The story behind the world's oldest museum, built by a Babylonian princess 2,500 years ago

io9 Book Club ^ | Monday, June 6th, 2011 | Alasdair Wilkins

[SunkenCiv]

...What were we to think? Here were half a dozen diverse objects found lying on an unbroken brick pavement of the sixth century BC, yet the newest of them was seven hundred years older than the pavement and the earliest perhaps sixteen hundred.

In this single room, Woolley had discovered at least 1,500 years of history all jumbled together, a bit like if you randomly found a Roman statue and a piece of medieval masonry while cleaning out your closet. Left to their own devices, these objects would never be found together like this. Somebody had messed around with these artifacts -- they just couldn't have guessed how long ago and to what purpose that tampering took place.

[SunkenCiv]

The problem was solved in 1945 --

• 170. The 59th year of some reckoning mentioned in a document written in [referring to] the days of Haremhab, is the 59th year of the era of Nabonassar, which started in 747 B. C.E.
• 185. The "Hittite" hieroglyphics are the Chaldean script.
• 186. The presumed "Hittite" art of the fourteenth-thirteenth centuries is the Chaldean art of the seventh-sixth centuries, and is coeval with and subsequent to late Phrygian art. The bas-relief of Yasilikaya dates from the time of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Greek sculptures with "Hittite" (Chaldean) signs present no problem, neither does the silence of Greek authors about the "Hittites" of the "post-Empire" period.
• 187. The "Hittite" stela in the palace of Nebukhadnezar in Babylon is a contemporary Chaldean document. The lead tablets from Asaur with "Hittite" hieroglyphics, date from the last centuries before the present era.
• 188. The succession of the kings of the Neo-Babylonian Empire was: Nabopolassar, Nergilissar, Labash-Marduk, Nebukhadnezar, Evil Marduk, Nabonides. Berosus, according to whom Nergilissar and his son followed Nebukhadnezar, is wrong.*
• 189. The treaties of Subliliumas with Azaru of Damascus, with a patricide prince of Mitanni, and with the widow of Tirhaka, make plausible his identity with Shamash Shum Ukin. This would signify also that Nabopolassar was a son of Shamash Shum Ukin.
• 190. The people and the kingdom of Mitanni did not "disappear" in the thirteenth century. Mitanni is another name for Medes; the northwest part of Medes retained this name as Matiane (Herodotus).

* Velikovsky later concluded that there were two Nergilissars, the second reigning after Evil Marduk.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Old Student!

One of *those* topics, and a good one!

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[SunkenCiv]

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[Quix]

hmmmm thx thx.

[PeterPrinciple]

Princess Ennigaldi and her father came up with an idea that is still relevant 25 centuries later. If it takes the death of your civilization’s future to realize that your past is worth celebrating, preserving, and (most importantly) organizing...well, I’ve heard of worse trade-offs.

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I guess we better get busy preserving............

[blueunicorn6]

I’m pretty sure that some of our carpet is at least 2,000 years old. Maybe it wasn’t a museum...it was just a cheapskate’s house.

[blueunicorn6]

I’m pretty sure that some of our carpet is at least 2,000 years old. Maybe it wasn’t a museum...it was just a cheapskate’s house.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Fascinating. At least they didn’t label the Princess a “hoarder”. Her life and times would make a fascinating novel (hint, hint).

[Sherman Logan]

Mitanni is another name for Medes; the northwest part of Medes retained this name as Matiane (Herodotus).

This is one theory, it is by no means proven fact.

The Mitanni Empire fell around 1300. The Medes emerged as a great power around 700.

Trying to connect two peoples 600+ years apart as "the same people" is pretty tough.

Mitanni was Hurrian in language, with initially an Aryan ruling class, but which apparently switched to Hurrian language before long.

The Medes were very much Aryan.

[worst-case scenario]

Thanks for this one. I love this post.

[SunkenCiv]

She’d have ended up on that packrat reality show.

[SunkenCiv]

Maybe it was in the middle of the desert, and they saved every danged thing because it was so far to the market.

[SunkenCiv]

The fact is, Mitanni didn’t even arise until after 1300 BC — these are two names for the same people.

[SunkenCiv]

My pleasure.

[SunkenCiv]

• Human Remains In Ancient Jar A Mystery -- For over 100 years, four blue-glazed jars bearing the nametag of Rameses II (1302-1213 B.C.) were believed to contain the Egyptian pharaoh's bodily organs. But analysis of organic residues scraped from the jars has determined one actually contained an aromatic salve, while a second jar held the organs of an entirely different person who lived around 760 years later... The mystery concerning the jars began in 1905, when they were brought to Paris' Louvre Museum, where they are still housed. Shortly after that time, researchers cut into a packet inside one of the jars and plucked out a piece of heart. The packet is now lost, but from that point on, the containers were labeled as "the canopic jars of Rameses II."

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• Biblical plagues really happened say scientists [ Thera, global warming, yada yada yada ] -- "These coffins were found in the tombs of senior officials of the 18th and 19th dynasties," near Saqqara, Zahi Hawass, the director of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said on Thursday. "Some coloured unopened coffins dating back to the sixth century BC were found as well as some coffins dating back to the time of Ramses II," who ruled from 1279 to 1213 BC, he said... The Saqqara burial grounds which date back to 2,700 BC and are dominated by the massive bulk of King Zoser's step pyramid -- the first ever built -- were in continuous use until the Roman period, three millenniums later.

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[Old Student]

“Thanks Old Student!

One of *those* topics, and a good one! “

My Pleasure! It's a subject I have some interest in, but not nearly as much knowledge as I'd like. ;)

I like the inclusion of Velikovsky's thesis in there, as well. I'm not sure I buy him as an accurate source, but I'm not sure I don't, either... ;)

We have a hard time determining who did what to whom during WWII, not to mention what Alley Oop did to the Upstairs Maid. (line stolen from, IIRC, Oscar Gordon, in Heinlein's Glory Road, with inappropriate paraphrase due to my not having reread the book in a couple of years, or decades, or something.)