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

DURING 19 CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 247
large objects which could not be deposited within.
On this
theory it is easy to explain the existence of so many artificial
reservoirs, water-courses, and wells in the immediate neighborhood
of this interesting structure. As indicated above,
they served various practical purposes in connection with
this large rural establishment, such as cleansing and washing,
the storing of dates, the preparation of date wine, and
the pressing of oil.
Like the storerooms of the temple at Sippara so frequently
mentioned in the later cuneiform inscriptions, this
sacred magazine of the earliest rulers of Lagash was not
exclusively a granary and oil-cellar.
According to time and
circumstances, it was turned into an armory or into a safe
for specially valuable temple property, vessels and votive
offerings of every description, as a small lot of copper daggers,
fragments of reliefs, and two inscribed door-sockets
found on the floor of the rooms sufficiently demonstrate.
Many other objects of art gathered from the debris around
this building may therefore have formed part of the treasures
which, previous to the final destruction of the city,
were kept within its walls. Modest and simple as this
whole temple annex appears to us from our present standpoint,
it was in every way adapted to the needs of the ancient
population of Shir-pur-la , on its lofty terrace equally
protected against the annual inundations of the rivers and
the sudden invasion of hostile armies.
Among the portable antiquities which rewarded De Sarzec's
labors during the three campaigns conducted from
1893 to 1895, about 30,000 baked cuneiform tablets and
fragments constitute his most characteristic discovery. In
1894 and 1895 they were found in a small elevation a little
over 650 feet distant from the large hill which contained the
buildings of the ancient princes of Lagash just described.
The successful explorer informs us !
that he came upon two
1
Through Heuzey, in Revue d' dssyriologie, vol. iii, pp. 65-68.