volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

104 Excavations at Kal'at Sharkdt.
work on the remains of the temple of Ishtar have
identified the remains of several temples to the goddess
which succeeded each other on the same site. The
development of the defences of Ashur has been carefully
worked out/ and the publication of the historical
inscriptions begun. ^ It has been possible to watch the
course of this great work through the series of letters by
Andrae which appeared in the Mitteilungen of the
Society, but it is to be hoped that he will summarize the
results of his labours in a single volume, and do for
Ashur what Koldewey has done for Babylon. It is
impossible not to regret that Layard and Rassam did
not make use of the golden opportunity they had of
excavating Ashur and carrying off rich archaeological
spoils, for in their day they had permission to take
possession of anything and everything they dug up,
and there was no Imperial Ottoman Museum to obstruct
their researches. Because they thought there was no
chance of finding at Kal'at Shark&,t the bulls and basreliefs
with which their minds were obsessed, neither
of them found there " any trace of its former magnificence,"
and neither saw any " sign of any ancient
building."^ A visitor to Kal'at Sharkat during the
course of the German excavations says :
" Their methods
is undeniably thorough, and suggests unlimited resources.
You have a set of mounds before you, covering perhaps
twenty acres or more, and rising to a height of about
eighty feet. A light railway is laid down running well
out into the desert ; and the whole of these mounds, or
something like it, goes through a fine sieve and is carried
into the wilderness and dumped. When a pavement is
reached in this process that level is cleared absolutely,
and everything worth preserving is preserved, with
careful plans showing the position in which it was found.
Then that pavement is broken up and progress made to
the next level ; and so the work is continued till virgin
' Andrae, Die Fesiungswerke von Assur, Leipzig, 1913.
* Messerschmidt, op. cit., Part I.
' Trans. Soc. Bihl. Arch., vol. viii, p. 364.