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Professor Hommel goes so far as to declare that in the types found on statues and monuments of the oldest period of Babylonian history the monuments coming from the mound Telloh we have actual representations of these Sumerians, who are thus made out to be a smooth-faced race with rather prominent cheek-bones, round faces, and shaven heads.
With the death of M. de Sarzec, which occurred in his sixty-fifth year, on May 31, 1901, the wonderfully successful series of excavations which he had carried out at Telloh was brought to an end. In consequence it was feared at the time that the French diggings on this site might be interrupted for a considerable period.
The group of mounds and hillocks, known as Telloh, which marks the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Shirpurla, is easily distinguished from the flat surrounding desert. The mounds extend in a rough oval formation running north and south, about two and a half miles long and one and a quarter broad.
Prom a photographic reproduction of this statue, it is seen that the head is larger than it should be, in proportion to the body, a characteristic which is also apparent in a small Sumerian statue preserved in the British Museum. Probably situated in the neighbourhood of Telloh. The circular shape is very unusual, and appears to have been used only for survey-tablets. Photograph by Messrs.
His view is plausible, but it still remains to be proved. The Telloh tablets appear to be largely lists of offerings made to the temples at Lagash, and temple accounts. Our knowledge of the documents of this period is due chiefly to Strassmaier and Meissner. At times under rather curious forms, e.g., Shush-sha; Strassmaier, Warka, no. 30, l. 21. Meissner, no. 42.
John H. Haynes, with most satisfactory success. A great temple dedicated to the god Bel was discovered, and work has hitherto been confined chiefly to laying bare the various parts of the edifice. The foundation of the building goes back to an earlier period than the ruins of Telloh.
After briefly describing the character and results of other recent excavations in Mesopotamia and the neighbouring lands, we will return to the discoveries at Telloh and sketch the new information they supply on the history of the earliest inhabitants of the country.
The site of the latter city, as has already been said, is marked by the mounds of Telloh on the east bank of the Shatt el-Hai, the natural stream joining the Tigris and Euphrates, which has been improved and canalized by the dwellers in Southern Babylonia from the earliest period.
At Telloh various fragments of large lion heads were found, so that there is every reason not only to trace this custom to Babylonia, but to carry it back to a very early period. The lion, it will be recalled, is more particularly the symbol of Nergal, but he appears originally, like the bull, to have been a symbol of other gods as well perhaps, indeed, of the gods in general.
The new director of the French mission in Chaldæa arrived at Telloh in January, 1903, and one of his first acts was to shift the site of the mission's settlement from the bank of the Shatt el-Hai, where it had always been established in the time of M. de Sarzec, to the mounds where the actual digging took place.
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