Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

DURING 19 CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 221
consisted of a platform of unbaked bricks crowned by an
edifice of considerable size and extent. But he was not satisfied
with this general result. Though the lack of drinking
water in the immediate vicinity of the ruins and the proverbial
insecurity of the whole region did not allow him to pitch
his tents anywhere near the mounds, he was by no means
discouraged. During all his several expeditions to Tello he
established his headquarters at Mantar-Qaraghol, in the midst
of the green fields embellishing the left bank of the Shatt
el-Hai, whence he walked or rode every morning to the ruins,
to return in the evening to the waters of the river. After
seven months of successful excavations conducted during the
springs of 1877 an(^ ^78, he obtained a leave of absence
from his duties at Basra, and sailed to France as the bearer
of important news and with the first
fruit of his archaeological
researches.
By following a ravine ending at the point where the fine
sculptured fragment was discovered, he
had reached a kind
of deep recess in the outer northeast wall of the building
which stood on the platform. No sooner did the workmen
begin to remove the debris with which it was filled,
when the lower part of a great statue in dolerite, partly covered
with a long cuneiform inscription, rose gradually out of
the depth.
It became at once evident that the shoulder piece
bearing the name of Gudea, referred to above, was a portion
of this extraordinary monument. De Sarzec having no
means at his disposal to remove the heavy torso, took a
squeeze of the inscription and buried the precious relic again
for a future occasion. Two years later, when Rassam visited
Tello, he found its upper part exposed again by the Arabs. 1
1
Comp. Rassam, " Asshur and the Land of Nimrod," New York, 1897,
p. 276, on the one side, and De Sarzec and Heuzey, D'ecouvertes en Chaldee,
p. 5, on the other. The British explorer asserts that this first statue unearthed
by De Sarzec is identical with the one previously discovered and mutilated by
the natives, who sold the bust and arm to George Smith. But this statement