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

340 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
traced its southwestern boundary wall for 164 feet, found
several uninscribed door-sockets in situ, and inferred from
the numerous remains of charred wood, burned barley, and
large red spots seen everywhere on the walls, doubtless
due to the effects of intense heat, that the whole complex
must have been destroyed by fire. Thus far we can follow
him without difficulty. But though nothing but late antiquities
1
at
had been discovered within this enclosure, he arrived
the startling conclusion that the large structure was a Cassite
palace, "erected somewhere between 1450 and 1250
b. c." How was this possible ? These are his arguments:
On the one hand, he unearthed a nest of about three hundred
fine clay tablets and many fragments dated in the
reigns
of Kurigalzu, Kadashman-Turgu and Nazi-Maruttash,
lying in the loose earth outside the
southwest wall of
the building in question, several yards away from it, and
slightly below its level. On the other hand, he saw a building
with similar columns on the top of a mound otherwise
unknown, called Abu Adhem, a little to the south ofjokha.
As antiquities of a period preceding 2000 b. c. had been
picked up by various travellers at Jokha and other neighboring
hills, which are situated " in the sphere of influence
ofTello,"' 2
he concluded — strange to say — that the building
at Abu Adhem " belonged to the middle of the third
millennium b. c." 3 I confess my inability to follow this
kind of reasoning or to appreciate his " evidence of the surrounding
mounds." If, indeed, the colonnade of Abu
Adhem were as ancient as Dr. Peters supposes it to be, and
1
Exxept the fragment of a statue in dolerite (a woman holding a lamb,
comp. Peters, /. c, vol. ii, p. 184), which belonged to the third pre-
Christian millennium. Being out of its original place, it was discovered in a
Jewish house on the top of the hill.
2
A ruin which, by the way, also has its Seleucido-Parthian palace lying
on the top of the temple mound.
3
As to Peters's naive arguments, comp. his "Nippur," vol. ii, pp.
186, seqq.