Page 151 - The Tigris Expedition

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The Tigris Expedition

vases are numerous, white calcitc (alabaster) being most
favoured, but soapstone, dioritc, and limestone also common,
while as rarities we find cups or bowls of obsidian and lapis lazuli;
lapis and carnelian are the stones ordinarily used by the jeweller.
The inlay technique that was illustrated by the Kish wall-
I decoration, carried out in shell, mother-of-pearl, and lapis lazuli,
occurs freely in the graves at Ur.
A description of the contents of the grave of a prince, Mes-
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kalam-dug, belonging to the latter part of the cemetery period,
will show the wealth of this civilization. The grave was an
ordinary one, a plain earth shaft, at the bottom of which was a
wooden coffin containing the body with a space alongside it
wherein the offerings were placed. The prince wore a complete
head-dress or helmet of beaten gold in the form of a wig, the hair
rendered by engraved lines and the fillet which bound it by a
twisted band also engraved; the helmet came down to the nape of
the neck and covered the cheeks, the ears being represented in the
round and the side-whiskers in relief; it is just such a head­
covering as is represented on Eannatum’s Stela of the Vultures.
With the body were two plain bowls and a shell-shaped lamp of
gold, each inscribed with the name of the prince; a dagger with
gold blade and gold-studded hilt hung from his silver belt and
two axes of electrum lay by his side; his personal ornaments
included a bracelet of triangular beads of gold and lapis lazuli,
hundreds of other beads in the same materials, ear-rings and
bracelets of gold and silver, a gold bull amulet in the form of a
seated calf, two silver lamps shaped as shells, a gold pin with lapis
head. Outside the coffin the offerings were far more numerous.
The finest of them was a gold bowl, fluted and engraved, with
small handles of lapis lazuli; by this lay a silver libation-jug and a
patten; there were some fifty cups and bowls of silver and copper
and a great number of weapons, a gold-mounted spear, daggers
with hilts decorated with silver and gold, copper spears, axes and
adzes, and a set of arrows with triangular flint heads.
The royal graves with masonry tomb chambers had been even
richer, and these presented a feature to which there was no
parallel in the plain shaft graves. The burial of the kings were
accompanied by human sacrifice on a lavish scale, the bottom of
the grave pit being crowded with the bodies of men and women
who seemed to have been brought down here and butchered
where they stood. In one grave the soldiers of the guard, wearing
copper helmets and carrying spears, lie at the foot of the sloped
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