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Joan Oates and her husband David met on Max Mallowan and Agatha Christie?s excavations at Nimrud in the 1950s. Since then they have excavated throughout the Near East culminating in their continuing excavation of Tell Brak (ancient Nagar), which is one of the most important 3rd millennium cities in northern Mesopotamia. Dr Oates is now based at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in Cambridge.
You have recently written (with your husband) a book called Nimrud: An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed. Why is Nimrud so interesting?
 Nimrud was not only one of the great Assyrian capital cities but it was one of the very first sites to be excavated in the Near East. It is also the source of the famous stone reliefs found by Layard in the 19th century and now to be seen in many museums in the West. Wonderful carved ivories were also found there, one of the things that attracted Max (Mallowan) to the site.
Nimrud is also a very beautiful place. The wild flowers are incredible (or were before modern pesticides started to be used). And unlike Nineveh, there wasn?t a Parthian city sitting on top of the Assyrian ruins. I came to the site entirely by accident. In the 1950s it was a choice between Kathleen Kenyon at Jericho and Mallowan at Nimrud, and I have never regretted choosing Nimrud.
Nimrud: An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed was written at the request of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, the institution that sponsored the British excavations at Nimrud. It was written to coincide with the Agatha Christie exhibition and a conference on Nimrud, both organised by John Curtis at the British Museum. Layard?s finds are, of course, largely at the British Museum, and many of Mallowan?s, so we were asked to write a readable, semi-popular account of the work at the site.
One of the nice things about the book is that it has been possible to illustrate recent Iraqi work at Nimrud thanks to the splendid cooperation of our Iraqi colleagues. Contrary to what our newspapers suggest, Iraq couldn?t be a nicer place to work and Iraqi archaeologists have always been friendly and helpful. Their recent discovery of royal tombs beneath the great palace is undoubtedly one of the great archaeological events of the last century, and they have restored many of the important buildings at the site.
What is the importance of Nimrud for Near Eastern archaeology?
It is now the most extensively excavated Assyrian city, and provides an extraordinarily rich view of its palaces and temples, and especially of the richness and quality of material objects, especially the carved ivories, produced by the craftsmen of the time. There are also a large number of archives of cuneiform tablets that are of great value for their historical, social and economic information. Even a collection of letters that constitute the equivalent of modern Foreign Office files.
What dont we know about Nimrud? Where can more research be done?
This is the embarrassing question in a way. Unfortunately at Nimrud we know nothing about where ordinary people lived or what their lives were like. This is the sort of information one would get much better from a smaller site where one was not impeded by the great monumental buildings. We have found private houses, but these belonged to palace or temple officials ? not your ordinary workman who was there cultivating the land or building the great palaces.
You are in the middle of publishing Excavations at Tell Brak. What is particularly exciting you about that site?
 Brak is one of those big sites that has turned out to have important elements from so many periods that it is almost irresistible. It has also filled a number of serious gaps in our knowledge. When we began work there (in 1976) very little was known of northern Mesopotamia in the 4th and 3rd millennia, since after the 19th century discoveries, for example at Nimrud, the research focus shifted to southern Mesopotamia and the much earlier Sumerians, who were considered to have developed the world?s oldest ?civilisation?.
At Brak I am currently working on the 4th millennium period, when the oldest cities are found, and a nice pattern is emerging of an extraordinary indigenous development of urban complexity already early in the 4th millennium followed by an ?imperial? period when Brak becomes a south Mesopotamian Uruk colony. In the 3rd millennium we know from cuneiform texts that Brak was the most important city in the region. Again, this period was followed by an ?imperial? episode, this time involving the well-known Akkadians (Sargon of Agade and Naram-Sin who built a great fortress-storehouse at Brak).
What I would really like to do now is to go back even further to the 5th millennium when I think this early complexity really begins. Another period of contact with the south. Of course Brak lies on a major trade route, a strategic point ideal for the exchange of both ideas and commodities, and such international contacts are perhaps important in the development of the early urbanism we see at the site.
Another important question is one that is unfortunately less attractive to funding bodies! And that is to find the cuneiform archives that we know must have been associated with the great third millennium city. When a contemporary archive was found at Ebla, it made headlines all around the world. Many of these mention Brak (ancient Nagar). So it is extremely frustrating that we have not as yet been so fortunate. However, Geoff Emberling (the current field director) is now working on a big administrative building of this date which has produced fascinating information about an industrial complex within the building (including a bakery and perhaps a brewery), and we might just get lucky and find some tablets there.
What is the state of Near Eastern archaeology as a discipline at the moment?
I find it very frustrating that there is so little funding available for long-term projects. On a site the size and depth of Brak (almost a kilometre long and over 40 metres high) a three-year project is simply not viable, but British and American funding bodies now prefer to support only such short-term work. One can certainly get a great deal of information from small sites in three years. But to focus on these and be forced to ignore the big central sites is to lose the overall picture of the social and economic contexts within which the smaller sites function.
Funding for work in Iraq at the moment is clearly an even greater problem because of sanctions, but this is really only hurting us and the Americans. There?s an enormous interest in the archaeology of Iraq elsewhere in Europe, and everyone except the British and the Americans are now working there again. The Iraqi archaeologists are being very helpful and supportive, and we are missing out! I find it sad that many of my younger colleagues have never had the opportunity to work there and have never experienced the excitement of the archaeology and the breadth and beauty of the landscape. I do hope British expeditions will be working again there soon.
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The first shop? Excavations at Tell Brak 2, page 69, figure 86
We?re looking from the back of what seems to be a typical suq shop, with an entrance from the street. You can see the ?counter? with half jars set into it, and there?s a small mortar and pestle in the corner. Whatever is being sold here is at least partially being prepared in the shop. I don?t know of any other shop that is this old (around 2100 BC). |
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Ivory lions. Nimrud: An Imperial City Revealed, colour plate 9
This ivory is one of my favourites from recent Iraqi excavation of a well that was not excavated by Mallowan because the sides were in such a dangerous state. It was properly shored up by the Iraqi team, and produced some of the finest carved ivories ever seen. This is a cup that was attached to a carved container made from a complete tusk, the liquid contained in the tusk apparently flowing through the lions? mouths into the cup. It is an incredibly beautiful piece and the Iraqi archaeologists have done a wonderful job of extracting and conserving it. |
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Gold earrings from Nimrud. Nimrud: An Imperial City Revealed, cover
One of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the last century was the royal tombs found at Nimrud under various rooms in the private quarters of the great palace of Assurnasirpal II, founder and builder of this Late Assyrian capital. The tombs have produced an extraordinary quantity of beautiful gold objects such as these earrings. Max (Mallowan) had actually dug the room in which the first tomb was found, but he was by then so obsessed with the ivories from the various wells in the palace that he failed to investigate the reason for the very uneven floor, something his Iraqi successors did (in 1989), and these beautiful finds were the result. Mallowan was by then no longer alive, but had he been so, the news of these discoveries, to which he had been so close, would certainly have killed him! |
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The Banquet stele. Nimrud: An Imperial City Revealed, p 39, figure 18
Also in the palace of Assurnasirpal II, Mallowan found a wonderful stone stele, now in the Mosul Museum, which has on it a long text celebrating the completion of the great palace and the reconstruction of a new capital city at Nimrud in the 9th century BC. The inscription also describes the great feast that was held over 10 days for the 47,000 workmen, 6500 visiting dignitaries and officials, and the 16,000 citizens of Nimrud. The text also recounts the menu, one of the very few food texts from antiquity! It is a quite extraordinary list?.10,000 jugs of beer, 10,000 skins of wine, meat, fish, spices and some things that unfortunately we cannot translate. It also reinforces the fact that we have a lot of information about the administration but very little about those 47,000 workmen ? where they came from, even where they lived. |
For more information about some of the places and people mentioned in this interview, you could look at one or more of these related books:
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