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Assyrian Instrument: Lyers of Ur

Date: August 29, 2023

Paintings, ornate vases, reliefs, and other pieces of ancient fine art depict musicians playing a myriad of instruments. However, it’s rare the instruments they are modeled after survive to this day— and stringed instruments, in particular, are quite fragile. This made the excavation of the Lyres of Ur in 1922 a magnificent feat.
Three lyres and one harp were discovered at the Royal Cemetery at Ur, dating back to the Early Dynastic III Period of Mesopotamia (between 2550-2450 BC). Due to how the lyres were discovered, it is believed that the instruments were used during burial ceremonies. Though the wood was decayed, the instruments are covered in nonperishable materials such as gold and silver. As a result, archaeologists were able to cast them in a liquid plaster and recover them. Now, the Lyres of Ur are recognized as the world’s oldest surviving string instruments.
The lyres were distributed among those involved in the expedition and the country from which they were found. The Golden Lyre of Ur, or the Bull’s Lyre, which was the finest, was given to the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. The Queen’s Lyre and Silver Lyre are both at the British Museum. The last instrument, the Bull Headed Lyre, is held at the Penn Museum.
To better understand how this instrument may have worked, the Oriental Institute in Chicago set out to create a replica of the Golden Lyre. After years of meticulous work from musicians and artists alike, museum guests can bask in what the instrument would have looked like in its prime— and they can even hear it too.
The Lyre Ensemble podcast, an endeavor created by the Oriental Institute, chronicles the recreation of this ancient instrument and how it may sound in traditional Mesopotamian music. Though the exact sound can never be recreated without the exact same materials used thousands of years ago, an approximation can be achieved, allowing us an exciting view of the past we otherwise wouldn’t have.

Image Credits: © The Trustees of the British Museum Released under: “CC BY-NC-SA 4.0” license.

Kilmer, Anne Draffkorn. “The Musical Instruments from Ur and Ancient Mesopotamian Music.” Expedition Magazine 40, no. 2 (July, 1998): -. Accessed August 24, 2023.

Written by: Cassandra Ledger

Published by: Brian Banyamin

The Vorderasiatisches Museum

Date: July 18, 2023

The next museum collection we will be discussing is the Vorderasiatisches Museum in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, Germany. The collection of ancient near eastern objects began with the discovery of what is likely the most well-known piece in the collection, The Ishtar Gate of Babylon.   

 

The Ishtar Gate was built in 575 BCE by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II. The gate is constructed out of brick that is coated in a rich blue glaze, intended to mimic the appearance of the precious stone lapis lazuli. It features bas-relief sculptures of lions, which are representative of the Goddess Ishtar, aurochs (a type of extinct bull) which are representative of the storm God Adas, and depictions of the mythical creatures such as mushussu red dragons, which are representative of the God Marduk. The gate was used during Kha b-Nisan each year as the processional way through which the new year’s celebration passed into the city during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II.    

 

The Ishtar Gate was unearthed by German archeologist Robert Koldewey in a series of excavations that took place from 1899 to 1914. Based on research conducted by British historian Claudius Rich, Koldewey managed to find two royal palaces belonging to King Nebuchadnezzar as well as the Ishtar Gate. The excavation was funded by the German Oriental Society, which was founded in 1898. The presence of this funding pressured archeologists to take actions to recoup the cost of the excavation. This was primarily done through the smuggling of artifacts back to Berlin. They were originally a part of the collection at the Kaiser Friedrich-Museum, now the Bode-Museum. The Ishtar Gate was completely deconstructed, with each individual piece cataloged using a numbering system intended to help the team to reassemble the gate on site at the museum. The individual pieces were hidden in barrels of straw, shipped down the Euphrates River, and eventually made their way to Berlin. The process of reconstructing the gate onsite at the museum was a meticulous undertaking. The museum staff was tasked with sorting through hundreds of barrels containing contents of the Ishtar Gate, which had to be desalinated and reconstructed using a combination of contemporary bricks fired to resemble the blue glaze of the gate. The original gate was constructed in two parts comprised of a larger back section, and a small frontal section. The museum did not have the space to constructed the larger back section of the gate on site, and so those pieces of the Ishtar Gate remain in storage. The reconstruction of the frontal section of the gate, however, remains on display to this day.  

 

In 1903, there was another significant development in the growth of the collection. Robert Koldewey’s assistant, Walter Andrae, began excavating the Assyrian city of Assur. Assur was the first capital of Assyria, its religious center, and is believed to have been first settled around 2500 BCE. Though later Assyrian kings would declare capitals at Nimrud, Khorsabad, and Nineveh, Assur always remained the religious capital of the empire. It was the location of the Temple of Assur, also referred to as the Old Palace, where some Assyrian kings were returned and buried upon their death. Walter Andrae’s team uncovered various city structures and buildings, including multiple religious temples to various Assyrian Gods and Goddesses such as Sin, Ishtar, Shamash, Anu, Adad, and Nabu.   

 

When the excavation ended in 1914, the finds were divided between the Germany and the Ottoman Empire. In the time that the German archeologists were bringing the artifacts back to Berlin, World War I began. The team temporarily stationed in neutral Lisbon Portugal. However, when Portugal declared war against Germany in 1916, the artifacts from Assur were seized and put on display in the Museum of Porto. The objects were returned to Germany in 1926 where, along with other near eastern objects at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, the collection was moved to the Pergamon Museum. In 1945, during World War II, the Soviet Union stole the Assur works from the museum. They were held in the Soviet Union until 1958 when they were returned to East Germany. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 allowed for another step forward for the community of German archeologists, as now they were able to collaborate with each other across East and West Germany. In 1997, Johannes Renger led The Assur Project. The Assur Project was an academic undertaking aimed at creating a database of the finds at Assur and organizing them into publications.   

 

Today The Vorderasiatische Museum in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin Germany is made up of fourteen rooms which feature objects from ancient Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian society. Their reconstructions of ancient monuments in particular afford visitors the opportunity to walk in the footsteps of the ancient peoples who once built and experienced these objects themselves. By prioritizing shared knowledge and collaboration with other archeologists, the team at the Pergamon Museum has been able to uncover truths about, and piece together our understanding of life in ancient Assyria.   

  Written by: Melanie Perkins 

 

Bibliography  

Berlin, Staatliche Museen. “About the Collection – Vorderasiatisches Museum.” Staatliche Museen Zu Berlin, https://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/vorderasiatisches- museum/collection-research/about-the-collection/. Accessed 9 Feb. 2023.  

“Ancient Near Eastern Cultures.” Staatliche Museen Zu Berlin, https://www.smb.museum/en/museums- institutions/vorderasiatisches-museum/exhibitions/detail/ancient-near-eastern-cultures/. Accessed 9 Feb. 2023.  

Pedde, Friedhelm. “ANE TODAY – 201501 – Recovering Assur From the German Excavations of 1903-1914 to Today’s Assur Project in Berlin – American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR).” American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR), https://www.asor.org/anetoday/2015/01/recovering- assur/. Accessed 9 Feb. 2023.  

Hormuzd Rassam

Date: July 30, 2021

Did you know that one of the first modern archaeologists to dig the remains of the ancient Assyrian Empire was himself an Assyrian?  Hormuzd Rassam dug at such places as Nineveh and Nimrud, and made hundreds of important finds such as the Balawat Gates, the cuneiform tablets containing portions of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the reliefs depicting the Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal. 

 

Hormuzd Rassam was born in Mosul, Iraq (the Ottoman Empire at the time) in 1826.  His family was part of the Chaldean Catholic Church, but Rassam himself would eventually convert to Anglicanism.  In 1845, when the pioneering British archaeologist, Sir Austen Henry Layard, sought to begin an archaeological dig in the Mosul area, he received assistance from the British vice-consul of Mosul, Christian Rassam.  Christian assigned his younger brother, Hormuzd, who was only nineteen at the time, to assist Layard with his Arabic-speaking archaeology team.  Slowly, Hormuzd Rassam gained Layard’s respect and friendship. 

 

In 1847, Layard helped provide Rassam with an opportunity to study at Oxford University’s Magdalen College.  He studied there until rejoining Layard in Iraq in 1849.  Together, they discovered King Sennacherib’s reliefs depicting the siege of the Judean city of Lachish, which proved the historicity of the Biblical account of this event in 2 Chronicles 32:9.  They also discovered the Library of Ashurbanipal.  After Layard returned to England, Rassam continued excavating the library.  The tablets containing the Epic of Gilgamesh were ultimately discovered at the Library of Ashurbanipal. 

 

Rassam eventually married an Englishwoman named Anne Eliza Price, and purchased a home in Isleworth, near London, which he named “Nineveh House.”  However, he continued returning to Iraq throughout his life to dig at both ancient Assyrian and Babylonian archaeological sites.  Rassam also served as a British diplomat in both Aden (located in present-day Yemen) and Ethiopia.  He specifically went to Ethiopia to help persuade its Emperor, Tewodros II, to free several British missionaries that he had taken captive.  However, Emperor Tewodros did not trust the British, so eventually imprisoned Rassam as well, despite being personally fond of him.  Rassam was not freed until the British fought against Tewodros at the Battle of Magdala two years later. 

 

Sadly, during his lifetime, Rassam did not receive the full credit that he deserved for his archaeological work.  This is most likely because he was viewed as a foreigner, so never fully accepted as an Englishman.  Rassam passed away in 1910 and is buried in Hove, England.  You can read his 1897 book about his archaeological expeditions, Asshur and the Land of Nimrod, online here. 

 

Published by: Brian Banyamin

Written by Esther Lang 

 

Bibliography 

Edermariam, Aida. “Birth of an Empire.” The Guardian. January 12, 2008. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jan/12/history.biography (accessed on March 17, 2021). 

 

Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Hormuzd Rassam.” Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hormuzd-Rassam (accessed on March 17, 2021). 

 

Grutz, Jane Waldron. “Iraq’s First Archeologist.” AramcoWorld. May/June 2018. https://www.aramcoworld.com/Articles/May-2018/Iraq-s-First-Archeologist (accessed on March 17, 2021). 

 

Hormuzd Rassam. London, England, Overseer Returns, 1863-1894 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013. 

 

“Hormuzd Rassam.” Nineveh Press. September 16, 2020. https://www.ninevehpress.com/2020/09/16/hormuzd-rassam/ (accessed on March 17, 2021). 

 

“Homruzd Rassam.” Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hormuzd.Rassam.reclined.jpg (accessed on March 17, 2021). 

 

Rassam, Hormuzd. Asshur and the Land of Nimrod. Cincinnati: Curts & Jennings, 1897. https://archive.org/details/asshurandlandni00rogegoog/page/n10/mode/2up (accessed on March 17, 2021). 

 

Reade, Julian. “Hormuzd Rassam and His Discoveries.” Iraq 55 (1993): 39-62. Accessed March 17, 2021. doi:10.2307/4200366.