Books in Brief

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Foundations in the Dust: The Story of Mesopotamian Exploration

Seton Lloyd

Revised and Enlarged Edition

(Thames and Hudson, Ltd., London, 1980) 216 pp., 80 illustrations, $19.95.

The Archaeology of Mesopotamia: From the Old Stone Age to the Persian Conquest

Seton Lloyd

(Thames and Hudson, Ltd., London, 1978) 252 pp., 174 illustrations, $17.95

Near Eastern archaeology still conjures up two contradictory images. The first pictures dusty tombs filled with the glint of gold, or dark bazaars where apothecaries invite favored clients into the back of their shops to examine curious antiquities. Excavators are intrepid adventurers who piece together ancient civilizations in brilliant flashes of inspiration; their expeditions resemble those described in Agatha Christie novels. The second image is less immediate in its appeal. It is “dirt archaeology.” It charts the passage of time in terms of pottery sequences, superimposed building strata, and the evolution of iconographic motifs on specific categories of objects. It results in a reconstructor of ancient civilization, first prehistoric, and later, historical, when correlated with written records. The second image is the modern view of Near eastern archaeology, as a discipline and not an entertainment. But of course, no excavators begin a digging season without some dreams of archives or royal tombs; they nevertheless devote their efforts to sherds, building plans, bones and pollens, and not to treasure hunting.

With the re-issuance of Foundations in the Dust, and the publication of The Archaeology of Mesopotamia, the noted British archaeologist Seton Lloyd has described both these aspects of archaeology for his readers. Foundations in the Dust recounts the history of exploration in Mesopotamia, while The Archaeology of Mesopotamia is a strict textbook approach to the sequence of civilizations in the land between the two rivers. Both works succeed admirably in giving lucid presentations of their closely allied subjects.

Foundations in the Dust was first published in 1947 and reprinted by popular demand several times in the following decade. Lloyd’s new edition is the finest, however, as it has, along with its elegant Thames and Hudson format, profuse illustrations and an additional chapter on post-war excavations in Iraq. The book begins with a lyrical description of the Iraqi countryside, a reflection of Lloyd’s own attraction to Mesopotamia. It is easy for the reader to understand the lure which this area held for the first 18th century British scholars in Iraq the first British Resident in Baghdad, Claudius Rich, and the adventuresome James Silk Buckingham. Their reports brought the ancient remains of Mesopotamia to wide European attention and prompted the great interest of the following century in anything Near eastern. Lloyd then recounts with some indulgence the decades of systematic looting that ensued, as museums funded limited research for the purpose of obtaining cuneiform tablets for their collections and other artifacts for their galleries. First Austen Layard, then his successor Hormuzd Rassam, tunneled their way through Assyrian mounds for the British Museum. To the south, Ernest de Sarzec was digging for statuary to grace the Louvre. Layard at least published in some detail his extraordinary findings. The accounts both delighted and amazed his readers, but the recurring observation about objects crumbling to dust upon discovery (see Foundations, pp. 116, 138) indicates to what extent his investigations were destructive.

The turning point occurred at the end of the 19th century, when a German team led by Robert Koldewey began a scientific excavation of Babylon and thus ushered in a new era in archaeological research. The standards developed by the Germans have since served as a basis for all systematic excavations in the Near East. The final development, in conjunction with the movement toward Iraqi independence after the first World War, was the creation of an Iraqi Department of Antiquities in 1917. Lloyd concludes with a chapter on his own considerable involvement with Iraqi excavations in the years before and after the second World War, and the important discoveries of recent years.

Lloyd’s The Archaeology of Mesopotamia is the proper sequel to Foundations in the Dust, for it presents the reconstruction of the findings from these two centuries of investigations. In a series of precise and well-illustrated chapters, Lloyd describes the earliest Paleolithic settlements in the Near East, their increasingly civilized Neolithic and Bronze Age successors, and, in conclusion, the spectacular Iron Age cultures of the Neo-Assyrians and the Neo-Babylonians. The book is an excellent review of present archaeological knowledge of Mesopotamia, both for the student and the interested layperson. Its attention to architectural finds in their excavated contexts distinguishes this treatment from earlier texts on the subject, which relied far more heavily on the artistic repertoire for each period. Lloyd’s familiarity with the key archaeological sites is particularly noticeable in his excellent discussion of the fourth and third millennia B.C. (the proto-Sumerians, the Sumerians, and their Akkadian followers)—indeed the period for which there is, at present, the greatest amount of excavated material.

The Archaeology of Mesopotamia represents the same move toward a more analytical approach to the ancient Near Fast that is outlined in the last chapter of Foundations in the Dust. Both books are fitting witnesses to the remarkable breadth of their author, Seton Lloyd, as archaeologist, scholar, antiquarian, and writer.

The Holy Land: An Archaeological Guide from Earliest Times to 1700

Jerome Murphy-O’Connor

(Oxford University Press, 1980) 320+ xvi p., 109 figures, paperback $9.95. (Also available in hardcover)

If you did not carry this book with you when you went to the Holy Land, you should return there with it (in its convenient compact paperback size) to see what you missed. This, of course, assumes that as a reader of BAR, you are seriously interested in finding your way even into obscure corners and in understanding the sometimes tangled strata of the tels and the usually complex reconstructions of existing monuments.

For example, while looking at the large-scale outdoor model of Herodian Jerusalem at the Holyland Hotel, you may wonder about that distant north wall of the city and may be 010interested to learn this opinion: “The line assumed by the northernmost wall of the model rests on very slight archaeological evidence, and all the buildings it encloses are the product of pure imagination.” If you are standing by the Stone of Unction in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, you may think that the wall in front of you obstructs an otherwise good view under a great arch across the church, and may be interested to read: “The recent restoration of the arch made the wall unnecessary but the Greeks now had nowhere to hang their icons, so a new one was built just for this purpose!”

The organization of the guide is admirably clear. Jerusalem sites are grouped by quarters Muslim, Christian, Armenian (which is Christian too), Jewish, Haram esh-Sharif, etc. Sites covering the broad area of Biblical events are listed alphabetically so you can immediately find the ones on your own itinerary. Since 5,000 historical sites and monuments are officially recognized in the Holy Land, and more are added almost every day (or so it seems), they cannot all appear in this small book. The terminus ad quem date is 1,700 A.D.; in Israel, something must be at least that old to be officially considered an antiquity. The selection of ancient sites has been governed also by considerations of accessibility and intelligibility—can you reach the site and, once there, can you discern something significant?

The text is so compact that you must accustom yourself to the term “C4” representing the fourth century of the present era. You must also accustom yourself to the numerous and very helpful drawings being positioned at different angles on the page—the “north” arrow rarely points straight up and down. The opening brief historical out line is excellent but telescoped to such an extent that it permits misreading. All of Herod’s sons seem to have been displaced by direct Roman control in 6 A.D.—a phenomenon which would have left Herod Antipas out of the Gospels.

The author is Professor of New Testament and Intertestamental Literature at the Dominican École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem, the first graduate school for Biblical and archaeological studies in the Holy Land—an ideal vantage point from which to write the guide. Professor Murphy-O’Connor is also known for his Pauline and Qumran studies.

So have an instructive trip to the Holy Land with this sometimes humorous, sometimes eloquent, and always invaluable guide in hand. You might also look at Hershel Shanks’s The City of David and Richard M. Mackowski’s Jerusalem, City of Jesus for more detail on those areas, and even this reviewer’s new Discovering Israel for more about Israel through the centuries and all the way down (or up) to the peace treaty with Egypt.

Foundations in the Dust: The Story of Mesopotamian Exploration