Briefe aus Uruk-Warka, 1931-1939.

• Author: Beckman, Gary
• Position: Book review

Briefe aus Uruk-Warka, 1931-1939. By ARNOLD NOL-DEKE; edited by MARGARETE VAN ESS and ELISABETH WEBER-NOLDEKE. Wiesbaden: REICHERT VERLAG, 2008. Pp. 347, illus. [euro]49.

Arnold Noldeke (1875-1964) is one of the unsung heroes of Mesopotamian exploration, working as an architect at the German Babylon excavations (1902-1908) and directing those at Uruk from 1931 through 1939, yet not receiving the recognition of an entry in the Real-lexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archaologie. This volume presents his private letters from Uruk to his wife Lisbeth and his daughter Elisabeth ("Lite"), who donated her father's archive to the Deutsche Archaologische Institut. Edited by Margarete van Ess, current leader of the Institut's branch in Baghdad, the letters are provided with useful notes conveying personal information about individuals mentioned, as well as glosses of many Arabic terms and German dialect words employed by Noldeke. She also contributes a short introduction to the history of archaeological research in southern Iraq and brief discussions of mandate Iraq and Noldeke's career.

The letters were sent on a regular schedule--much detail is provided concerning postal arrangements both in Iraq and in Germany--by Noldeke during the seven campaigns in which he was active. They contain little about the actual scientific results of the excavations, which have of course been published in the preliminary reports, but much about life on a dig during the first half of the twentieth century. At Uruk, no more than four to seven German expedition members supervised up to 250 native workers clearing Inanna's Eanna temple and the Anu ziqqurat. Noldeke affectionately narrates many incidents from the lives of his workmen, who not only labored under trying circumstances, but were subjected to the financial exactions of their rapacious sheikhs.

Another frequent topic is the difficulties of travel, both between Iraq and Europe and within the vicinity of Warka itself: After the heavy rains often experienced in the winter months during which the Germans worked, the site was cut off from the outside world as desert tracks became impassable. This isolation at least brought relief from the necessity of entertaining visitors, a duty which Noldeke generally fell was a waste of his time...