By: Leon Legrain
Volume XI / Number 3
As the goddess of love Ishtar descended into Hades in quest of her youthful lover Tammuz, she had to divest herself of her queenly attire, her crown, earrings, necklace, breastplate, bracelets and anklets, girdle of precious stones; and when she passed the seventh gate, she was nude. For such is the rule of Hades. This […]
By: Leon Legrain
Volume XI / Number 4
I Portrait of a King Who Reigned 4130 Years Ago Ibi-Sin, the last king of Ur, began to reign in 2210 B.C. The I only portrait of him is one stamped on a lump of clay, taken from the excavations at Nippur in Babylonia and preserved in the University Museum. Other examples of the discovery […]
By: Leon Legrain
Volume XII / Number 1
THE DYNASTY OF AGADE. At a few months interval, our material for reconstructing the early Sumerian chronology has been increased by the recovery of a small fragment. It belongs to the tablet published in the last number of the MUSEUM JOURNAL. It is indeed the lower part of cols. 7 and 8, which gives us […]
By: Leon Legrain
Volume XIII / Number 1
I The Oldest Dated Royal Seal. The Seal of Basha-Enzu, B. C. 2900. ART and history are interested in this small monument that haslain unconspicuous in the Collections of the Museum for over30 years. It is a limestone cylinder seal, 29 x 16″mm, that was bought by Dr. Haynes at Baghdad on Dec. 23, 1890. […]
By: Leon Legrain
Volume XIV / Number 2
The seals and seal impressions are the real jewels of the Babylonian Collections of the Museum. Up to the present day, they number about 804 stone seals of various forms, 3 stone or metal rings, and 226 seal impressions on clay. They have been acquired since 1888, by purchase, by excavation mainly at Nippur, and […]
By: Leon Legrain
Volume XIV / Number 3
WHILE Cambyses led the Persian Army in Egypt, he was frightened by an obscure oracle at Buto, and sent back one of his officers to murder secretly his own brother Smerdis, whom he feared as a competitor. But who can avoid his destiny and escape the will of the gods? Another Smerdis was found, the […]
By: Leon Legrain
Volume XIV / Number 3
ABOUT B. c. 2600, a scribe of the temple of Enlil at Nippur who had the training of an historian, compiled on a large 28 column tablet, the inscriptions on the stelae, on the statues and their pedestals, and on other votive monuments erected by the kings of Agade in the courts of the temple […]
By: Leon Legrain
Volume XIV / Number 4
Cylinder of Nebuchadnezzar.Museum Object Number: B9 One of the finest and for several reasons a unique document of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, has been preserved in the University Museum for over 35 years but never entirely deciphered. And yet its description of the gorgeous temples of Marduk and Nabû and of their splendid furniture, especially […]
By: Leon Legrain
Volume XIV / Number 4
THE extension of the walls of the great city of Babylon after King Nabuchadnezzar is a vexed question, which may derive some light from an inscription of Nabonidus on a clay barrel shaped cylinder entered in the Museum collections before 1900. The text here first translated strangely confirms the results of the German survey and […]
By: Leon Legrain
Volume XV / Number 1
Ancient coins have the double charm of history and beauty. A special interest is attached to the present coins, which have all been recovered in the ruins of Nippur, from 1891 to 1895, generally from the debris on the slopes of Mount X. There are 57 coins, including 6 silver coins, one alloy of lead […]
By: Leon Legrain
Volume XV / Number 1
Many temples, walls, stage towers and shrines of Babylonia were restored by order of the kings of Ur, B. C. 2304-2187. Their names and inscriptions are found on many bricks, clay nails, door sockets and stone tablets. Two door sockets from Nippur in gray diorite and black basalt have preserved good inscriptions of Dungi, the […]
By: Leon Legrain
Volume XV / Number 3
The wonderful discoveries made at Ur and Tell el Obeid by the Joint Expedition of the British Museum and the University Museum were briefly reviewed in the March JOURNAL. The very early forms of Art, going back to the Fifth Millennium B.C., recovered at Tell el Obeid in the neighbourhood of Ur, give a striking […]
By: Leon Legrain
Volume XVI / Number 2
As I leave Marseille on the SS. Lotus on October 1, 1924, sharp north wind. which they call “lou mistral,” puts white crests on the blue waves. The parting view along the bay is lovely: Notre Dame de la Garde, the green pines of the Prado and Corniche, the grey rocky islands, If, Pomegue and […]
By: Leon Legrain
Volume XVII / Number 3
I The pilgrim on an archaeological quest, on his journey to Ur observes that the signs on the face of heaven are changing fast as he approaches the Libyan coast and the gates of the East. There are strange feverish sunsets, full of mirages and dreams. We are approaching an old world full of ancient […]
By: Leon Legrain
Volume XVII / Number 4
During the last two seasons at Ur, and especially during the recent campaign, the Joint Expedition of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania and the British Museum recovered several thousand tablets. These documents written in the Babylonian and Sumerian languages divide themselves into two main groups: historical texts and business records. Dr. Legrain who, […]
By: Dr. Leon Legrain
Volume XVIII / Number 1
I THE great stela of King Ur-Nammu has been called by Mr. C. Leonard Woolley in his successive reports of the work done by the Joint Expedition of the British Museum and the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania to Mesopotamia, the most important monument yet found at Ur, a magnificent example of the art […]
By: L. Legrain
Volume XVIII / Number 3
ARCHÆOLOGISTS in the field have many hard days, but they have also a delightful reward when out of the trenches come new documents which throw light on the past, dispose of old theories and help to rebuild a truer history. One of the best pieces of sculpture discovered at Ur by the Joint Expedition during […]
By: L. Legrain
Volume XVIII / Number 4
PALMYRA1 in the desert is a magnificent ruin, a dead city, only known in our MUSEUM through some funerary monuments; a small but representative collection of fifteen busts and reliefs brought back by Dr. John P. Peters from Palmyra in 1890. They well deserve, after so long a span of time, a little attention, as […]
By: L. Legrain
Volume XVIII / Number 4
YEAR after year the excavations at Ur of the Chaldees seem to become more important and interesting. But the discovery of royal tombs reported within the last week by C. Leonard Woolley is so wonderful that the readers of the MUSEUM JOURNAL must hear of it while awaiting the complete account of the results of […]
By: L. Legrain
Volume XIX / Number 2
ORIENTAL cults were always familiar with the figure of the nude woman, the “funeral Venus,” whose images are found in all the cemeteries of the old world. Local worship does not always explain its origin and character. Most of these images are clay figurines. The small collection of stone statuettes and carvings in bone which […]
By: L. Legrain
Volume XIX / Number 3
IT is a pure joy for a weary archaeologist to plunge into a study of Oriental art—the oldest known Mesopotamian art—thanks to the rich collection of objects, figures, statues, reliefs, and engravings discovered in the predynastic cemetery at Ur. A new stage of civilization, perfectly unknown a year ago, has now been reached. And to […]
By: L. Legrain
Volume XIX / Number 4
THE wonderful discoveries made in the royal tombs have been a revelation to many and have proved that old Sumer could lay claim to wealth and beauty. The art of the day of King Mes-kalam-dug and Queen Shub-ad was a classical art, sure of its past and of its methods. Who would not enjoy visiting […]
By: L. L.
Volume XX / Number 1
THE interpretation of the inlay standard in the MUSEUM JOURNAL of September, 1928, brought the following remarks from Mr. Woolley in a letter dated from Ur, November 18, 1928. “There are a few details which ought to be corrected as they give a false impression in view of what I had said about the standard […]
By: L. Legrain
Volume XX / Number 3-4
QUEEN SHUBAD was so fond of her jewels that when she died in ancient Ur, six thousand years ago, they buried her in queenly state with all her regalia, so that her spirit might have rest. After so many centuries this treasure of feminine adornment is still a delight to the eyes. Her golden comb, […]
By: L. Legrain
Volume XX / Number 3-4
“All the Babylonians,” says Herodotus, who visited the land in the days of Artaxerxes Longhand, “have a seal and they carry a stick on the top of which is an apple, a rose, a lily, an eagle or some other figure, for they may not carry a cane or a stick without a characteristic ornament.” […]
By: Leon Legrain
Volume Supplement / Number 1934
A small but choice collection of Persian bronzes from Luristan was acquired in 1930 by the University Museum through Mr. Arthur Upham Pope. They include sixty bronze—and some iron—pieces, and along with them eight seal cylinders, a few glass beads and three flint arrow heads. A horse-bit in bronze, number 53, was bought from Mr. […]