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University of Pennsylvania Musuem, Philadelphia

During the Nippur expedition’s final season, field director John Henry Haynes brought his new bride Cassandria (carried on the litter) to the site. Bossy and opinionated, Cassandria was unpopular with most of Haynes’s co-excavators, including Hilprecht. The prickly Assyriologist indignantly accused Cassandria of interfering with Haynes’s excavations and intimated that Mesopotamia was no place for a lady. But Hilprecht conceded that Cassandria was an excellent housekeeper. During her year-long stay in Mesopotamia, the new Mrs. Haynes renovated and expanded the American encampment and took over such domestic chores as cooking and entertaining guests. Under her authority, Hilprecht joked, the accommodations at Nippur became a “perfect little paradise.”