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

388 EXPLORATIONS IX BIBLE LAXDS
mention several well-formed copper nails and fragments
of copper vessels, a fine brick stamp of Sargon I., the
fragment of a pre-Sargonic mace-head, two slightly concave
seal cylinders in white shell and stone, about twenty
well-preserved unbaked clay tablets antedating the period
of Sargon, a great quantity of large
but badly broken fragments
of similar tablets, and, above all,
an important stone
tablet 7 inches long, 5 % inches wide, and a little over 1
inches thick, completely covered on all its six faces with
the
most archaic cuneiform writing known from the monuments
of NurTar and Tello.
Ur-Gur's clay pavement was separated from the next one
below, i. e.j the fifth one from the top, by a layer of earth
generally only a few inches deep, — a circumstance that cannot
surprise us, as that ruler very evidently removed a considerable
mass of debris in order to secure a solid basis for
his own unusually thick pavement. Having cut through
this thin layer, Haynes, in truth, could exclaim with King
Nabonidos : What
for ages no king among the kings had
seen, the old foundation of Naram-Sin, son of Sargon, that
saw I. More than this, he saw the inscribed bricks of both
of these ancient rulers, whose very existence until then had
been seriously doubted by different scholars. The extraordinary
value of this pavement for Babylonian archaeology
lies in the fact that it supplied the first irrefutable proof of
the historical character of this ancient Semitic kingdom,
that it
enabled us more clearly to comprehend the chronological
order of the rulers of Tello and Sargon I, and that
it enabled us to establish new and indubitable criteria to
distinguish between pre-Sargonic and post-Sargonic constructions
and antiquities. It is, therefore, a matter of
the utmost regret that Haynes, not fully realizing the
unique importance of what he had been so fortunate to
discover, removed this precious pavement almost completely.
It consisted of two courses of baked bricks. The