242 OLD BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTIONS 



II. 



THE INSCRIBED MONUMENTS OF S ARGON'S 

 PREDECESSORS. 



Although more than 500 l mostly fragmentary antiquities of Sargon and his 

 predecessors have heen excavated in Nuffar, it may at first seem strange that nearly 

 all of them were discovered out of place, ahove the platform of Ur-Gur. But if we 

 examine the details more closely, we will easily find the explanation of this remarkable 

 fact. Almost all these monuments that, on the basis of strong palseographic evi- 

 dence and for various other reasons, must be ascribed to this early phase of Babylo- 

 nian history, 2 were found in a stratum on the S.-E. side of the ziggurrat, between the 

 facing of the latter and the great fortified wall which surrounded the temple. This 

 stratum varies in thickness. " In some places it lies directly upon the crude brick 

 pavement of Ur-Gur, while in other places it reaches a height of c. 1 m. above this 

 platform." 3 Few of the objects found were whole, the mass of them was broken and 

 evidently broken and scattered around on purpose. Most of the fragments are so 

 small that during the last three years it needed my whole energy and patience, com- 

 bined with much sacrifice of the eyesight, to restore the important inscriptions pub- 

 lished on the following pages (particularly Pis. 36-42). The apparent relation in 

 which this stratum stands to a peculiar building in its immediate neighborhood will 

 furnish the key to the problem. 



AN ANCIENT TEMPLE ARCHIVE. 



Directly below the great fortification wall of the temple to the S.-E. of the zig- 

 gurrat, Mr. Haynes discovered recently a room 11 m. long, 3.54 m. wide and 2.60 m. 

 high. It showed nowhere a door or entrance in its unbroken walls, and there can be 

 no doubt "that the room was a vault entered by means of a ladder, stairway or other 

 perishable passage from above." This structure " was erected on the level of 

 Naram-Sin's pavement," and yet it was made of the same bricks which compose the 



1 Stamped bricks beiDg excluded. 



2 Cf. proof below. 



3 Haynes, Report of Dec. 14, 1895. 



