D. G. LYON TELLS STORY OF EXCAVATIONS OF AMERICAN RESEARCHERS IN NUZI, IRAQ

The following article written by D. G. Lyon is a brief account of the excavations carried on at Nuzi in Iraq by the Fogg Art Museum and the Harvard Semitic Museum with the co-operation of the American School of Oriental Research at Bagdad. It is reprinted from the current issue of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin.

The region in which Nuzi lies is on the borders of Babylon and Assyria, and was in antiquity occupied by a people known as the Guti, the ruins of whose cities are now represented by numerous mounds The Guti seem not to have been Semites, but probably of Hittite origin. Most of the proper names in the inscriptions from Nuzi are non-Semitic. Many of these, such as Durar-Teshub, Shar-Teshub, have as their second element the name of the chief Hittite god, Teshub. The language of the inscriptions is Assyrian, with considerable intermixture of non-Assyrian words.

Our explorers, led by Professor Edward Chiera, now of Chicago University, restricted their work to the houses which belonged to the last occupation of Nuzi, destroyed by fire about 500 B. C. They made only tentative penetrations below the floor level, but these sufficed to show that important ruins lay underneath, dating from earlier occupations. In these lower depths we may hope to find objects of finer quality than anything yet found on the site, as has often occurred in Babylonian exploration.

Part Palace, Part Temple

The largest mound at Nuzi rises about five and one half meters above the plain. Its top is nearly level and measures some 160 meters square. This was probably the citadel. It contains the ruins of an immense building of uncertain dimensions. The excavated portion, estimated as one-half, measures 116 by 68 meters, and contains 100 rooms. The objects and inscriptions found there seem to indicate that the building was in part palace and in part temple. Among the tablets are some, which record lists of offerings and pay-lists of temple employees. The bronze censer and the fragments of frescoes come also from this building.

In the division with the Iraq Museum the Harvard Museums have had generous treatment. The share of the finds assigned to them, packed in 40 cases, has recently reached Cambridge.

The two great prizes as objects of art, the bronze censer and the fragments of frescoes, have come to the Fogg Museum.. The bronze suit of arm or was kept in Iraq for the National Museum at Bagdad.

Semitic Acquisitions

To the Semitic Museum has come the archaeological and inscriptional material. The inscribed clay tablets, some two thousand in number, rank first in importance. It is understood that we shall return a portion of these to the Museum at Bagdad, after publication of the inscriptions in this country. From some hundreds found in one of the rooms excavated, Professor Chiera, while still at Nuzi, selected 107 and copied them on 100 plates. These will appear at an early date as a volume of the "Harvard Semitic Series."

The varied story, as recorded on the tablets, of the life of a people who flourished so long ago, is a notable contribution of our first campaign and will be hailed by all students of early civilization. Not only on local affairs, but on ethnic and international relations, these documents will shed much-needed light.

If there were no higher motive, the enrichment of our museums with treasures of learning and art is ample reward of our efforts. No one who knows the facts could question the wisdom of carrying on.

Accordingly, our expedition is again in the field, this time under the direction of Dr. R. H. Pfeiffer, of the Semitic Department. We had hoped to work this year on a larger scale, but, owing to the necessity of purchasing additional equipment and paying more for salaries, the resources available for labor are somewhat less than those of a year ago.

The first objective of the campaign is to complete the excavation of the palace-temple. Somewhere in the ruins of this imposing structure should be found a royal or a temple library.

Further Survey Needed

It is regrettable that our resources may not enable us to make during this season full exploratory tests of the underlying ruins. Several prehistoric mounds of the vicinity and a nearby cemetery of the Nuzian era invite the explorer.

Iraq, one of the earliest centers of civilization, is now attracting world-wide attention. Here are prospects bright enough to arouse the slowest imagination. Many institutions, American, English, French, German, are wide awake. Dr. Pfeiffer has just written from Bagdad: "There are to be seven archeological expeditions besides our own in Iraq this year, they say the greatest number of excavations ever known and the best equipped."