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

224 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
his promising investigations at his own responsibility and
expense, until the proper moment for action had come on
the side of the government. At the same time the necessarv
steps were taken in
Constantinople to secure the imperial
firman which established French priority over a ruin
soon to attract a more general attention. As we shall see
later in connection with the contemporaneous British excavations
in
the vilavet of Baghdad, this cautious but resolute
proceeding by a few initiated men, who carefully guarded
the secret of De Sarzec's great discovery, saved Tello from
the hands of Rassam, long the shrewd
of French explorers in
Assvria and Babvlonia.
and successful rival
2. On the 2 1st of January, 1880, De Sarzec was back
again at his encampment near the Shatt el-Ha'i, this time
accompanied by his young bride, who henceforth generally
shared the pleasures and deprivations of her husband
in the desert. During this and the following campaign
(November 12, 1880, to March 15, 1881) he concentrated
his energy on a thorough examination of the great building
hidden under Mound A and of its immediate environments,
discovering no less than nine ' large statues in dolerite,
besides several statuettes in stone and metal, fragments of
precious bas-reliefs, an onyx vase of Naram-Sin, and numerous
inscriptions and small objects of art. It is true, all the
statues
hitherto unearthed were previously decapitated, and
in some instances otherwise mutilated, but three detached
heads, soon afterwards rescued
bv De Sarzec from different
parts ot the ruins, enabled us to gain a clearer conception of
1
According to Heuzev, in the introduction to his Catalogue de la Sculpture
Chaldeenne au Musee du Louvre, Paris, 1902. De Sarzec, in his brief
description of his first four campaigns (
Decouvertes en Chald'ee, p. 6) mentions
the discovery of a tenth (or including the lower part of a statue unearthed
in 1877, an eleventh) statue, and speaks of only two detached heads then found
by him. This difference in counting is due to the size and fragmentary condition
of some of the statues and objects discovered.