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

55C
EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
containing his pen-holder and inkstand and a little
scrap of
crumbling parchment inscribed with a few Hebrew characters,
large quantities of late pottery and several rotten bags
filled with kufic silver and copper coins were gathered by
our different expeditions in the upper stratum of Nuffar.
All these antiquities show that the city existed in some form
or other even as late as the early Arabic period, and that
the Jewish element was strongly represented among its
inhabitants.
About a. d. iooo or soon afterwards the site
must have been abandoned definitely. Arabic historians
occasionally refer to it. But the latest inscribed antiquities
thus far excavated are thin silver coins of Mervan ibn Mohammed,
the last 'Omayyade caliph (744-749), and others
of the first 'Abbaside caliphs of Baghdad, among them
Harun ar-Rashid (786-809 a. d.), the well-known contemporary
of Charlemagne, and several of his less famous
successors in the ninth century. 1
In examining the post-Babylonian ruins of Nuffar, which
represent about twelve hundred years of strange history, we
distinguished six different periods. Two of them, however,
can be recognized with certainty only in the large temple
area. Beginning at the surface of the mounds, we first come
upon the extensive remains of the early Arabic period, easily
determined by low mud houses containing vessels and
potsherds, Hebrew Mandean and Syriac incantation bowls,
Kufic coins, shallow graves, etc. (pp. 313, 337). Next we
reach the numerous Sassanian
burials, characterized by certain
forms of coffins and different kinds of pottery drains
which often descend far into the real Babylonian strata
below, by rude seals badly engraved with human figures,
animals, plants and the like (p. 326), and by many minor
antiquities. The layers then following are filled with the
1
According to information from Halil Bey, Director of the Imperial Ottoman
Museum, who at my request kindly examined all our excavated Arabic
coins, as far as they had then been cleaned.