NIPPUR, OR EXPLORATIONS AND ADVENTURES ON THE EUPHRATES.

No city in this country has shown an interest in archaeology at all comparable with that displayed by Philadelphia. A group of public-spirited gentlemen in that city has given without stint time and money for explorations in Babylonia, Egypt, Central America, Italy, Greece, and our own land; and has, within the last ten years amassed archaeological collections which are unsurpassed in this country. The first important work undertaken was the Babylonian Expedition. As described in the Narrative, this expedition was inaugurated by a Philadelphia banker, Mr. E. W. Clark. The enterprise was taken up in its infancy by the University of Pennsylvania, under the lead of its provost, Dr. William Pepper. Dr. Pepper made this expedition and the little band of men who had become interested in it the nucleus for further enterprises. A library and museum were built, an Archaeological Association was formed, and a band of men was gathered together in Philadelphia who have contributed with a liberality and enthusiasm quite unparalleled for the prosecution of archaeological research in almost all parts of the world. Upwards of $70,000.00 have been spent on Babylonian exploration alone; and Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania have won a noble and unique reputation, for princely liberality in the support of scientific explorations, wherever scholarship is honored and admired, both in this country and abroad.

These two volumes bear the title, Nippur. Before the explorations of the University of Pennsylvania Expedition, that name was known only to a few scholars, and they knew little more than the name of the city and that at an early period it had played an important part in the religious development of Babylonia and, through Babylonia, of the world. We now know that in the times of the glory of Nineveh and Babylon the name of “Nippur” was as familiar to the citizens of those cities as the names of Nineveh and Babylon are to us, and that Nippur exercised on their religious life and religious development an influence as potent as that of Jerusalem on our own. The Temple of Bel at Nippur was to the religion of Babylonia and Assyria very much what the Temple of Jerusalem was to our religion. It was this city, which exercised so great an influence on the religious life of the people that so long dominated the civilized world, and so materially affected and determined the religious and scientific development of both Orient and Occident, and particularly the great Temple of Bel in that city, the oldest temple in the world, which the University of Pennsylvania Expedition explored.

I have called this temple “the oldest temple in the world”. We found that Nippur was a great and flourishing city, and its temple, the Temple of Bel, the religious centre of the dominant people of the world at a period as much prior to the time of Abraham as the time of Abraham is prior to our day. We discovered written records no less than 6000 years old, and proved that writing and civilization were then by no means in their infancy. Further than that, our explorations have shown that Nippur possessed a history extending backward of the earliest written documents found by us, at least 2000 years.

The history of Assyrian and Babylonian research has been full of surprises. The explorations of Layard at Nineveh astonished the world by their revelation of buried cities and buried records, all antedating the earliest Greek and Roman civilization of which men then had any knowledge. The discoveries of George Smith—the deciphering of the libraries brought by Layard from Nineveh—excited even more wonder and surprise, by revealing the close connection existing between Babylonian and Hebrew civilization, legends, myths, and religion. The work recently done in Babylonia, both by the University of Pennsylvania Expedition, and also by the French explorations at Tello, southward of Nippur, have opened to us new vistas of ancient history. They have shown us that men in a high state of civilization, building cities, organizing states, conducting distant expeditions for conquest, ruling wide-extended countries, trafficking with remote lands, existed in Babylonia 2000 years before the period assigned by Archbishop Ussher’s chronology for the creation of the world. Our work at Nippur has carried our knowledge of civilized man 2000 years farther backward, an enormous stride to make at one time.

It was my good fortune to be, in a sense, the discoverer of Nippur, as these pages will show, but this was in very truth my good fortune, and not my merit. Our first year’s work, which is described in the first volume, was more or less of a failure, so far at least as Nippur was concerned. In contrast with this, our second campaign, which is described in the second volume, was a complete success. The amount of inscribed stones, bricks, and tablets found by us was enormous, not to speak of uninscribed objects, sarcophagi, pottery, stone and metal implements, and the like; but what was far more important, a large part of these objects came from a period up to that time regarded as not only prehistoric, but even remotely prehistoric antedating all possible history by several millenniums. In fact, we had found the oldest inscriptions ever discovered. Further, we had in large part explored the Temple of Bel, and in doing so had made an important contribution to the history of religion.

The results of the second year’s campaign were so satisfactory that it was determined to carry on the work farther, and Dr. J. H. Haynes was sent out to conduct the excavations on the lines laid down by the first expedition. His excavations extended over the years 1893-95, and were eminently successful. He explored the Temple farther, and found almost double as much inscribed material as had been unearthed by me, much of it of the very earliest period. But his excavations, by their very success, only made it clearer that all the immense mound of Nippur should be explored to its bottom-most layers. The public-spirited gentlemen of Philadelphia, so far from abandoning the Herculean task, raised the funds to send out still a third expedition to take up Dr. Haynes’s work as he laid it down. Unfortunately, the person chosen for this work allowed himself to be turned back, after he had reached the field, by the report of the danger and difficulty of the task; and for two years the work has been in abeyance ; but only in abeyance, for it is the intention of the Archeological Department of the University of Pennsylvania, so soon as the times permit, to resume and ultimately complete the excavation of this most ancient city yet discovered.

It will be many years before the immense amount of inscribed material excavated by these expeditions, part of which is in the Imperial Museum in Constantinople, and part in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, has been published, or even rendered accessible to scholars. There are, it is estimated, between 30,000 and 40,000 inscribed objects, the inscriptions on which cover a period of over 5000 years. These inscriptions are being published in facsimile form under the editorship of Professor Hilprecht, and after the texts have been thus rendered accessible to Babylonian scholars it is proposed to publish a series of translations to make them accessible to the general public. Up to this date one volume in two parts has appeared, containing the more ancient texts.

I may not close this preface without tendering my thanks to the liberal-minded patrons of research who have undertaken and carried out this great work of exploration, and under whose official sanction these volumes are published; to the Professors of Robert College, who assisted us so materially; to my colleagues in the expedition; to Talcott Williams, LL. D., who by his wise counsel has been a mainstay of the expedition from first to last; to M. Pognon, Mr. Pinches, and Professor Sayce, Assyriologists, who assisted me with many helpful suggestions; to Professor Gottheil; to Professor Jastrow, who placed at my disposal the proofs of his Babylonian-Assyrian Religion; to Dr. Ward, Director of the Wolfe Expedition, who has furnished me for publication a narrative of his explorations, and also permitted me to use as illustrations many valuable photographs taken by the Wolfe Expedition; and last, but not least, to my dear wife, whose helpful courage kept me in the field when I was sorely tempted to resign.

John P. Peters.

St. Michael’s Church,

New York.

May 15th. 1897.