Bint-el-Amir, the mound which contained the ruins of this renowned temple, was conical in shape and covered a surface of more than eight acres.[23] A scientific examination of a mound of such gigantic proportions was in itself no light task, while the exploration of the buried temple was a work of pioneering, none of the large Babylonian temples having as yet been completely excavated.
PLATE VII
Excavations in the Temple Court: Nippur
(From C. S. Fisher’s “Excavations at Nippur,” by permission)
The excavation of this temple proved that the stage-tower “did not occupy the central part of the temple-court,” and though it was undoubtedly the most conspicuous feature of the temple-area, it was not actually the temple itself: the latter is to be found in a large building adjacent to the stage-tower. This building is at all events as early as the time of the Shar-Gâni-sharri and his son Narâm-Sin. The stage-tower, which probably never had more than three stages, owed its latest form to Ur-Engur, king of Ur (circ. 2400), though Ashur-bani-pal, King of Assyria nearly two thousand years after, had occasion to repair and restore it. The bricks of Ashur-bani-pal, which are intermingled with those of Ur-Engur, bear the stamped inscription, “To Bel, the King of the lands, his King, Ashur-bani-pal, his favourite shepherd, the powerful King, King of the four quarters of the earth, built E-kur, his beloved temple, with baked bricks.” Four feet behind the facing-wall of Ur-Engur, large bricks characteristic of Narâm-Sin’s time were discovered, while the bricks of which the innermost core of the tower was formed belong to the pre-Sargonic and early Sumerian days.[24]
The extreme antiquity of the lower strata in this mound may be gauged from the fact that Haynes in descending into the pre-Sargonic period below the pavement of Narâm-Sin, penetrated through some thirty feet of ruins before he arrived at the virgin soil.
One of the most interesting discoveries in the early strata was a vaulted drain (cf. Fig. [15] and p. 170) which purports to be the earliest Babylonian arch known, while a large number of terra-cotta pipes as well as a terra-cotta drain were also brought to light. The smaller objects include votive stelæ (cf. Fig. [25]), tablets, cylinder-seals and terra-cotta vases (cf. Figs. [92], [93]). But a large number of relics contained in the strata above the level of Narâm-Sin were found to be pre-Sargonic in spite of their position in the mound. They included door-sockets, fragments of vases, slabs, statues, and more than fifty brick-stamps, bearing an inscription of Sargon or Narâm-Sin.
But the discovery and partial excavation of the Temple “Library”[25] or “archive” at Nippur have produced the most far-reaching and epoch-making results, for thereby literally thousands of tablets have been unearthed, affording an amount of new material for Assyriological study seldom paralleled in the history of Babylonian exploration.
The greater part of the excavated material[26] is scientific or literary in character. The majority of the tablets are unbaked, and have consequently suffered from the detrimental effects of time, climate and other influences, among which may be particularly mentioned the havoc wrought by the invading Elamites during the third millennium B.C. In consequence of this, the decipherer’s task is much more arduous than it would otherwise have been, but in spite of the vandalism of the Elamites and the work of destruction which they sought to, and to some extent did accomplish, the archæologist probably owes the preservation of these tablets to their burial in the ruined débris of which they formed a part. These unbaked clay tablets seem to have been generally arranged on shelves made of clay and about 1-1/2 feet wide, while they contain every variety of “literature,” treating of astronomy, astrology, mathematics, geography, history, medicine, grammar and religion. One of the tablets gives us valuable information regarding the temple itself; the name of the great hall of the temple was Emakh, and though En-lil and his consort were without doubt the principal deities of the place, there were some twenty-four shrines dedicated to other gods, just as was the case in E-sagila, the great Temple of Marduk at Babylon, recently excavated by the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft.