
Some have suggested an inferior technology could have been imposed by political elites as a strategy for extracting taxes, tribute, or rents. But farming was independently adopted millennia before the emergence of governments or political elites capable of imposing a new way of life on heavily-armed foraging communities.
Bowles and co-author Jung-Kyoo Choi, an economist at Kyungpook National University in South Korea, use both evolutionary game theory and archaeological evidence to propose a new interpretation of the Neolithic. Based on their model, a system of mutually recognized private property rights was both a precondition for farming and also a means of limiting costly conflicts among members of a population.
While rare among foragers, private property did exist among a few groups of sedentary hunter-gatherers. Among them, farming could have benefited the first adopters because it would have been easier to establish the private possession of cultivated crops and domesticated animals than for the diffuse wild resources on which hunter-gatherers relied.
"It is a lot easier to define and defend property rights in a domesticated cow than in a wild kudu," says Choi. "Farming initially succeeded because it facilitated a broader application of private property rights, not because it lightened the toil of making a living."
The Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents A Wonder to Behold: Craftsmanship and the Creation of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate, opening new avenues for understanding one of the most spectacular achievements of the ancient world. On view from November 6, 2019, through May 24, 2020, the exhibition features 180 objects that bring to life the synthesis of masterful craftsmanship and ancient beliefs that transformed clay, minerals, and organic materials—seen as magically potent substances—into this powerful monument.
Reconstructed panel of bricks with a striding lion Neo-Babylonian Period; Processional Way, El-Kasr Mound, Babylon, Iraq [Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art]
A Wonder to Behold demonstrates how the master craftspeople who designed and built the Ishtar Gate and its affiliated Processional Way were not simply skilled technicians—though they were certainly that— but also artists, historians, and ritual practitioners known as “experts” (ummanu). They were believed capable of creating artworks that manifested divine powers on Earth, and the Ishtar Gate, offering entry into the imperial city of Babylon, was designed to be one such magically activated monument.
A Wonder to Behold has been organized by ISAW and co-curated by its Associate Director of Exhibitions and Gallery Curator, Clare Fitzgerald, PhD, with guest curators Anastasia Amrhein, an art historian specializing in the ancient Middle East (University of Pennsylvania), and Elizabeth Knott, PhD, a historian specializing in the textual and visual remains of the ancient Middle East (NYU).
Dr. Fitzgerald states, “ISAW is thrilled to present A Wonder to Behold, which follows the transformation of commonplace, if sacred, materials as they journey from the brickyards to one of the greatest monuments of the ancient world, a divinely protected and ritualized entryway to the inner city of Babylon. In so doing, the exhibition opens a window onto both ancient beliefs and superb artistic skills, and expands our understanding of the critical role of craftspeople in the ancient Middle East. ISAW is grateful to Anastasia Amrhein and Elizabeth Knott, who have brought their deep knowledge to this exhibition.”
Built over the course of King Nebuchadnezzar II’s reign (r. 604–562 BCE), the Ishtar Gate (named in honor of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar) was at the epicenter of a major empire that extended from presentday Iran to Egypt. In its final and most spectacular phase, the monument was built with brilliantly glazed bricks, molded in relief to depict hundreds of dragons, lions, and bulls—all set against a background the color of lapis lazuli. At once providing access to and protecting the heart of the sacred imperial city, these creatures inspired both admiration and apprehension.
By the late 19th century, it appeared that all that was left of the Gate were glittering fragments of colorful glazed brick scattered among the rubble of collapsed clay architecture. But between 1899 and 1917, German-led excavations not only studied the glazed remains of the towering Ishtar Gate, but also excavated its molded (unglazed) foundations, which extended deep into the earth. Archaeologist Robert Koldewey sent almost 800 crates of fragments to Berlin, with the permission of the Ottoman, and later the Iraqi governments. Once there, the colorful remains were cleaned, stabilized, and sorted, then assembled piece by piece, creating first whole bricks and subsequently panels of brightly colored raised-relief beasts. These reconstructed ancient remains were joined with modern blue bricks to create a monumental reconstruction (albeit at a slightly smaller scale) of the Ishtar Gate and its affiliated Processional Way at Berlin’s Vorderasiatisches Collection, housed in the Pergamon Museum.
Today, a multi-national process of excavation, reconstruction, and conservation of the Ishtar Gate continues, both on-site and at various institutions. The monument may be experienced not only in Berlin, but also at Babylon, Iraq—now a UNESCO World Heritage Site—where earlier phases of the Gate still stand and visitors can experience its true scale and relationship to the ancient city.
The objects on view in A Wonder to Behold are on loan from a variety of international and domestic collections including the Louvre, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and, notably, the Vorderasiatisches Museum. Together, they provide a vivid picture of the making of the Ishtar Gate, shedding light on the people who created it and the materials they engaged with and transformed.
The exhibition opens with an introduction to the gateway as revealed through its discovery and reconstruction. A variety of archival drawings, photographs, and objects demonstrate the immense complexity of this undertaking. A 1901 watercolor by archaeologist Walter Andrae, for example, shows the Babylonian system of fitters’ marks that he deciphered, revealing the painstaking process through which the monument was created. This process began by marking out the design on a wall of unadorned bricks, and continued with the molding, glazing, and baking of each individual brick before fitting them together, a task that is something like designing and assembling an intricate puzzle.
The Ishtar Gate and Processional Way represent the epitome of major developments in molding and glazing technologies that had taken place over the preceding centuries, enlivening architecture by bringing color and dimension to otherwise unadorned mud brick buildings. A reconstructed panel on view here shows one of the 120 molded and glazed lions that paraded out from the Gate and down the Processional Way. Believed to be powerful beings associated with the king’s role as protector of his people, the beasts are depicted in bold relief, projecting into the space of the viewer as they intimidated unwelcome visitors while protecting the inhabitants of the city.
Other objects illustrate the links between the world of the gods and the Ishtar Gate through an exploration of the religious meaning of lions, bulls, and mushussu-dragons. These include an Assyro-Babylonian cylinder seal showing the fierce goddess Ishtar, who helped protect the city from enemies, with her lion, and a marble bowl dating from 2900–2600 BCE that demonstrates the continuity and ritual significance of the repeating bull image—which also appears on the facade of the Ishtar Gate—and its ritual significance, already understood to be ancient in Nebuchadnezzar II’s time.
The material components of the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way—clay and a glass-like glaze composed of ground stones and metal oxides—were endowed with metaphysical and magical qualities. The exhibition examines these substances, including their origins, sometimes in far-flung places; the techniques with which they were produced and worked; and the powerful cultural and religious beliefs attached to them.
Endowed with vital power in the ancient Middle East, clay was viewed as the stuff of creation and tied closely to the gods: ancient texts asserted that the first gods and first humans were created of clay. Clay was often used to create figures believed to be imbued with life and capable of acting on their creator’s behalf. As highlighted by a mold for a female figurine here, artists in the ancient Middle East did not share the modern emphasis on the new, but frequently replicated more or less identical images, each thought to be as powerful as the next. As such, molds like this one were understood as authoritative image sources, originally passed down to humanity from the gods.
A Wonder to Behold also includes a fragment of a baked clay plaque with a striding lion reminiscent of those on the Processional Way. This piece, which dates from late 3rd–early 2nd millennium BCE, shows the longevity of lion imagery created from molded clay. Figures like these, which were believed to be capable of effecting change in the lived world, were not restricted to monumental or public contexts, but could also be found in domestic houses and shrines. Although their exact purpose is unknown, they may have protected the household from dangers such as illness and misfortune, as well as from demons, or they may have been directed to perform more specific magical tasks.
A brick from Babylon containing the cuneiform inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II illustrates clay’s inherent malleability and receptivity to touch. After being molded, bricks like these, which were used in official constructions, were stamped with the king’s inscription and laid out to dry in the sun or sometimes baked in a kiln. While this brick was still soft, it was also impressed with the paw of a wandering dog—a humble, everyday touch that gives us a direct, affective point of access to the ancient world.
A cuneiform tablet from the Middle Babylonian Period (ca. 1300–1200 BCE) records a recipe for making red glass that highlights the secret alchemical knowledge of ancient Middle Eastern craftspeople, while an Egyptian glass vessel from ca. 1400–1300 BCE showcases the range of brilliant colors that these experts were able to achieve. In fact, human-made materials were believed to be as powerful as naturally occurring ones, their brilliance and shine no less meaningful. The recipes for manufacturing these magical substances, which prescribed specific rituals to ensure a successful outcome, were closely held.
In the ninth to seventh centuries B.C., the Assyrians, based in northern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), forged a great empire that extended at its height from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and parts of Turkey in the west, through Iraq to the mountains of Iran and Armenia in the east. To glorify their reigns, the Assyrian rulers built majestic palaces adorned with relief sculptures that portray the king as a mighty warrior and hunter, and confront visitors with imposing images of winged bulls, demons and other mythological guardians.
Assyria: Palace Art of Ancient Iraq, on view at the Getty Villa October 2, 2019 to September 5, 2022, presents a selection of these famous relief sculptures as a special loan from the British Museum in London. Among the greatest masterpieces of Mesopotamian art, the Assyrian reliefs have, since their discovery in the mid-19th century, fascinated viewers with their vivid depictions of warfare, hunting, building works, mythology, rituals, banqueting and other aspects of Assyrian court life. Often bearing cuneiform inscriptions, some scenes show characters, events and places known from the Old Testament and ancient Greek authors. Together they represent the richest body of narrative art and iconography to have survived from the ancient Near East.
“The British Museum possesses the largest and most important collection of Assyrian reliefs in the world. The fourteen panels on view at the Getty Villa create a compelling overview of the subjects, styles, and artistic achievements of Assyria’s sculptors, including outstanding masterpieces such as the ‘Banquet Scene’ of the last great king of Assyria, Ashurbanipal, reviled as ‘Sardanapalus’ in the Old Testament,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum.
“At the time of their discovery, taste in Britain—and Europe generally—hewed strongly to classical models, by which standard some saw these Assyrian monuments as unrefined; but this attitude soon subsided, and they are now universally appreciated as artistic achievements of great visual and emotional power. In our own day the historical and cultural importance of these sculptures has increased with the tragic destruction by ISIS of many of the reliefs that remained in Iraq. We hope therefore that this display will raise awareness of the need to protect major heritage sites that remain at peril around the world.”
The Assyrian heartland lay astride the Tigris River in Mesopotamia, in what is today northern Iraq. The reliefs in this exhibition come from the palaces of kings Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 B.C.) and Tiglath-pileser III (745–727 B.C.) at Kalhu (Nimrud), Sargon II (722–705 B.C.) at Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad), and the last great Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (668–627 B.C.) at Nineveh.
In the mid-eighth century B.C. the Assyrian Empire expanded westward to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and Egypt, coming into contact with the Greeks in Phoenicia, on Cyprus, and along the southern coast of Anatolia (Turkey), as well as in trading colonies in northern Syria.
Assyrian palaces were imposing complexes that served both as residences for kings and their families and as the venues for official diplomatic and ceremonial functions. The most important rooms within the palaces were decorated with reliefs. Scenes in the throne room and reception halls typically emphasized the king’s military prowess and his status as the all-powerful ruler, sometimes in graphically brutal terms. The king’s private quarters could include beneficent mythological creatures, rituals, and other themes. The hunt was one of the most frequently depicted royal activities, symbolizing the king’s supreme power over the most fearsome enemies.
The British adventurer Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894), who led the excavations at Nineveh and Kalhu (modern Nimrud), published two series of folio-sized illustrations documenting his discoveries under the title The Monuments of Nineveh (1849-1853). Both series are on display in the exhibition, the complete sets of images being accessible on an iPad in the gallery. A number of reliefs on view in the exhibition were excavated by Layard in 1845-51.
This is the second long-term loan exhibition in the gallery devoted to The Classical World in Context, a new gallery at the Getty Villa highlighting cultures that influenced and interacted with the classical world of ancient Greece and Rome.
The exhibition will remain on view for three years, during which it will coincide with upcoming exhibitions on ancient Mesopotamia (March 18 – July 27, 2020), drawn from the collections of the Musee du Louvre, and ancient Persia’s relationship with the classical world (2021).
Assyria: Palace Art of Ancient Iraq is curated by Timothy Potts, director at the J. Paul Getty Museum, with assistance from Sara E. Cole, assistant curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Iraqi officials are displaying stolen artifacts from the country's rich cultural heritage that were recently recovered from Britain and Sweden.
Recently recovered antiquities are displayed at the foreign ministry, in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, July 29, 2019 [Credit: AP/Hadi Mizban]
Many archaeological treasures from Iraq, home of the ancient "fertile crescent" considered the cradle of civilization, were looted during the chaos that followed the 2003 U.S. invasion and whisked out of the country.
Now Iraq is making a massive effort to bring these pieces home, working closely with the U.N. cultural organization.
The artifacts paraded Monday include archaeological and historical pieces recovered from Britain and Sweden, pottery fragments and shards with writing dating back to the ancient Sumerian civilization. Iraq is putting a great effort to restore its lost rich cultural heritage after it was decimated during the chaos that followed the 2003 U.S. invasion [Credit: AP/Hadi Mizban]
The artifacts on display Monday at the foreign ministry in Baghdad include archaeological and historical items, such as pottery fragments and shards with writing dating back at least 4,000 years to the ancient Sumerian civilization.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Hakim said his country is determined to recover its lost heritage, whatever it takes.
A single character can often make the difference between a clear-cut reading and a puzzling conundrum. Enrique Jiménez, a specialist in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, is engaged on the reconstruction of the beginnings of world literature. Mesopotamia was home to the first true civilization, and a rich and bilingual literary culture had appeared there by around the year 2500 BCE. Its texts were written in cuneiform script on clay tablets in Sumerian and Akkadian. These texts survive only in fragmentary form, and many fragments measure only a few centimeters. The challenge for Jiménez and his colleagues is to identify pieces that belong together –the script itself is polyvalent and the semantics are highly context dependent. "Having to abandon work on a text because a single sign is missing is incredibly frustrating, especially when you know that there has to be a fragment somewhere that fills the gap."
Enrique Jiménez makes use of artificial intelligence to fill in the many tantalizing gaps in the surviving texts written on clay tablets by scribes in early urban societies 3000 years ago [Credit: Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich]
Enrique Jiménez has set himself the goal of filling these agonizing gaps with the help of artificial intelligence, and he received a Sofia Kovalevskaya Prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to help him to achieve this aim. The award is intended to enable junior academics to undertake innovative research projects in a field of their own choice. Jiménez chose to pursue his project at LMU, where he holds a dual appointment in the Institute of Assyriology and at the Department of Ancient History, where his research group on Electronic Babylonian Literature is based. He and his team have begun to assemble a "Fragmentarium," a database in which all the text fragments in world museums will find their place. The project began in May 2018, and the database now contains some 10,000 fragments. "I hope to get up to about 15,000 by the end of the year," he says. This will allow all previously unpublished fragments from the library of the Assyrian King Assurbanipal to be located in less than a second.
Assurbanipal built his library in his capital city of Nineveh 2700 years ago, with the intention of bringing together the collected knowledge and wisdom of his time. After his death, the library was destroyed by the Babylonians who conquered the city in the year 612 BCE and its holdings were shattered. Most of the fragments recovered by archaeologists are now in the British Museum in London. About half of these have yet to be deciphered—and Enrique Jiménez has taken on this task as part of his project, in cooperation with the Museum. In May, two members of the Museum's staff began to photograph the remaining collections of clay tablets held by the institution, and Jiménez and his group will have 40,000 photographs of fragmentary cuneiform tablets to work on over the next 5 years.
For years, Jiménez has been exploring the opportunities opened up by digital media. To begin with, he wrote simple programs himself. Now he works closely with data scientists. During his time at Yale University, he was involved in the Cuneiform Commentaries Project, whose was to publish online commentaries on Ancient Mesopotamian literature. He is also making the results of his research available on a dedicated website. He is currently engaged in training the program to 'read' Akkadian and recognize all the possible readings of the signs used in Akkadian texts. "The goal is to enable the program to recognize sequences of characters, which it can automatically slot into the appropriate context. This is much easier for a computer than it is for us humans. A computer can take all imaginable possibilities into account at once, and automatically compare new fragments with previously stored texts." The immediate goal is to complete or reconstruct texts that are already known in part, and there are plans to publish translations into English, German and Arabic.
Jiménez himself focuses on literary texts that were in circulation in what is now Iraq in the first millennium BCE—when Akkadian literature was in a flourishing state—and on texts that are written in poetic forms. Over the course of the project, Jiménez intends to work on a text corpus comprising approximately 10,000 lines. In this endeavor, he is collaborating with Dr. Anmar A. Fadhil of Baghdad University, who curates an archive of literary tablets found in the famed library of Sippar in northern Babylonia. The Greek historian Berossos, whose life spanned the turn of the 4th to the 3rd century BCE, explains how it allegedly came into being: When Noah learned that the Deluge was imminent, and before he boarded the Ark, he was said to have buried the whole corpus of Mesopotamian writings in the city of Sippar before boarding the Ark.
Sippar was located near the site of present-day Baghdad, but its library was only discovered in 1986. Among the texts recovered were the epic "Enuma eliš" (the Babylonian version of the Creation, and "a very beautiful text," says Jiménez) and an account of the Great Flood. "On the one hand, these texts are very different from the stories that are familiar to us. On the other, there are a great many parallels, including thematic parallels, between the different versions. Together with our Iraqi colleagues, we plan to publish the most important literary tablets. One of these is a fragment of the poem on the "Sufferings of the Righteous Man," the story of the Babylonian Job."
The poem tells the story of a just man, who nevertheless undergoes repeated punishments. At the midpoint of the text, the protagonist is first punished, then pardoned, and receives news of the pardon in a dream. Jiménez and Fadhil were able to assign a short text fragment from the library of Sippar to the dream episode in the poem, thus closing a gap in the previously known version. "We are now able to decode this passage, which nobody has been able to read for the past 2000 years. We have reconstructed a literary text that was recognized as a classic in antiquity, and rescued it for present-day readers."
Jiménez also identified fragments of a hymn addressed to the Babylonian god Marduk. "The texts that I work on are poetic texts. Akkadian poems are written in lines that have a clearly marked caesura in the middle. It is very difficult to translate this poetic structure into German." In scholarly publications, the texts are normally translated word-for-word into English. Enrique Jiménez has translated the reassembled and now intact lines into German, and the English version given below is a free rendering of that text (the newly discovered phrases are shown in italics):
"Marduk, your anger is like a raging flood, But in the morning, your mercy gives consolation to your victim, The fearsome and terrifying storm has abated, Where the waves thundered, the shore is now calm, The dark threatening cloud you have now illuminated. Where the searing scorching wind blew, your bright day now reigns."
Researchers can learn a lot from these texts about everyday life in Ancient Mesopotamia—about the objects they handled each day and about social life in general. "The Sufferings of the Righteous Man" describes how the protagonist awakes and speaks with his entourage—and the passage shows that he has a servant whose duties included waking his master up in the morning.
"In terms of its function too, Babylonian literature is not that far removed from our own," says Jiménez. The classical works were constantly copied, largely because they served as sources of exemplary passages for the teaching of reading and writing in schools. But the Creation Epic was recited in public at the festival traditionally held to celebrate the coming of the New Year. The Babylonian classics also suffered a fate that remains familiar even today: they were often parodied. "These parodies tell us a lot about the relationship between the people of Mesopotamia and their own traditions. For example, one line in the "Sufferings of the Just Man" was modified slightly so as to turn it into a joke. We have a very similar attitude to our literary traditions in the modern world. On the one hand, the classics are highly respected, and at the same time one can play around with them."
Unfortunately, there are many gaps in the parodies that have been studied, because so many of the tablets have suffered damage at one time or another. "I am confident that, with the help of the computer, we will be able to reconstruct the whole of Akkadian literature in the coming 40 to 50 years. For us, digital media are simply tools: We are not working on algorithms in the abstract. We want to use them to establish the recorded texts. Without knowledge of its literary classics, it is impossible to understand any civilization."
Ur is one of the world’s oldest cities. What was life like for its inhabitants some 4000 years ago? A team led by Adelheid Otto, Director of the Institute of Near Eastern Archaeology at LMU, is carrying out excavations at Ur, which promise to provide some answers to this question. The team has now returned from Southern Iraq, having completed their second season due to the kind permission by the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage. This year’s dig, funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation and the Munich University Association, lasted for 9 weeks. Its target was a residential building that was located on the edge of the city, and has been dated to the period around 1835 BCE. The excavation forms part of a larger project led by Professor Elisabeth Stone of Stony Brook University in New York State.
The LMU team has excavated the remains of a house on the periphery of the city, a capacious residence consisting of 17 rooms. It belonged to the Administrator and Chief Priest of Ur’s second most important temple, obviously a prominent member of the city’s elite [Credit: A. Otto/LMU; Berthold Einwag]
The LMU group began work on the site 2 years ago, and has now uncovered the whole house, together with a vaulted tomb in which the remains of 24 individuals were discovered. To accomplish this task, the team, which included Bachelor’s and Master’s students as well as doctoral candidates worked 6 days a week on the site. “They did a fantastic job,” says Adelheid Otto. “We began work every morning at 5 and worked until 10 or 11 o’clock at night.”
A villa on the outskirts of the city
What the team brought to light was a 17-roomed house with a large courtyard, and the surviving inventory were all recovered. “The question we originally wanted to answer was whether the poorer class of people lived on the periphery of the city, since excavations in the city center have revealed that its residential population was clearly well off. But instead of finding lower-class dwellings, we came upon this Old Babylonian villa. It was certainly a very imposing building. We have been able to identify the function of each of its rooms, and the finds give a very detailed and precise picture of how its inhabitants lived nearly 4000 years ago. Even the kitchen and a bathroom complete with toilet and a drainage system are preserved. Indeed, in terms of hygiene, the arrangements were excellent.”
Here you can see the bathroom, which was tiled, and also the drain, which led a depth of several metres [Credit: A. Otto/LMU; Berthold Einwag]
Thanks to the finds made during the excavation, it is now possible to piece together how the inhabitants led their lives. “It is the very model of a private residence in the Old Babylonian period,” says Adelheid Otto. “We have many pieces of the puzzle, which will provide us with a picture of this house’s past, not only the architecture with its various rooms and their functions, but also texts on clay tablets, including letters and the impressions of seals, which were deciphered by cuneiform specialists Professor Dominique Charpin (Collège de France Paris) and Professor Walther Sallaberger (LMU). That is a particular stroke of luck, because these finds tell us who the owner was.”
His name was Sîn-nada, and he was essentially high priest and managing director of the second most important temple in Ur, an office which made him a personage of considerable consequence in the city. “Interestingly, it turns out that his wife was also involved in the administration of the temple. In Ur during this period, women could also read and write.” The LMU researchers also collected botanical samples and animal bones in the course of the excavation, which are now being analyzed and promise to provide insight into the residents’ diet.
The LMU archaeologists have excavated a crypt under the courtyard next to the house. Here the deceased family members were buried. "The people treated the deceased with great reverence. Older skeletons were carefully stacked on top of each other at the back," says Adelheid Otto [Credit: A. Otto/LMU; Berthold Einwag]
The human remains found during the dig are being investigated further by anthropologist Andrea Göhring in the Department of Biology, who took an active part in the excavation. “Preliminary analyses indicate that these people were healthy and well nourished, and some of them survived for 70 years and more.
More detailed study should yield further information on what they ate, how long they lived and how healthy they were, and should also tell us whether or not they were related to each other, and whether they were natives of Ur or had moved to the city from elsewhere. Ur was a trading center, so it is likely that many of its inhabitants came from further afield, says Adelheid Otto. A team led by Professor Jörg Fassbinder of the Department of Geophysics has also carried out a geophysical survey of the South Mound, which revealed that this part of Ur was a densely built-up area, but it also had open spaces, such as public squares and harbours.
All that remains is – a pile of sand
So far, the investigations at Ur have demonstrated that, 4000 years ago, the city was a lively and densely settled metropolis. “It was a flourishing period during which people generally had a good life. That is certainly what this house and its residents tell us.”
The finds also include inscribed clay tablets and unrolled seals. In this way the LMU archaeologists learn a lot about the lives of the residents of the house, such as what the landlord and mistress of the house were called and that they also taught reading and writing in their house [Credit: A. Otto/LMU; Berthold Einwag]
Its owner Sîn-nada and his family led prosperous lives almost a century before the city itself met its end. Its fate was sealed when the city’s population revolted against the King of Babylonia, who had gained control of the city. The King responded by cutting off the city’s water supply by rerouting the course of the Euphrates.
Ur found itself, as it is today, in the middle of a dry steppe, and urban life eventually became impossible, says Adelheid Otto, and goes on to point out the relevance of this tragedy to the threats we face today from climate change. Within a very short time, the shortage of water turned this prosperous city into a pile of sand. By about 1720 BCE, Ur ceased to exist, and it was only hundreds of years later that life at Ur was resuming again.
