CLOSING THE GAP AT TEPE GAWRA ^ 



By E. A. SPEISB3 

 University of Pennsylvania 



[With 12 plates] 



In October 1927, I had the experience of starting excavations on a 

 hitherto unknown ancient mound. The place was Tepe Gawra, "The 

 Great Mound," in the Turkomanized dialect of the local Kurds. It is 

 situated 14 miles north of modern Mosul, in northern Iraq, and 2 miles 

 east of the remains of Dur Sharrukin, one of the capitals of old As- 

 syria. The site had been chosen a few months earlier, out of several 

 hundred mounds surveyed, as the one most likely to constitute a guide 

 through prehistoric Assyria. Our sole basis for this optimistic esti- 

 mate was the nature of the potsherds found on the slopes and at the 

 foot of Tepe Gawra. The name itself could not be regarded as an 

 indication of expected contents; for it was due entirely to appear- 

 ances — the mound stood 70 feet above the surrounding plain, and this 

 circumstance made it a "great" landmark. 



The first campaign was conducted by a staff of three, which included 

 a European architect just out of school and a 13-year-old son of a col- 

 league at the University of Pennsylvania. It lasted 2 weeks because 

 at the end of that period our budget of $500 had been exhausted. But 

 the results of this brief preliminary dig, for which the American 

 Schools of Oriental Research and the Dropsie College of Philadelpliia 

 were sponsors, were suflSciently impressive to justify a systematic ex- 

 ploration which began in January 1931, with the Museum of the Uni- 

 versity of Pennsylvania as an added partner in the undertaking. The 

 successive campaigns which followed have been directed alternately 

 by me and by Charles Bache, a former assistant. I had the good for- 

 tune of being out in the field in the season of 1936-37, and the latest 

 campaign was opened by Mr. Bache, with only a quarter of the 

 mound's original height remaining (pi. 1), in October 1937, exactly 

 10 years after Tepe Gawra had first been brought to the attention of 

 the archeological world. 



Ten years is not a long time in the necessarily slow process of scien- 

 tific excavation. Yet Tepe Gawra, which in 1927 could not be found 



* Reprinted by permiBsiou from Asia, vol. 38, No. 9, September 1938. 



437 



