Archaeologists are not a product of recent times. Scholars delving into the distant past or young people digging in the ground to discover ancient artifacts.
In fact, archaeology is as old as what we call ancient times. Of course, people who were studying the past did not call themselves archaeologists back then. Neither archaeology was an academic discipline. Archaeology as a field of study is no more than a few centuries old.
However, one of the earliest persons we know that we can call an “archaeologist” was a sixth-century BC man who lived at Nippur in Babylonia (modern-day Iraq), according to archaeologist Elizabeth Douglas Van Buren (1881-1961). He was either a collector or a curator of the university museum. This is inferred by a collection of artifacts he had in a clay vessel his house next to the library. He was a man of considerable knowledge, based on the collection of objects he kept. All the objects were specimens of the history and antiquity of his country.
The collection was a treasure trove for modern archaeologists, as it shed light on the history and topography of Babylonia. For instance, a well-preserved tablet contained information as to the number of temples and shrines that existed in Nippur in the past. Two tablets from 1100 BC and 1095 BC contain chronological references to kings of that period.
However, the name of the Nippur man with the priceless collection of Babylonia antiquities is not known. We don’t know how he acquired them, either.
Around the same time period, ancient texts show that there was another man that we can call an archaeologist. This one had a name and he was a king. He is the first man recorded to have conducted excavations. Fittingly, he was the Babylonian king Nabonidus (r. 555-537 BC), ruler of a kingdom with advanced civilization. Nabonidus’ prominent position allowed him to indulge his interest in the past of his country.
Nabonidus and the World’s first excavation
Nabonidus was the last king of the Babylonian empire, a man who devoted himself to restoring ancient shrines and temples of decaying gods, in the hope of reviving religion and restoring patriotic pride in his subjects. He researched the history of the temples he restored and asked the scribes to study the inscriptions discovered.
The World’s first recorded excavation was that of the Ebabbar temple in Sippar, in today’s central Iraq. It was recorded in a text called the Nabonidus Cylinder of Sippar. In the text, Nabonidus tells how he set about restoring several temples during his reign, including the Ehulhul of Sin in Haran, the Ebabbar of Shamash in Sippar, and the Eulmash of Anunitum in Sippar-Amnanum.
In his description of the reconstruction of the Ebabbar temple, Nabonidus states that he excavated the ruins of the temple in search of its foundations. During the dig, he came across an older inscription, left in the foundations by Naram-Sin, king of the Akkadian empire (r. 2254–2218 BC). Nabonidus even attempted to date the inscription of Naram-Sin based on his excavation. While other excavations may have occurred during other such reconstruction efforts, this is the only known text that describes the excavation of a site and the dating and study of the finds.
The excavations around the ancient temples and the numerous restorations along with the recording of the findings and the works done can easily give the Babylonian king the title of the first archaeologist. The proof is the terracotta cylinders found in the area on which the detailed works conducted are engraved.
The dream he had when he came to the throne
Shortly after Nabonidus came to the throne, he had a dream in which the gods Marduk and Sin appeared before him and the former spoke to him: “Nabonidus, King of Babylon, with thy horses and wagons, bring bricks, build E-kal-khul (the house of joys), and let Sin, the great lord, have his dwellings therein.”
So Nabonidus, preoccupied with the moon god Sin, attempted a large-scale religious reform to supplant Marduk as the head of the Mesopotamian pantheon. The most holy shrine that the god Marduk had asked him to rebuild was the temple of Sin in the ancient city of Harran, which was overrun by the Medes who had destroyed it. The god reassured him that since then the Medes had gone. The Babylonian king laid a levy upon his realm to gather men for the work.
When the temple was rebuilt, it was so glorious that the whole city of Harran “shone like the new moon”, according to writing found on one cylinder.
Other great works that Nabonidus completed during his reign were rebuilding the temple at Larsa and restoring the ziggurat at Ur, where four inscribed cylinders of his were found at the four corners of the temple. On one of them, the names of the early rulers of Ur, Ur-Engur, and Dungi (c. 2400 BC) are etched.
During his reign, Nabonidus led a campaign to expand the Babylonian territory. He reached all the way to Arabia and conquered lands as far south as the area of Medina in modern Saudi Arabia. For reasons unknown, he stayed in Arabia for a decade after his campaign ended and established a capital in the city of Tayma. Archaeological excavations of Tayma have revealed extensive construction in the city during the time of Nabonidus. Many architectural elements show clear signs of Babylonian influence, while several Babylonian inscriptions have also been found in the region, including some in Sela, in southern Jordan.
Nabonidus returned to Babylon in 542 BC and likely conducted an archaeological excavation of the Ebabbar temple. A few years later, the Persian king Cyrus launched an invasion of Babylonia. The fate of Nabonidus remains uncertain, with some historians suggesting that he died in battle or that he was exiled.