Archeological Excavation of Crete – 2

As the earth was removed from the edge of the platform of plano-convex bricks, there appeared the ancient refuse-heap of the temple.

Continuing Archeological Excavation of Crete,
our selection from Dr. Edgar J. Banks. The selection is presented in three easy 5 minute installments.

Previously in Archeological Excavation of Crete.

Time: 3800 BC
Place: Island of Crete

As the earth was removed from the edge of the platform of plano-convex bricks, there appeared the ancient refuse-heap of the temple. Most of the objects which adorn the archeological museums of Europe were once discarded by the ancients as worthless, and this old temple dump proved to be a veritable treasure-house. Dozens of baskets of marble, alabaster, onyx, and porphyry vases, fragmentary and entire, were recovered. Some of the bases bore inscriptions in a most archaic character; others were engraved with strange de signs or inlaid with ivory and stone. Representing almost every conceivable shape, they present a valuable contribution to the study of the earliest art.

Among the most interesting objects of a lower stratum at Bismya was a conch shell from which a section had been cut, so that it formed a perfect oil-lamp, while the valve of the shell served as a groove for the support of the wick. The sea- shell was the lamp of primitive man. In the temple dump appeared several alabaster blocks cut into the form suggested by the early shell lamp. Later, the lamps of stone were decorated with reticulated lines; the groove for the wick was ornamented, and in one example it terminates in the head of a ram. Thus the sea-shell is now known to have been the ancestor of the lamp which later was adopted by the Hebrews and the Greeks and then by modern nations.

Trenches were dug about the base of the temple tower, where there seemed to have been secret passages for the priests. While excavating beneath the west corner of the tower, a bright-eyed Arab excitedly called me to the trench, and pointed to a piece of white marble projecting from the clay. Transferring the agitated Arabs to another part of the ruin, I waited until the work of the day was over, and then, with my own hands, dug out the oldest statue in the world. It was lying upon its back as it had fallen from the platform above. In cutting away the hard clay at its feet, I found that the toes were missing, but they were recovered in fragments at the base. Then I dug toward the head, but at the neck the marble came to an end. The head was gone! We bore the heavy statue upon our shoulders to the camp, and there, placing it in a bathtub, we scrubbed away the earth which clung to it. Upon the right upper shoulder appeared an archaic inscription of three lines. Just a month later, while excavating at the farther end of the trench, a hundred feet away, two marble heads were found lying upon the floor in the corner of the chamber; one of them, when placed upon the headless neck, fitted it, and the statue was complete!

The statue is remarkable. Not only is it the oldest statue in the world, but it is the only perfect Babylonian statue yet discovered. The style of its art, its costume, its arms which at the elbows are free from the body, its location when found, and the archaic character of its inscription all point to a date not far from 4500 B.C., and justify the assertion that at that remote age Babylonian civilization was at its highest point. The brief inscription, containing a mass of the information for which we had been seeking, gave “Emach” as the name of the temple, “Udnun” as the city in which we were excavating, and “Daud” or David as the Sumerian king whom the statue represents. The names of the temple and city had appeared on the recently discovered Hammurabi Code, but the name of the king was unknown excepting as that of the Hebrew David who lived 3500 years later. The statue, although its discovery was a sufficient recompense for the excavations, finally resulted in closing the work at Bismya. During a revolution among the Arabs of the surrounding desert, our camp was raided, and among other things the statue disappeared. Later it appeared in Bagdad, and although it was chiefly through my own efforts that it was restored to the Turkish Government, the excuse for which the authorities had long been searching was at hand, and the excavations were suspended.

Excavations in the upper strata of the temple hill resulted in the unique discovery of the evolution of the brick. The earliest of all bricks found in the lowest strata were merely sun-dried lumps of clay, and it appears that bricks were not burned until about 4500 B.C., the date given to those of a plano-convex shape. Such bricks are flat on the bottom, where they were placed upon the ground to dry, and rounded upon the top, and instead of being laid flat they were set upon edge, herring-bone fashion, and cemented with clay or bitumen. The inscription which characterized the bricks of a later period had not yet appeared, but the kings who employed the plano-convex bricks conceived the idea of giving them a distinguishing mark by pressing the thumb into the clay before it was baked. That thumb-mark was the origin of the brick inscription. The bricks of later rulers were larger and less convex, and lines varying in direction and in number were drawn by the fingers to serve as marks. In 3800 B.C., Sargon adopted the large, square brick, the form of which continued to the end of the Babylonian Empire, and he appears to have been the first to employ an inscription. Bismya yielded three brick stamps of Naram Sin, the son of Sargon. Each was inscribed “Naram Sin, the builder of the temple of the goddess Ishtar.” This long series of bricks discovered at Bismya, forty-five in number, not only shows the evolution of the brick, but presents the archeologist with a clue to the chronology of the earliest Babylonian ruins, enabling him to tell at a glance their relative dates.

Continued.

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