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

DURING 19 CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 225
the unique type of these priceless specimens of ancient
Babylonian art.
With the exception of the six
which he spent in the cooler serdabs 1
hottest months of the year,
of Baghdad, to restore
his health affected by the usual swamp fevers of 'Iraq, he
continued his
labors at Tello until the spring of 188 ^finding
even older remains below the foundations of the abovementioned
palace, when the threatening attitude of the
Muntefik(j) tribes, and the growing insecurity of his own
party drove him away from the ruins. At the end of May
in the following year he arrived at Paris a second time with
a most valuable collection of antiquities, which by special
trade from the Sultan he had been allowed to carry away
with him as
The first
his personal property.
announcement of De Sarzec's fundamental discovery
before the French Academy, 2 and Oppert's impressive
address at the Fifth Internationa] Congress of Orientalists
at Berlin, 3 opening with the significant words :
" Since
the discovery of Nineveh ... no discovery has been
made which compares in importance with the recent excavations
in Chaldea," had fairly prepared the scientific world
for the extraordinary character and the rare value of these
ancient monuments. But when they were finally unpacked
and for the first time exhibited in the galleries of the
1
Subterranean cool rooms which are provided in every better house of
Baghdad in order to enable the inhabitants to escape the often intolerable heat
of the daytime during the summer months.
2
Published in Revue Archeologique, new series, vol. xlii, Nov., 1881,
pp. 56 and 259-272 : Les Fouilles de Chaldee ; communication d'' une lettre de
M. de Sarzec par Leon Heuzey.
* Die franz'osischen Ausgrabungen in Chaldda, pp. 235-248 of Abhandlungen
des Berliner Orientalisten- Congresses. A useful synopsis of the early
literature on De Sarzec's discoveries was given by Hommel in
Die Semitischen
Volker und Sprachen, Leipzig, 1883, p. 459, note 104, to which may be
added an article by Georges Perrot in Revue des Deux-Mondes, Oct. 1, 1882,
pp. 525, seqq.