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

454 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
was too wet, the light too poor and the trenches perhaps
too short, they did not reveal positive traces of the earlier
building. We were, however, rewarded by another discovery
made in the most northern trench. At a point several
feet below the level of Naram-Sin's pavement and still
outside
of the ziggurrat, we came upon a well-defined small bed
of black and gray ashes 3 to 4 inches high. Several rude
blocks of stone lay around it, and the fragments of a
bronze 1 sword or dagger were found among the ashes.
What did these few ancient remains from below the Sargon
level in the neighborhood of the ziggurrat indicate ? Haynes
had found such beds of ashes mixed with fragments of pottery
and occasionally accompanied by objects in
copper and
bronze (nails, knives, battle axes, portions of vessels) or
beads in stone, silver, and even gold, rings and other jewelry,
seal cylinders, etc., everywhere in the lower strata to the
southeast of the stage-tower (comp. pp. 401, seqq.). My
curiosity was aroused, and I was determined to make an effort
to ascertain the meaning of these remarkable relics.
1. Unfortunately the greater part of the southeast section
of the temple enclosure had been removed before my arrival.
But Haynes' perpendicular cuts enabled me at least
the single strata of the
to obtain an excellent side view of all
remaining unexplored portions from the Sargon level down
to the virgin soil. As soon as I began to examine them one
after another, I
was struck with the enormous mass of larger
and smaller fragments of pottery intermingled with ashes
which peeped out of the ground wherever my eye
glanced.
I set to work to extricate these pieces carefully with a
1
In which antimony took the place of tin. The analysis of one of the
fragments by the late Dr. Helm of Danzig showed 96.38 parts of copper,
1.73 parts of antimony, 0.24 part of iron, 0.22 part of nickel, 1.43 parts
of oxygen and loss, traces of lead. Comp. Helm and Hilprecht in the proceedings
of the Berliner anthropologischen Gesellschaft, session of February
16, 1901, p. 159.