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

DURING 19TB CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 335
the discovery in one of these rooms of a large number of
Cassite votive objects — the first great collection of antiquities
of this dynasty ever found — induced him to ascribe this
whole row of booths to
a time a thousand years earlier than
it actually was. He formulated a new fantastic theory, according
to which these cameos of agate and thin round tablets
of lapis
lazuli, with their brief votive inscriptions, were sold
as charms to pilgrims, some of them being " a sort of masses
said for the repose of the soul of such and such a king."
The true facts are the following. All these interesting
Cassite relics in agate, magnesite, feldspar, ivory, turquoise,
malachite, lapis lazuli, and an imitation of the last-mentioned
three stones in glass, " together with gold, amethyst, porphyry
and other material not yet worked," were originally
contained in
a wooden box, traces of which (carbonized fragments
and copper nails) were lying around them. Most,
if not indeed the whole, of this unique collection had been
presented by a number of Cassite kings to various shrines
of the temple of Bel somewhere between 1400 and 1200
b. c. A thousand years later, when the temple was in ruins,
an inhabitant of Nippur, and himself a dealer in precious
stones, searched in the neighborhood of his booth for raw
material, and discovered them, or purchased them from
other diggers. He was about to manufacture beads for necklaces
and bracelets, rings, charms, and the like out of them, 1
1
A votive cylinder of Kurigalzu in agate had been cut into three beads
without regard to its legend ; a votive inscription had been erased insufficiently
from an axe-head in lapis lazuli ; a small block of the same material
showed a deep incision beneath the inscribed portion, just about to be cut off,
while several other blocks in lapis lazuli and magnesite had been reduced considerably
from their original weight, as could easily be established. Comp.
Hilprecht, "The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania,"
series A, vol. i, part 1, nos. 28, 50, 74, and plate xi, nos. 25 and 28 ;
part 2, no. 140, and Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie, pp. 190, seqq., where,
misled by Peters' reports, I gave an erroneous interpretation of the facts
treated above.