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Excavations at Abu Salabikh, 1975

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

J. N. Postgate  and
P. R. S. Moorey
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Extract

With the generous consent of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago excavations at the site of Abu Salabikh were re-opened in September-December 1975 by the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq, under the writer's direction. It is a pleasure to record here our profound gratitude to Dr. Isa Salman, Director-General of Antiquities, and to all those members of his directorate who made our work possible and assisted us in every way. Special mention must be made of our representatives, Ghassan Azzawi, Ali Hashim, and Abdul-Mejid Muhammad, who never failed to give us all possible help, and of Dr. Abdul-Hadi al-Fouadi, whose assistance as director of excavations in Baghdad was indispensable. The members of the team were Niels Christian Andersen, M.A.A., architect, Dr. P. R. S. Moorey, cataloguer, R. M. C. Shirley, archaeologist, Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan and Kathryn Tubb, photographer and conservator respectively, and Mr. and Mrs. Philip and Adrienne Watson, archaeologists. Mrs. Carolyn Postgate was in charge of the pottery, and Miss Martha Patrick nobly doubled up as child-minder and draughtswoman. All members earned our sincere gratitude for their conscientiousness, and invariably did more than the mere recital of their assigned functions would imply. Grants towards the costs of the excavations were made by the British Academy, the British Museum, Trinity College Cambridge, and the C. H. W. Johns Fund, Cambridge, and to all these institutions we are greatly indebted for their support.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1976 , pp. 133 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1976

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References

1 For use in general contexts we have not thought it necessary to retain the diacritical marks of the accurate transcription of the Arabic (i.e. Abū Ṣalābīkh) nor the designation Tell, which is not used by the local inhabitants in any case.

2 In McG. Gibson, The City and Area of Kish, Map I F, site no. 275; also shown on the map reproduced in Iraq 22 (1960), Pl. XXVIII opposite p. 175Google Scholar.

3 He passed about 10 miles to the west of Zibliyyat, an imposing Sassanian(?) ruin visible from Abu Salabikh (Loftus, W. K., Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana, 84–5)Google Scholar.

4 See the notices of Goetze, A., Sumer 11 (“1955”), 127–8Google Scholar, with map; and Crawford, V. E., BASOR 148 (1957), 7Google Scholar.

5 See principally Biggs, R. D., Inscriptions from Tell Abū Ṣalābīkh (Oriental Institute Publications Vol. 99)Google Scholar—hereafter abbreviated IAS—with a chapter on the structural remains by D. P. Hansen, pp. 5–18. Brief preliminary statements, with details about Area A, are to be found in Archaeology 16 (1963), 290Google Scholar, and BASOR 175 (1964), 13Google Scholar.

6 For the effect of the salt on the tablets, see Biggs, R. D., IAS, p. 19Google Scholar.

7 This plan was prepared by the writer in February 1973 with the support of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, and we would like to take this opportunity of expressing our gratitude to Nahidh Abdur-Razzaq Daftar for his patient co-operation during the surveying work in uncongenial circumstances. For the contour an arbitrary datum of zero was postulated 10 m below the highest point on the Area E dump, and the outmost contour line on the east is at 4·50 m.

8 See Crawford, V. E., BASOR 175 (1964), 13Google Scholar.

9 As may be seen on Fig. I we have imposed an arbitrary 100-m grid on the site, in which each square is identified with a figure and a letter—e.g. 6G—and within these each 10-m square is assigned a double figure from 00 to 99—e.g. 6G 64. A a-m baulk is left on the north and west sides of each 10-m square, and the remaining 8 × 8 m is excavated in 4 × 4-m quadrants lettered so that the NW quadrant is “a”, the NE is “b”, the SW “c” and the SE “d”. 6G 64d is therefore the SE quadrant of the 10-m square lying from 60 to 70 m south and 40 to 50 m east of the grid-lines of square 6G.

10 This differs from the 1963 numbering in which the main level is Level I, but since it is not likely that we shall be able to correlate the stratigraphy precisely in the deep sounding, it seemed easier to admit this and adopt a new series of levels which can accommodate the surface remains.

11 A pivot-stone (AbS 471) was also found against the wall some 50 cm north of the doorway, but it cannot have supported this actual doorpost.

12 Numbered 51 21:25, 51 21:26, and 51 21:31 (objects not catalogued and so assigned an AbS number retain the numbering by square which is given on the site).

13 See p. 146 and no. 26.

14 AbS 398 (a small globular jar) and AbS 312 (a small squat jar) also came from this area, but as they were found at the base of a pit they could have been intrusive.

15 Projections of a kind are found at four points, but in no case is the full width preserved and they are not quite evenly spaced.

16 Although we cannot describe the graves individually, an inventory of Grave 26 is given below (p. 159); see also Plate XXIVc and d.

17 See Delougaz, P., Hill, H. D. and Lloyd, S., Private Houses and Graves in the Diyala Region (OIP 88), 58Google Scholar; Moorey, P. R. S., Iraq 28 (1966), 38–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quoting also Schmidt, E., Museum Journal 22 (1931), 207Google Scholar.

18 For the presumed complete erosion of a layer from the surface of a mound, compare the conclusions of Schmidt, E., Museum Journal 22 (1931), 202–5Google Scholar.

19 Two upright handles with pinnate designs and no anthropomorphic features were found in Grave 35 without the jars to which they belonged. They may however be unreliable as a dating criterion since they seem to have been kept in their own right as handles (AbS 751 and 758).

20 This conclusion is neither strengthened nor invalidated by the single fragment of an administrative tablet found in a cut from the surface in Room 7 (AbS 1049). Its script is to our eyes perhaps somewhat later than that of the administrative tablets from Area E, and for comparison we publish beside it a photograph of the one stratified tablet from the palace at Kish (see Plate XXVIIa and b).

21 As given in IAS, pp. 5–18.

22 IAS, p. 11.

23 IAS, p. 6.

24 Although there was probably a doorway through this wall leading into the courtyard, we have not restored one because its position would depend in part on whether Room 45 was single room or, perhaps more likely, divided by a cross-wall into two.

25 IAS, p. 11.

26 For one set of these curiously ungainly objects see IAS, p. 11 with Fig. 5; the other set of three also came from Room 39. The discovery of the “feet” mixed up with the sherds of a round-based jar strengthens the case for seeing them as supports for vessels, but it must be confessed that they seem most awkward to use.

27 Delougaz, P., Hill, H. D. and Lloyd, S., Private Houses and Graves in the Diyala Region (OIP 88), 59Google Scholar; Mackay, E., Report on the Excavations of the “A” Cemetery at Kish, Mesopotamia (Anthropology Memoirs Vol. I, Chicago 1925 and 1929Google Scholar [hereafter abbreviated AM I], pp. 15 and 132Google Scholar (although the 30 × 15 cm dimensions quoted for Kish seem rather small).

28 Cf. those from a contemporary grave in the Piano-Convex Building at Kish, illustrated in Langdon, S., Excavations at Kish I, Pl. XV. 2Google Scholar (cf. Moorey, P. R. S., Iraq 26 (1964), 89)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 This tends to support the view that these shells served for drinking, and not as lamps. The shell is of a type common in ED III contexts, cf. recently Reade, J. E., Iraq 35 (1973), Pl. LXVIIIe and p. 167CrossRefGoogle Scholar. According to Iraq 25 (1963), 82 with Pl. XVIIIGoogle Scholar, one such shell from Ur is to be identified as Xancus gravis Dilluyn.

30 The bones visible in the photograph are those of the disjointed limbs of an entire mature sheep, but the deposit also included some portions of a much younger animal, probably a year-old goat. Some other graves also contained animal bones, and in the (much disturbed) shaft of Grave 38 were bones of sheep and a young bovid, as well as less substantial fragments of pig and equid bones. I am very much indebted for these species identifications to M. R Jarman.

31 All the spouted jars but not all the conical bowls have been indicated on Fig. 6. Dr. R. D. Barnett has kindly called my attention to the remarkable later third millennium grave at Tell Ahmar (Til-Barsib), in which were found “1045 pièces intactes” of pottery (Dunand, M., in Thureau-Dangin, F. and Dunand, M., Til-Barsib, p. 97)Google Scholar.

32 Iraq 37 (1975), 101–128CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am very grateful to Johanna Firbank for first bringing the relevance of this article to my attention.

33 Iraq 37 (1975), 109Google Scholar; the Sumerian reads: u4-ba unú urì ba-an-gub ki u4-nam-tar-ra- en-en-e-ne libir-ra-meš ki-bi bàd nu-um-gú (Iraq 13 (1951), 27–39, 11. 34–6)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. We find the suggestion of P. N. Weadock (p. 119128) to treat the “dining-room” (unú) as separate from the cemetery area rather forced; the passage reads as though they were one and the same, and the absence of a copula would be surprising in this text which shows Akkadian influence (e.g. Iibir-ra-meš).

34 Offerings made over the graves of important persons are well attested for the Ur III period, and include food as well as the libation of liquids; in some cases there were clay pipes to take the libations (on which cf. Sjöberg, Å. W., Studies … Landsberger (AS 16) 63–4)Google Scholar.

35 IAS, p. 6.

36 The southern unit seems to have sloped very slightly towards the south, since this floor was at 6 · 91 m above datum in the north corner of Room 41, at 6 · 88 where the corridor (Room 43) enters Room 45, at 6 · 80 in the side of the Grave 1 shaft, and at 6·78 where Room 45 leads into Room 48.

37 IAS, p. 11.

38 IAS, p. 26.

39 See Hansen, D. P., IAS, p. 13 with Fig. 19Google Scholar; Delougaz, P., The Temple Oval at Khafājah (OIP 53), 131–3Google Scholar.

40 For this identification I am much indebted to Dr. J. Clutton-Brock of the British Museum (Natural History). The identification is on the basis of some of the teeth and one limb, and requires to be confirmed by further detailed study, particularly in view of the possibility of interbreeding with the ass (Dr. Clutton-Brock has identified an articulated limb from Room 49 Level I B (6G 65: 77) as being probably ass).

41 We pass over the square 6G 74 where the area exposed is hardly sufficient to permit any general conclusions, except that the complex of buildings extended further southwards at this point.

42 Since this conclusion would be particularly distasteful to those engaged in surface survey programmes, we hasten to point out that a similar deduction was made by Schmidt at Fara (see above, p. 140, note 18), where the Ur III occupation of the site is firmly attested by the clay nail of Hala-adda.

43 Jacobsen, T., Iraq 22 (1960), 176CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sumer 14 (1958), 103Google Scholar.

44 See Westenholz, A., Literary and Lexical Texts and the Earliest Administrative Documents from Nippur (OSP I), in Index, p. 112Google Scholar; Edzard, D. O. and Farber, G., Die Orts- und Gewässernamen der der 3. Dynastie von Ur (Répertoire Géographique des Textes Cunéiformes, Band 2)Google Scholar, quoting YOS 4, 396, 43Google Scholar and ‘Atiqot (English Series) IV (1965), 52 (en5-si eréški)Google Scholar.

45 The writer is very much indebted to Miss J. M. Munn-Rankin for suggesting a number of improvements to the first draft of this article.

46 IAS, p. 5.

47 Delougaz, P., Pottery from the Diyala Region (hereafter Diyala Pottery) (Chicago, 1952), 128Google Scholar.

48 Reade, J. E., Iraq 30 (1968), Pl. LXXXV. 20Google Scholar; Oates, D., Iraq 32 (1970), 19, Pl. XdCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Berghe, L. Vanden, Bulletin of the Asia Institute of Pahlavi University, Shiraz 3 (1973)) Fig. 11.4 (decoration)Google Scholar.

50 Cf. Diyala Pottery, B.416.371, C.526.3620,0; Kish: Iraq 28 (1966), Pl. VI–IXGoogle Scholar.

51 In Brill, R. H. (ed.), Science and Archaeology (M.I.T., 1971), 65–79Google Scholar.

52 Diyala Pottery, p. 87.

53 Cf. for miniature: Kish—Mackay, E., AM I, Pl. XLVIII. 18Google Scholar.

54 Cf. Diyala Pottery, Pl. 95 from Khafajah.

55 AM I, Pl. LI. 19, 22Google Scholar; Diyala Pottery, Pl. 182: C.527.362.

56 AM I, Pl. LIV. 28, 34, 38, 40Google Scholar; Iraq 26 (1965), 98, Pl. XXIV D, XXV BGoogle Scholar = Langdon, S., Excavations at Kish, I, Pl. XV. 2Google Scholar (incorrectly captioned); Parrot, A., MAM III: Les Temples d'Ishtarat et de Ninni-Zaza (Paris, 1967), p. 300 nos. 3219, 3218, 3226, 3201, 3205, 3217, Fig. 314Google Scholar.

57 AM I, pp. 32, 150Google Scholar; Diyala Pottery, pp. 100 ff.

58 Diyala Pottery, pp. 108–9.

59 Parrot, A., Le Temple d'Ishtar (Paris, 1956), Fig. 107: 1548–9Google Scholar.

60 Cf. AM I, Pl. LIV. 8Google Scholar: Grave 136.

61 Diyala Pottery, p. 103; cf. Hansen, D. P., Artibus Asiae 35 (1973), Fig. 16 (Al-Hiba)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Moorey, P. R. S., Iraq 32 (1970), 101Google Scholar.

63 AM I, Pl. LIV. 57Google Scholar; Parrot, A., Les Temples d'Ishtarat et de Ninni-Zaza, pp. 293 ff., Figs. 314–5Google Scholar.

64 Cf. Diyala Pottery, Pl. 81 a–c; Watelin, L.Ch., Excavations at Kish IV, Pl. XVI. 5–6 (upside down)Google Scholar.

65 Cf. AM I, Pl. XIV. 6, Pl. LU. 9 for type of potteryGoogle Scholar.

66 Cf. Diyala Pottery, Pl. 92F.

67 Cf. Diyala Pottery, Pl. 94; AM I, Pl. XLVI. 3Google Scholar.

68 Cf. AM I, Pl. XLV. 4Google Scholar; Diyala Pottery, Pl. 106.

69 Cf. Woolley, C. L., Ur Excavations IV, Pl. 11 CGoogle Scholar.

70 Delougaz, P., The Temple Oval at Khafājah (OIP 53), fig. 51Google Scholar.

71 Cf. especially AM I, Pl. XLVII. 1 (human), 7, 11 (animal)Google Scholar.

72 The classification of these seals, and the sealings at Abu Salabikh, will need special attention in the light of Dr. Martin's work on the Fara sealings in: Le Temple et le Culte (Proceedings of the 20th. Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale held at Leiden in 1972; Istanbul, 1975), 173 ffGoogle Scholar. See also R. M. Boehmer, ZA 59 (1969), 261 ff.

73 Barnett, R. D., Syria 43 (1966), 259 ff., Fig. 1. 23, Pl. XXIII. 3, 5, 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 Diyala Pottery, Pl. 62: male figure.

75 Frankfort, H., Stratified Cylinder Seals from the Diyala Region (OIP 72), Pl. 12. 99 ff.Google Scholar; Amiet, P., MDP XLIII (1972), Pl. 119: 1172, 1184Google Scholar.

76 Cf. the upper register of a cylinder seal from Mari: Parrot, A., Le Temple d'Ishlar, Pl. LXV. 329Google Scholar.

77 Cf. AM I, Pl. XXXV, XXXVI. 3 for type of plaqueGoogle Scholar.

78 Cf. AM I, Pl. XLII. 17Google Scholar—the plain blades and sickle blades here are exactly like those from Abu Salabikh.

79 Cf. AM I, Pl. XLII. 16Google Scholar; H. Frankfort, OIC 17 (1934), Figs. 28–9.

80 Cf. AM I, Pl. LVIII. 19–21Google Scholar; Pl. LVIII 8–9.

81 Cf. AM I, Pl. XLIII. 1Google Scholar.

82 Cf. Woolley, C. L., Ur Excavations II, Pl. 226Google Scholar: Type S. 19; Parrot, A., Le Temple d'Ishtar, Pl. LXIV. 583, 603, 1399Google Scholar.

83 It is a copy of the type: AM I, Pl. XXXIX. 2448Google Scholar.

84 van Buren, E. D., The Fauna of Ancient Mesopotamia … (An. Or. 18), 103–4Google Scholar.

85 Leemans, W. F., Foreign Trade in the Old Babylonian Period (Leiden, 1960), 25 n. 4Google Scholar.