A Useful Lesson

Today I've returned to reading National Geographic Magazine, August, 1928, "ARCHEOLOGY, THE MIRROR OF THE AGES: Our Debt to the Humble Delvers in the Ruins at Carchemish and at Ur" by C. Leonard Woolley.

My earliest memories of an archeologist was reading National Geographic years ago, as a child.  I remember learning about Dr. and Mrs. Leakey discovering a human jawbone partially protruding out from the rocks and dirt of a cliff in Africa.  "Archeologists just wander around and are lucky if they find important things," I thought.

The next instance I seriously thought about archeologists was the "Indiana Jones" movies.  What a giant 'dig' the Nazis had (fictitiously, I hope), trying to unearth the Ark of the Covenant.  Once I knew a young woman who graduated with a degree in Archeology.  Unwilling to move to exotic places, she never found a job so returned to college and earned a medical degree.

Mr. Woolley probably wrote this article for ignorant people like me!  "When we see an object from the past, neatly and cleanly displayed and labeled in a museum case, we have no idea the labor by many hands that has gone into showing us this one object."  He continues, "I have often been asked whether I do all the digging with my own hands, and the questioner has been surprised to learn that I employ anywhere from one hundred to three hundred men" (p. 207).

The excavation he writes about was sponsored by the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, and took place in  Carchemish, the ruins of an ancient Biblical town in Turkey.  When the Baghdad Railway was being constructed, "a wall of finely trimmed limestone blocks" was exposed.  "Starting from the edge of the cutting, we soon brought to light the ruins of a large private house, a building whose ground plan was not unlike that of a modern suburban villa, even to the detail of the front door with its roofed porch, approached by a flight of stone steps" (p. 221).  Amazing!

Let's not forget, this 'dig' took place nearly 100 years ago.  First, Mr. Woolley had to get permission from the national and local authorities.  He had to convince the local men to work for him.  Hiring the foreman was critical; he was quite pleased with the honest, hardworking man he found, Hamoudi.  He also had to inspire a sense of the importance of the project into the men.  They had to be careful with their work; they were rewarded for their 'finds.'  The appropriate bribes were given at all levels. The men had to be fed, housed, and paid.

Back to the ruins of the villa: "The story of two nations is read in the ashes of a villa.  It was clear from the outset that the house belonged to the last days of the city's existence, to the time when, according to the writers of the Old Testament, Pharaoh Necho, King of Egypt, went up to Carchemish, which is beside  the Euphrates, to do battle with Nebchadnezzor, and was defeated there in 604 B.C.  As work went on inside the house, proof came in dramatic fashion."

"The floor was covered with a thick layer of ashes, and in the ashes lay hundreds of bronze arrowheads, lance-points, and fragments of broken swords" (p. 221).  Here in Kentucky, hunters and farmers still find stone arrowheads from our native Americans' habitations many years ago.  They are treasured and many are displayed in glass cases in private homes.  I doubt if any of these finders consider themselves archeologists.

In part of the city of Ur, "We had cleared the kitchen of the temple Gig-Por-Ku, and the whole thing, dating from the time of Abraham, was so astonishingly well preserved that we told the men to light fires in the old cooking ranges, to grind corn in the querns (stone bowls), cut up meat on the chopping block, and draw water from the well, so that we might photograph the scene almost as it was when the temple yet stood" (p. 224).

"To our Arabs the finished results appeal strongly; they pore over the architect's drawings, delighted to see what the city looked like in the days of Abraham" (p. 225). Any knowledge of life in Biblical times and places helps me to make the Bible, God's Word, more real to me.

Mr. Woolley concludes, "The story of the past which they have helped to lay bare would fill volumes; they themselves deserve at least these few pages" (p. 225). 

Lesson learned and enjoyed!  I'll never again examine a beautiful, interesting object in a museum without thinking about those who labored to bring it to this display.