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

344 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
building with registering offices, a kind of bazaar, or both,
as seems to result with great probability from a study of the
tablets and from later discoveries made in this neighborhood
by the present writer. Indeed, it was a dark day when
Peters decided to excavate the ruins of Nuffar without the
aid of a specialist, whether Assyriologist or architect.
Fortunately
Pognon, then French consul at Baghdad, occasionally
lent a helping hand in determining the age and contents
of some of the better preserved inscriptions from squeezes
and photographs submitted to him, 1 and Peters could congratulate
himself that at the time of his greatest need a
Hungarian engineer, in the employ of the Ottoman government,
Coleman d'Emey, appeared suddenly in the camp
to hunt in the Babylonian swamps. He was easily induced
to devote part of his time to a renewed survey of the
principal
ruins and to the preparation of plans of the excavated
walls and rooms of the two Parthian palaces. It is true, according
to the director's own statement, the real merits of his
drawings are to be judged leniently, 2 but in connection with
Peters' scanty notes they enabled us at
least to form a general
idea of the character and disposition of the latest constructions
on the temple mound.
On the third day of May the excavations
of the second
campaign came to a more peaceful ending than those in the
previous year.
Before the trenches were abandoned, Peters
very wisely decided to send part of his material out of the
country, " to insure the preservation of something in case
of disaster." For in consequence of his stubborn refusal
to pav the often demanded blood-monev to the Sa'id, the
disappointed tribe very naturally sought to indemnify itself
in another way. A first boat-load of antiquities had left
Nuffar safelv towards the end of April. At the same time
Haynes, who not without reason feared being waylaid and
1
Comp. Peters, /. c, vol. ii,
pp. 51 and 280.
2
Comp. Peters, /. c. , vol. ii, pp. 90, seqq.