NUZI AND THE HURRIANS 



THE EXCAVATIONS AT NUZI (KIRKUK, IRAQ) AND THEIR CONTRI- 

 BUTION TO OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE HISTORY OF THE HUR- 

 RIANS 



By RoBEKT H. Pfeiffer 

 Harvard University 



[With 2 plates] 



Before 1925 the very name of the Hurrian city of Nuzi was for- 

 gotten, and the information about the Hnrrians was scanty and 

 vague. In 1925 Miss Gertrude Bell, first director of antiquities of 

 the Kingdom of Iraq, commissioned Prof. Edward Chiera, of the 

 University of Pennsylvania, to undertake archeological excavations 

 in northern Mesopotamia under the joint auspices of the Iraq Mu- 

 seum and the American Schools of Oriental Research. The chief 

 objective of this work was to find the place of origin of certain 

 cuneiform tablets with marked characteristics, such as non-Semitic 

 personal names and outlandish spellings of Assyrian words, and to 

 obtain such tablets by scientific excavations rather than by acci- 

 dental finds or illicit diggings on the part of the natives. On the 

 advice of Dr. Corner, the resident civil surgeon in Kirkuk, who had 

 obtained such tablets from his native patients, Dr. Chiera chose 

 for his excavations a small mound near the village of Tarkalan, 

 about 10 miles southwest of Kirkuk, and thus he discovered the 

 lost city of Nuzi. 



THE EXCAVATIONS AT NUZI 



In 1925-26 Dr. Chiera cleared the ruins of the house of Shurki- 

 tilla (about 1500 B. C.) and penetrated into some of the rooms of 

 the adjoining house of Tehiptilla. In the latter he found the family 

 archives, numbering more than 1,000 cuneiform tablets; 559 of 

 these records have been published in five volumes by Dr. Chiera. 



After an interruption of 1 year the excavations were resumed and 

 were carried forward during four seasons (1927-31) under the joint 

 auspices of the Fogg and Semitic Museums of Harvard University 

 and the American Schools of Oriental Research. 



535 



