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Recent British Museum Excavations in Assyria1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2009

John Curtis
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Extract

It is a great honour for me to be asked to give the Richard Barnett memorial lecture. I knew Richard Barnett well, and had the privilege of working with him at the British Museum for three years before his retirement. He was a great source of inspiration, and I and many others owe him a considerable debt of gratitude. I have chosen as my subject recent British Museum excavations in Assyria, partly because I believe this would have been of some slight interest to Dr Barnett. Both the British Museum and Assyria were close to his heart. He worked in the Museum for more than 40 years, and from 1955 to 1974 was Keeper of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities. Throughout this time Assyria was a special interest, and Dr Barnett did some of his most important work on Nimrud ivories, the Assyrian reliefs and the Balawat Gates. Inevitably, the role of the British Museum in making these pioneering discoveries in the nineteenth century held a particular fascination for him.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , July 1992 , pp. 147 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1992

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Footnotes

1

This lecture—the Richard Barnett Memorial Lecture—was delivered at the Anniversary General Meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society on 10 May 1990.

References

2 Throughout the project, and later at the sites of Nimrud and Balawat, the officials of the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and Heritage were unfailingly helpful and courteous and made every effort to facilitate our work. We owe a particular debt of gratitude to the Director of Antiquities, Dr Mu‘uyyad Sa'id.

3 Iraq xix (1957), p. 38

4 For a full publication of this site, see Curtis, John, Excavations at Qasrij Cliff and Khirbet Qasrij (Saddam Dam Report 10), British Museum 1989.Google Scholar

5 The excavations at Khirbet Khatuniyeh took place in spring 1984 and spring 1985. In 1984 the team consisted of J. E. Curtis, D. Collon and R. K. Uprichard, and in 1985 Curtis, J. E., Green, A. R., Melnyczek, M., Norman, K., Searight, A., Knight, W. and Mitchell, T.C.. A preliminary report on the excavations at Khatuniyeh has appeared in Researches on the Antiquities of (the) Saddam Dam Basin Salvage (Baghdad, 1987), pp. 73–7.Google Scholar

6 Mallowan, M.E.L., Nimrud and its Remains (London, 1966), i, pl. 124.Google Scholar

7 See n. 4. Excavations at Khirbet Qasrij were in 1983 and 1984. The team in 1984 comprised J. E. Curtis, D. Collon and R. K. Uprichard.

8 The Tell Deir Situn fibula has been published in Curtis, J.E. (ed.), Bronzeworking Centres of Western Asia c. 1000–539 B.C. (London, 1988), pls. 89a-c.Google Scholar

9 Muscarella, O.W. has written about such fibulae in Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica, VII–VII1 (1976–1977), p. 316;Google Scholar another example from Assyria, in gold, is now known from one of the royal tombs at Nimrud.

10 The expedition that worked at both Nimrud and Balawat consisted of J. E. Curtis (Director), D. Collon (Deputy Director), A. R. Green and G. Herrmann (Assistant Directors), D. Tucker, L. G. Davies, D. Dollery, P. Dollery, S.James and A. Searight. We also benefited from the advice of Lady Mallowan who stayed with us for an extended period. Other welcome visitors included Mrs K. R. Maxwell-Hyslop.

11 For a history of the excavations at Balawat, see Curtis, J.E. (ed.), Fifty Years of Mesopotamian Discovery (London, 1982), pp. 113–19.Google Scholar

12 The cuneiform inscription reads:

[KUR AŠ-ma of the] land of Aššur (am I)

A corner fragment of the same or a similar wall-plaque, but uninscribed, was found at a distance of 8 m, also on the surface of the main mound. Other fragments of glazed wall-plaque were found at Balawat by the Mallowan expedition:

(a) ND831 (Iraq Museum), inscribed uruim-gúr-dBE, Iraq, XIII (1951), p. 119Google Scholar, Postgate, J.N., Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud II, p. 263,Google Scholar Dayton, J., Minerals, Metals, Glazing and Man (London, 1978), p. 375,Google Scholar fig. 338.

(b) BT 154 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, MMA 58.31.29), Albenda, P., Iraq, LIII (1991), p. 50Google Scholar, n. 26, pl. Xb.