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Ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) was the original site of many of
the major developments in human history, such as farming, the rise of
urban literate societies and the first great empires of Akkad, Babylonia
and Assyria.
The work of archaeologists is central to our understanding of
Mesopotamia’s past; this innovative volume evaluates the theories,
methods, approaches and history of Mesopotamian archaeology from
its origins in the nineteenth century up to the present day.
Dr Matthews places the discipline within its historical and social
context, and explains how archaeologists conduct their research
through excavation, survey and other methods. In four fundamental
chapters, he uses illustrated case-studies to show how archaeologists
have approached central themes such as
• the shift from hunting to farming
• complex societies
• empires and imperialism
• everyday life
This is the only critical guide to the theory and method of
Mesopotamian archaeology. It will be both an ideal introductory work
and useful as background reading on a wide range of courses.
Roger Matthews was Director of the British Institutes of
Archaeology in both Baghdad and Ankara. He has directed excavations
and surveys in Iraq, Turkey and Syria, and currently lectures at the
Institute of Archaeology, University College London. His recent publi-
cations include The Early Prehistory of Mesopotamia (2000).
The Archaeology
of Mesopotamia

Epigraphic Evidence
Ancient History from Inscriptions
edited by John Bodel
LiteraryTexts and the Greek Historian
Christopher Pelling
LiteraryTexts and the Roman Historian
David S. Potter
Reading Papyri,Writing Ancient History
Roger S. Bagnall
Archaeology and the Bible
John Laughlin
CuneiformTexts and the Writing of History
MarcVan De Mieroop
Ancient History from Coins
Christopher Howgego
The Sources of Roman Law
Problems and Methods for Ancient Historians
O. F. Robinson
The Uses of Greek Mythology
Ken Dowden
Arts, Artefacts, and Chronology in Classical Archaeology
William R. Biers
Approaching the Ancient World

Theories and approaches
Roger Matthews
The Archaeology
of Mesopotamia

First published 2003
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2003 Roger Matthews
Typeset in Baskerville by Taylor & Francis Books Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Matthews, Roger, Dr.
The archaeology of Mesopotamia : theories and approaches /
Roger Matthews.
(Approaching the ancient world)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Iraq–Antiquities. 2. Excavations (Archaeology)–Iraq. 3.
Archaeology–Methodology. I. Title. II. Series.
DS69.5 .M37 2003
935'.001–dc21
2002068224
ISBN 0–415–25316–0 (hbk)
ISBN 0–415–25317–9 (pkk)
Transferred to Digital Printing 2005

List of illustrations ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgements xiii
1 Defining a discipline: Mesopotamian
archaeology in history 1
A chequered past: origins and development 1
Theories and approaches: culture history and anthropological
archaeology 19
2 Tools of the trade: scope and methods of
Mesopotamian archaeology 27
Things and ideas: approaches to archaeological research 27
Excavating the past into the present 32
Surveying for the past 7
Archaeology and Assyriology 56
Chronology of the Mesopotamian past 64
3 Tracking a transition: hunters becoming farmers 67
Settling down 67
Climate: something in the air 70
Population: getting together 72
Plants: a green revolution 74
Animals: partners in clime 79
People first and last 89
Contents

4 States of mind: approaching complexity 93
The complexity of complexity 93
Approaches to the study of social complexity 96
Complexity in the fifth millennium BC: the Ubaid period 102
Kings, captives and colonies: the Uruk phenomenon 108
5 Archaeologies of empire 127
Empires in archaeology 127
Empires in Mesopotamia and Mesopotamia in empires 132
The imperial core 134
Domination of peripheral polities 142
At the edge of empires 146
Empires in time and space: expansion, consolidation, collapse 147
6 People’s pasts 155
‘Humble people who expect nothing’ 155
Cities 157
Houses and households 169
Town, country and nomad 182
7 Futures of the Mesopotamian past 189
AD 2084: a vision 189
Telling tales and painting pictures 190
Mesopotamia in England AD 2002 193
An uncertain future: transcending history? 198
Bibliography 205
Index 231
viii Contents

Tables
5.1 Empires: characteristics and correlates 129
5.2 Mesopotamia and empires 133
Figures
1.1 Map of Mesopotamia and environs 2
1.2 Borsippa, central south Iraq, mistakenly identified
in the past as the Tower of Babylon 3
1.3 Telloh, south Iraq 10
1.4 Nippur, south Iraq 11
1.5 Aššur, north Iraq 13
1.6 Rescue archaeology. Excavations at Tell Mohammed ’
Arab on the Tigris river 18
2.1 Excavating buildings of later-third-millennium BC
date at Tell Brak 34
2.2 Building VI.A.10 at Çatalhöyük 36
2.3 Plan of surface architecture of the Neolithic period in
the north area at Çatalhöyük 42
2.4 Regions where archaeological survey has been conducted
in Iraq, northeast Syria and southeast Turkey 48
2.5 Intensive field-walking survey in north central Turkey,
Project Paphlagonia 56
2.6 Patterns of residence through time in TA House 1 at
Nippur, south Iraq 62
3.1 Plan of the early settlement at Hallan Çemi, southeast
Turkey 83
3.2 Abu Hureyra, north central Syria. Large mammal bones
from Trench B 85
Illustrations

3.3 Umm Dabaghiyah, northwest Iraq. Wall-painting
depicting onagers and possible net-hooks 87
3.4 Umm Dabaghiyah, northwest Iraq. Composite plan
of levels 3–4 87
4.1 Development of states through time in Mesopotamia 101
4.2 Eridu, south Iraq. Cultic building, temple VII 103
4.3 Tepe Gawra, north Iraq. Temple of level XIII 104
4.4 Uruk-Warka, south Iraq. Major structures of the fourth-
millennium city 111
4.5 Najaf, central Iraq 112
4.6 Seal impressions from Uruk-Warka 113
5.1 Khorsabad, north Iraq. Plan of the city 137
5.2 Khorsabad. Plan of Sargon’s palace 138
5.3 Samarra, central Iraq, imperial racecourse in cloverleaf
plan 140
5.4 Tell Brak, northeast Syria. Hoard of silver, gold, lapis
lazuli, carnelian and other items 151
6.1 Maškan-šapir, south Iraq. City plan 161
6.2 Abu Salabikh, south Iraq. Plan of the mounds 164
6.3 Abu Salabikh, south Iraq. Plan of Early Dynastic
buildings 165
6.4 Tell Madhhur, east central Iraq. Distribution of small
finds within the excavated house 171
6.5 Abu Salabikh, south Iraq. Plan of House H, Main
Mound 173
6.6 Abu Salabikh, south Iraq. Adult and child burial within
Early Dynastic house 177
6.7 Resources and production in terms of city/village/
nomad interactions 184
7.1 Daur, central Iraq 203
x Illustrations

Archaeologists spend much of their time attempting to capture the
essence of a moment in time. In this book I intend to explore how we
make our attempts by considering the theories, approaches and mecha-
nisms that are the currency of Mesopotamian archaeology at the start
of the twenty-first century AD, and through which we try our best to
encapsulate the past for study in the present.
The need for a book such as this was confirmed as I read Marc Van
De Mieroop’s excellent study Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History, in
which the following sentence occurs: ‘Methodological discussions of art
history and archaeology with specific focus on ancient Mesopotamia
are not available, but it is to be hoped that they will appear in the near
future’ (Van De Mieroop 1999a: 5). As a discipline, Mesopotamian and
Southwest Asian archaeology has not been renowned for its critical
awareness or self-reflexivity, but if this is a failing it is one that it shares
with many other regional archaeologies of the world, for there are
extremely few specifically methodological studies available in any field
of modern archaeology.
In this volume I aim to explore the historical context of
Mesopotamian archaeology, to consider its theoretical and methodolog-
ical alignments, to investigate how archaeology is constructed and
practised within the context of a series of major research arenas, and
finally to speculate on some potential future directions of the discipline.
As with all archaeology, the production of this book has been above all
an exercise in sampling. Within each selected research issue, I have had
to limit the coverage to a small proportion of the available subject
matter, but in covering the so-called ‘big issues’ of the human past, for
which Mesopotamian archaeology is uniquely suited, I hope to give
some idea of the special nature of this wonderful discipline.
Preface

I owe thanks to several people who have helped with this volume in one
way or another, but I should first stress that any faults or errors
remaining are entirely my responsibility. For courteous assistance in
libraries at the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, and the
Institute of Archaeology, University College London, I am extremely
grateful to, respectively, Yaprak Eran and Robert Kirby. For helpful
comments and advice on several aspects I am very grateful to Bob
Chapman and Wendy Matthews, both of the Department of
Archaeology, University of Reading, as well as to three anonymous
referees for useful suggestions. For advice and comment on sections of
Chapter 7, my sincere gratitude goes to Sam Moorehead of the British
Museum and to Harriet Martin. Hugh Alexander of the Public Record
Office Image Library, Kew, provided invaluable assistance with regard
to permissions for reproduction of aerial images held in their collec-
tions, and I thank him for that. I also thank Matthew Reynolds for his
able assistance with illustrations used throughout this volume. Finally,
my sincere thanks go to the staff at Routledge, particularly Richard
Stoneman and Catherine Bousfield, for steering me and the book
towards a productive meeting point.
Roger Matthews
London
11 June 2002
Acknowledgements

A chequered past: origins and development
The history of Mesopotamian archaeology as a modern discipline is
rooted in the entrepreneurial and colonial past of the Western powers.
The story of modern Western involvement with Mesopotamia, as with
other parts of the world, begins with sporadic encounters by enter-
prising traders and travellers pushing out their horizons and setting up
initial and tentative lines of contact between vastly disparate worlds.
Since the end of the Crusades in the Middle Ages, a largely disastrous
engagement between the West and the East had been in abeyance, but
with the widening of cultural, political and economic horizons atten-
dant upon, initially, the Renaissance and then, more urgently, the
Industrial Revolution in Western Europe and the consequent capitalist
drive towards new resources and markets, a renewal of interactions
became inevitable. Over the past two centuries or so, the nature of that
renewed engagement has scarcely been less catastrophic than that of
the Middle Ages, as is attested by at least one story a day in our newspa-
pers, but one of the surviving waifs of that intercourse is indeed the
modern study of the Mesopotamian past. In assessing the role and posi-
tion of Mesopotamian archaeology within the contemporary world,
however, let us try not to visit the sins of the parent upon the child, at
least not without a full and fair hearing.
Where, then, in history can we assign the beginning of Mesopotamian
archaeology? Does it begin with the long journey through the region in
the later twelfth century of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, or with the
Italian noble Pietro della Valle collecting a handful of bricks bearing
cuneiform inscriptions from the ruins of Ur, Babylon and Borsippa,
where he conducted some excavations, and returning with them in 1625
to Europe where his finds caused considerable interest (Invernizzi 2000)?
Or do we see a start in the voyage of the Dane Carsten Niebuhr and
Defining a discipline
Mesopotamian archaeology
in history
Chapter 1

Key to sites:
1 Abu Hureyra
2 Abu Salabikh
3 Arpachiyah
4 Arslantepe
5 Aššur
6 Babylon
7 Beydar
8 Brak
9 Çatalhöyük
10 Ebla
11 Eridu
12 Gawra
13 Girikihacýyan
14 Göbekli Tepe
15 Godin Tepe
16 Habuba Kabira
17 Hacýnebi
18 Hallan Çemi
19 Jarmo
20 Jemdet Nasr
21 Khafajah
22 Khorsabad
23 Kültepe-Kaneš
24 Kurban Höyük
25 Madhhur
26 Mari
27 Maškan-šapir
28 Nimrud
29 Nineveh
30 Nippur
31 Qermez Dere
32 Samarra
33 Sawwan
34 Shanidar
35 Susa
36 Telloh
37 Umm Dabaghiyah
38 Ur
39 Uruk-Warka
Figure 1.1 Map of Mesopotamia and environs, depicting location of selected
sites mentioned in the text

his basic mapping of Nineveh in March 1766? Does the discipline begin
with Claudius Rich surveying the ruins of Babylon in December 1811
and of Nineveh in 1820 on outings from his post as Baghdad Resident of
the East India Company? Or in December 1842 with Paul Emile Botta
sinking the first trenches into the dusty earth of Nineveh? Or with Austen
Henry Layard’s discovery in November 1845 of two Assyrian palaces on
his first day of digging at Nimrud? And what of early nineteenth-century
attempts at the decipherment of cuneiform, such as those of Grotefend
and Rawlinson on the trilingual Bisitun inscription in Iran? All these
dramatic events, and many others, can be compounded as an early stage
in the evolution of Mesopotamian archaeology.
Are these genuine beginnings to the discipline or are we ignoring
earlier or contemporary developments outside the Eurocentric tradi-
tion? Tellingly, Seton Lloyd begins his masterful book on the history of
Mesopotamian discovery, Foundations in the Dust, with the following
sentence:
It is a curious fact that, owing to the almost universal ignorance of
Arabic literature in the West during their time, our ancestors’
knowledge of the geography of Mesopotamia and Western Asia
Defining a discipline 3
Figure 1.2 Borsippa, central south Iraq, mistakenly identified in the past
as the Tower of Babylon
Source: photo by R. Matthews.

generally was derived largely from the accounts of various
European travellers.
(Lloyd 1947: 11)
Lloyd was correct to point to the underrated (in the West) achieve-
ments of Arab intellectuals. Comparative historical narratives dealing
with ancient non-Islamic peoples and with Islamic origins, as well as with
the classical tradition of Greece and Rome, were already a feature of
ninth- and tenth-century Arab historians such as al-Tabari, al-Mas’udi,
and al-Biruni (Rosenthal 1968; Masry 1981: 222; Hourani 1991: 53–4),
while the geographical writings of Ibn Battuta in the fourteenth century
situate the world of Islam within a rich and diverse global context.
The works of the fourteenth-century historian Ibn Khaldun, above
all, are imbued with a concern to transcend particularist histories by
developing a ‘science of culture’ (Mahdi 1964), rooted in what we
might now see as principles of social theory, human-environment
dialectics, and ideology, an intellectual foundation upon which to
explore what Ibn Khaldun saw as the five problematic subject areas of
human existence worthy of scientific historical investigation: the trans-
formation of primitive culture into a civilised condition, the state, the
city, economic life, and the development of the sciences. Why did
archaeology not develop out of or alongside this intellectual discourse?
In a recent article, Vincenzo Strika speculates that Islamic intellectuals
of the Middle Ages were on the verge of arriving at something that
might have become archaeology as we know it, had it not been
swamped by the European tradition of science and history from the
time of Napoleon onwards, a tradition that was too intertwined with
Western exploitative colonialism ever to be acceptable or attractive to
indigenous intelligentsia (Strika 2000).
If we look for evidence of a specifically Ottoman interest in the past
of Mesopotamia, a land ruled by the Ottomans for almost four
centuries, we are met with complete silence until after the arrival of the
European powers (Özdoğan 1998: 114), followed by the founding of
the Imperial Ottoman Museum in Istanbul in the late 1860s. In essence,
the past of Mesopotamia had reverted to dust, and its recovery and
interpretation have been largely the fruit of Western engagement. By
the time of that engagement, Mesopotamia had become ‘a neglected
province of a decaying empire’ (Lloyd 1947: 211), ‘the system of irriga-
tion had declined, and vast areas were under the control of pastoral
tribes and their chieftains, not only east of the Euphrates but in the
land lying between it and the Tigris’ (Hourani 1991: 226–7).
4 Defining a discipline

But let us not forget the evidence for the practice of a kind of proto-
archaeology by the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia themselves.
Irene Winter has suggested that in the first millennium BC ‘the
Babylonian past was actively sought in the field’ (Winter 2000: 1785;
italics in original), by the inhabitants of Babylonia as part of a concern
with royal patronage. Thus carefully executed programmes of excava-
tion at Babylon, Sippar, Ur and Larsa of buildings a thousand or more
years old were mounted by kings such as Nabonidus and Nabopolassar
in the seventh and sixth centuries BC, while statues of Gudea were
recovered and displayed in the palace of a Hellenistic ruler of Telloh,
2,000 years after their manufacture (Kose 2000).
The theory and practice of the modern discipline are heavily rooted
in the story of Western political interest in the Middle East. At this
point, it may be useful to define some of the geographical terms that
will feature throughout this volume, particularly as the origin and usage
of these terms cannot be separated from their political contexts in
modern times (Bahrani 1998; Van De Mieroop 1997a). The term
‘Mesopotamia’ as used today refers to the territory largely contained
within the Republic of Iraq, with much smaller areas in northeast
Syria, southeast Turkey, and west Iran. Modern usage of the term
‘Greater Mesopotamia’ applies to the watersheds of the rivers
Euphrates, Tigris and Karun (Wright and Johnson 1975: 268). In antiq-
uity Mesopotamia was the name given to a satrapy constructed by
Alexander the Great from parts of two Achaemenid satrapies, and
subsequently a province of the Roman empire in what today is the
region of southeast Turkey stretching from the left bank of the
Euphrates at Samsat to the Tigris at Cizre (Talbert 2000: map 89). J. J.
Finkelstein demonstrated some time ago that prior to the late second
millennium BC, citations in Akkadian of ‘M‰t B”r”tim’, or ‘the land of
Mesopotamia’, referred to ‘the midst of the river’ rather than ‘between
the two rivers’, and more specifically that the name Mesopotamia desig-
nated the lands contained within the three sides of the great bend of
the Euphrates in Syria and Turkey, extending only as far east as the
westernmost tributaries of the Habur river (Finkelstein 1962). Use of
the term Mesopotamia to mean the lands between the Euphrates and
Tigris rivers probably came about with the arrival of Aramaic-speaking
tribes in the late second millennium BC, a usage adopted by Alexander
the Great and the Romans in their definitions of Mesopotamia. Today
the geographical scope of the term has greatly expanded to include all
the Euphrates-Tigris lands as far downstream as the Gulf. Zainab
Bahrani has argued that the application of the term ‘Mesopotamia’

from the mid-nineteenth century onwards serves a political end in
expropriating the past of Iraq and its neighbours for the European clas-
sical tradition, at the same time dissociating the past of the region from
its modern inhabitants, whose country is called Iraq, not Mesopotamia
(Bahrani 1998: 165); a fair point, given that the term as originally
constructed did not apply to territory south of the Habur-Euphrates
confluence. Perhaps use by the Romans of the Greek word
‘Mesopotamia’ to designate this fiercely contested border region from
the second century AD onwards served a similar political agenda in its
own time.
The terms ‘Middle East’ and ‘Near East’ are also of nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century origin, coined by European and North
American politicians and strategists in order to define parts of what had
previously been lumped together under the term ‘the Orient’, a catch-
all phrase covering all of Asia from Constantinople to Beijing and much
more besides. As Bahrani has shown, usage of the term ‘Mesopotamia’
to cover the pre-Islamic past of the region and of ‘Middle East’ to cover
the modern, principally Islamic, manifestation of the region has further
served to dissociate the past from the present in the eyes of the
Eurocentric tradition (Bahrani 1998: 165). Increasing use of the terms
‘Southwest Asia’ or ‘Western Asia’, particularly in contemporary
European academe, to denote ‘the geographical region between the
eastern Mediterranean and the Indus Valley and between the Black and
Caspian Seas and southern Arabia’ (Harris 1996: xi) is the result of an
honest attempt to employ a terminology as empty as possible of polit-
ical baggage. But within this still huge area we need a term to cover
what most of us agree on as a specific geographical region and
‘Mesopotamia’ is the only term readily comprehensible by all.
The story of the early development of Mesopotamian archaeology
has been related in several accounts (esp. Lloyd 1947, revised 1980; and
Larsen 1996; see also Handcock 1912; Parrot 1946; Pallis 1956), and
here we provide no more than a summary of some main features. The
early decades of Western archaeology in Mesopotamia were at one
level an episode of loot-grabbing whereby spectacular finds such as
slabs of stone reliefs from great Assyrian palaces in north Iraq were
sought and claimed on behalf of museums in, principally, Britain and
France. Working within an intellectual framework shaped by the Bible
and the classics, Western scholars and adventurers, led by Botta and
Layard, uncovered enormous quantities of valuable antiquities,
removed them from their original contexts and then shipped them to
the Louvre or the British Museum, who encouraged them with finan-

cial inducements ranging in scope from miserly to generous. The scale
of these operations was immense. At Nineveh, for example, Layard
uncovered a total of 3km of wall faces with sculpted reliefs, principally
using the technique of tunnelling.
What was being transported to the museums and upper-class resi-
dences of Britain and France was much more than priceless antiquities,
however. An entire past was being kidnapped as part of ‘building the
Orientalist discourse’, in Edward Said’s phrase (Said 1978). In search of
biblical verification and a radicalisation of the Western Graeco-Roman
tradition within a region now identified as the ‘cradle of civilisation’,
scholars sought to bring the Mesopotamian past firmly within a histor-
ical trajectory defined by the Bible, classical texts, and primitive theories
on the rise of civilisation (Larsen 1989). For the Marxist prehistorian
Gordon Childe, the glory of the Orient was to be viewed as an ‘indis-
pensable prelude to the true appreciation of European prehistory’
(Childe 1952: 2). Their success in this expropriation may be measured
by the wide acceptance of the accuracy of that trajectory from
Mesopotamia through Greece and Rome to the world of the West
today (Bottéro 2000; Parpola 2000). As Zainab Bahrani puts it: ‘The
image of Mesopotamia, upon which we still depend, was necessary for
a march of progress from East to West, a concept of world cultural
development that is explicitly Eurocentric and imperialist’ (Bahrani
1998: 172; see also Van De Mieroop 1997a: 287–90).
While accepting the force and validity of this argument, two points
may be made. First, writing as a Mesopotamian archaeologist of west
European origin, I wish to bring in from the postmodern cold my colo-
nial ancestors who, like us all, were subject to forces of history on a
scale larger and subtler than they perhaps could have imagined. As
Seton Lloyd has written regarding nineteenth-century excavators in
Mesopotamia: ‘No logic or ethics of an age which they could not
foresee must be allowed to detract from the human endeavour of these
great explorers’ (Lloyd 1947: 212). The context of their interactions
with the indigenous peoples of Iraq and adjacent lands may have been
one of imperial exploitation, annexation and expropriation. In many
cases, however, their intentions were noble and committed, as comes
through in surviving diaries and letters, such as those of Gertrude Bell
(1953) and others who learnt local languages and strove to improve the
social, economic and cultural lot of the inhabitants of the region. Many
of them suffered and died in pursuit of their commitments and convic-
tions. Whatever the political context of their passion for the past, and

for the present, of the lands of Mesopotamia, that passion was genuine
and in some ways productive.
Second, we should not cease to appreciate on their own terms the
achievements of the Eurocentric tradition in apprehending the
Mesopotamian past, as much as the achievements of that past itself.
There is no denying the imperialist and Eurocentric context of the
creation of a place for ‘Mesopotamia’ within the world-view of
Victorian England. In deconstructing the concept of ‘Mesopotamia’,
however, we should not thereby reject all notion that, for example, the
world of ancient Greece was heavily affected by a host of influences
from the East and that these influences might indeed have been trans-
mitted to us today, however indirectly. These influences and traditions,
often subtle and inadequately studied, in fields as diverse as religion,
ideology, philosophy, mathematics, music and sport, have received
consideration lately in a range of stimulating publications, including
Stephanie Dalley’s book The Legacy of Mesopotamia (Dalley 1998), an
article by Simo Parpola boldly entitled ‘The Mesopotamian soul of
Western culture’ (Parpola 2000; see also George 1997), and Jean
Bottéro’s vision of ‘the birth of the West’ from Mesopotamian origins
(Bottéro 1992; Bottéro et al. 2000). The annexation of the past of
Mesopotamia by nineteenth-century travellers from Western Europe
took place a century and a half ago, but the process has not stopped
and the ground remains hotly contested. Above all, we need constantly
to be aware of our generally implicit attitudes towards the
Mesopotamian past and its part in world history: ‘Perhaps the time has
come that we, Middle Eastern scholars and scholars of the ancient
Middle East both, dissociate ourselves from this imperial triumphal
procession and look toward a redefinition of the land in between’
(Bahrani 1998: 172; see also Larsen 1989). Redefining, realigning and
rehabilitating the Mesopotamian past remains a major task and chal-
lenge for the decades ahead.
Moving on from the first steps in Mesopotamian archaeology, and
the modern postcolonial date, we now provide a brief account of how
the discipline evolved in the decades subsequent to the 1840s. Following
Botta and Layard’s assaults on the great Assyrian cities of the north, a
mass of barely controlled investigations started up over much of
Mesopotamia, with British explorers Rawlinson, Loftus and Taylor
working at Borsippa, Warka, Larsa, Ur and Tell Sifr from 1849
onwards. Layard himself rather reluctantly sunk trenches into Babylon
and Nippur in late 1850 without major result. French explorations at
Kish and Babylon south of Baghdad in 1851 failed to find the hoped-

for sculpture-clad palaces now well known in the north, and interest
eventually waned. Rassam and Place continued the work of Layard and
Botta at Nineveh and Khorsabad, and Rassam found time to
commence digging at yet another Assyrian capital, Aššur, in 1853. A
major disaster occurred in 1855 when 300 hundred packing cases full of
priceless antiquities from these Assyrian capital cities, as well as material
from Babylon, were sent to the bottom of the Shatt al-’Arab near
Qurna by local marauders to whom the requisite protection money had
not been paid by the French. On this dreadful note, European explo-
rations of Mesopotamia came to a halt with the outbreak of the
Crimean War in the same year.
From 1873 onwards European interest in Mesopotamia revived. The
first sign was an expedition financed by the Daily Telegraph and headed
by George Smith of the British Museum, sent in search of a missing
fragment of the so-called ‘Deluge tablet’, which appeared to recount an
early version of the biblical story of Noah and the Flood, in fact now
known to be part of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Incredibly, the missing frag-
ment was indeed found. Following Smith’s death in 1876, excavations at
Nineveh were continued under the direction of Rassam, previously
Layard’s assistant. From the Ottoman authorities Rassam obtained an
extremely generous permit which allowed him to excavate anywhere
within the pashalıks of Baghdad, Aleppo and Van, a truly vast area, and
he proceeded to do exactly that in the period 1878–82, leaving gangs of
workmen, with local supervisors, for weeks at a time at such widely scat-
tered sites as Nineveh, Nimrud and Balawat in the north, and Babylon,
Borsippa, Cutha, Telloh and Sippar in the south, as well as at Sheikh
Hamad on the Habur in Syria, and the Urartian site of Toprakkale by
Lake Van in Turkey.
The personality and career of Hormuzd Rassam are notable enough
to make us pause for a moment over their consideration. Reasonably
entitling Rassam ‘the first Iraqi archaeologist’, Julian Reade has recently
attempted to rehabilitate the much-maligned Moslawi (Reade 1993),
pointing out that:
He is condemned for not recording and publishing his excavations
properly, and for being a treasure-hunter rather than a seeker after
truth, when such criticisms might more reasonably be directed at
the people who were giving him his orders, or rather at the entire
climate of opinion, concerning archaeology and Biblical antiqui-
ties, in Victorian England.
(Reade 1993: 39)

Rassam, a Chaldaean Christian by birth, converted to Protestantism
under the influence of European missionaries in Mosul, and thus began
a life-long love affair with the religio-cultural world of the West and
England in particular. Following Layard’s brilliant successes at Nineveh
and Nimrud, in which Rassam was heavily involved from 1846, Rassam
carried on archaeological pursuits in Mesopotamia and beyond, culmi-
nating in the Aleppo-Baghdad-Van permit of 1878–82, as related
above. But perhaps the main interest of his story is the way in which he
attempted to cross the social bridge between the British and Ottoman
empires and, above all, the reasons for his failure in this endeavour. As
Reade puts it: ‘Rassam in Turkey was a member of a suspect minority;
in England, however hard he tried to make himself an Englishman, he
seemed to many people suspiciously oriental’ (Reade 1993: 50). He
ended his long life neglected and largely forgotten in England.
The last quarter of the nineteenth century saw signs of the emer-
gence of the modern discipline, at least in terms of scope if not
methods. Old habits were dying hard, however. Characterised as
displaying a ‘total misunderstanding of stratigraphy and architecture’
(Liverani 1999: 2), long-term French excavations commenced at the
Sumerian city of Telloh (ancient Girsu of Lagaš state) in 1877 under
Ernest de Sarzec.
Figure 1.3 Telloh, south Iraq. Large hole made by de Sarzec and Parrot

Exhibitions in France of Sumerian antiquities from Telloh, such as
the Stela of the Vultures and diorite statues of the rulers of Lagaš,
caused a national sensation and encouraged a French commitment to
the site for over half a century. Our understanding of Sumerian society
is still heavily influenced by the thousands of Sumerian tablets recov-
ered from the site in these campaigns. Sadly, these years also saw the
real start of extensive illicit digging in Mesopotamia and the looting of
untold thousands of tablets from Telloh during de Sarzec’s absence
from the site. Looting of tablets from many Mesopotamian sites, espe-
cially those already under excavation, was found to be commonplace by
Wallis Budge of the British Museum during his visits to Baghdad in
1888–9. It was also at this time that Hamdi Bey was appointed as first
director of the Imperial Ottoman Museum in Istanbul, leading to
stricter controls over foreign expeditions working in Ottoman lands.
Following an initial expedition in 1884, the first American involvement
in Mesopotamia came with the commencement of a long-term
commitment to Nippur from 1887. Much of our knowledge of
Sumerian literary compositions, in particular, stems from finds made
during the campaigns directed by Hilprecht, Peters and Haynes in these
early years. The American connection with Nippur has survived, with
gaps, until modern times.
Figure 1.4 Nippur, south Iraq. Excavated mud-brick buildings being reclaimed
by the desert

At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the arrival of
German scholars on the flat plains of Mesopotamia brought about a
transformation in the discipline. In 1898 the German Oriental Society
(Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft) was founded, and from 1899 until the
First World War the society sponsored excavations at Babylon under the
direction of Robert Koldewey, who had studied architecture, archae-
ology and ancient history in Berlin, Munich and Vienna, and had
earlier excavated at Assos and Lesbos. In 1887 at the Sumerian sites of
Surghul and al-Hiba near Telloh, Koldewey first began to develop the
technique of tracing and excavating mud brick, a genuine revolution in
the methodology of the discipline, as until then mud-brick walls had
simply been dug away without detection or recording. At Babylon
Koldewey’s patient and exacting work revealed great portions of the
city of Hammurabi’s time (eighteenth century BC) and of the era of
Nebuchadrezzar (604–563 BC), including the Procession Street, the
Ištar Gate and the ziggurat, as well as numerous temples, palaces and
houses (Koldewey 1914). His assistants and workmen gained invaluable
experience and expertise in the tracing of mud brick, thus equipping
themselves for work elsewhere in Mesopotamia.
In breaks from Babylon, Koldewey excavated at Borsippa and at
Fara (ancient Šuruppak) from 1901 to 1903. Most significantly, one of
Koldewey’s assistants at Babylon, Walter Andrae (also a talented artist:
Andrae and Boehmer 1992), excavated from 1902 to 1914 at the first
Assyrian capital of Aššur, exposing as at Babylon large swathes of the
ancient city.
An extremely important development came in the form of Andrae’s
deep stratigraphic sounding through the Ištar Temple at Aššur, repre-
senting the first occasion in Mesopotamian archaeology where a
chronological sequence of buildings was excavated and recorded
through application of the principles of archaeological stratigraphy. A
well trained cadre of local professional diggers, called ‘Sherqatis’ after
the town of Qala’at Sherqat, the modern town by Aššur, evolved at the
site and went on to serve on numerous mud-brick excavations
throughout Mesopotamia in the twentieth century. These German
investigations at Babylon and Aššur in the years before and just into the
First World War set entirely new standards in the conduct of fieldwork
in Mesopotamia, and many of their achievements remain of major
significance today. In concert with the application of the principles of
archaeological stratigraphy, the use of ceramic typology, as developed in
Egypt by Flinders Petrie, began to enable archaeologists to arrange
their pots in meaningful chronological and geographic sequences.

Figure
1.5
Aššur,
north
Iraq,
photographed
from
8,000
feet
on
26
May
1918.
Andrae’s
trenches
clearly
visible
Source:
Public
Record
Office
ref.
CN
5/2
393.

While the Germans applied method and patience to their
Mesopotamian investigations, others were less competent or restrained.
The American Edgar Banks hacked his way through the Sumerian city
of Bismaya (ancient Adab), while the French at Kish and the British at
Nineveh continued largely to ignore contemporary developments in the
discipline. During these years the first surveys of the Islamic remains of
Mesopotamia were underway, conducted by Massignon, Preusser,
Herzfeld and others. With the outbreak of war in 1914, work in
Mesopotamia came to an almost complete and immediate halt.
During the First World War the political relationship between the
West and the modern lands of Mesopotamia, principally Iraq, devel-
oped in dramatic ways. European engagement with the Ottoman
empire took the form of rather half-hearted military campaigns,
teetering on the edge of disaster (and frequently going over it), in north-
west Arabia and Jordan, the Gallipoli peninsula, and Mesopotamia
itself. The British capture of Baghdad in 1917 laid the foundation for
the exercise of British control and influence over the newly created state
of Iraq thereafter. Not surprisingly, British involvement in the archae-
ology of Mesopotamia took on a major new significance in the years
following the end of the First World War, with the Iraqi Department of
Antiquities under the guidance of Gertrude Bell, who oversaw the
development of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. Being largely artificial
entities, the states created after the First World War out of the wreckage
of the Ottoman empire were in need of national identities, or so
believed their new imperialist occupiers, and much of the work of this
time was ultimately directed towards such an end. The creation and
definition of these new national identities were also seen as exercises in
providing a cultural image of the past that might unite and transcend
the multi-ethnic constitution of Iraq and other states.
Already in 1918 soundings at Ur and Eridu were made by Campbell
Thompson, while in 1919 Hall excavated again at Ur and at nearby
Tell al-Ubaid. Throughout the 1920s British and British-American
campaigns were underway at several major sites, perhaps the most
important of which was Ur ‘of the Chaldees’, excavated by Leonard
Woolley from 1922 to 1932 on behalf of the British Museum and the
University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania (Woolley and
Moorey 1982). Woolley’s discoveries, which receive scientific study to
this day, threw dramatic light on the city of Ur in many of its phases.
His excavation of the Sumerian royal cemetery yielded astonishing
finds of jewellery, furniture and musical instruments that captured
public imagination on a scale not seen since Layard’s triumphs of the

mid-nineteenth century, and his deep sounding at Ur provided informa-
tion for the first time on the prehistoric settlement of the Lower
Mesopotamian alluvium. Woolley’s emphasis on the biblical connec-
tions of his work at Ur, including its claim as the birthplace of
Abraham and the exposure of deposits interpreted as evidence for the
Flood (Woolley 1938; see also Woolley and Moorey 1982: 8), strongly
situate his work within an intellectual framework directly descended
from that of the mid-nineteenth century.
Many other teams were at work in Mesopotamia during the 1920s.
French archaeologists were back at Telloh. At Kish and Jemdet Nasr a
British-American team from Oxford and Chicago excavated as if no
advances in techniques had been made since the 1880s. As Seton Lloyd
put it many years later, ‘Ingharra [Kish] was badly excavated, the exca-
vations were badly recorded and the records were correspondingly
badly published’ (Lloyd 1969: 48). An American expedition to Fara
behaved little better. At last the Germans returned to the scene with the
start of a long-term commitment to the massive site of Uruk-Warka
(biblical Erech) from 1928. Here the Germans recovered plans of huge
late-fourth-millennium temples and thousands of clay tablets inscribed
in proto-cuneiform, as also encountered at Jemdet Nasr, now generally
believed to be the earliest form of writing from anywhere in the world.
Mesopotamian Palaeolithic archaeology began in the 1920s with exca-
vations by Dorothy Garrod at the cave sites of Hazar Merd and Zarzi
in the Zagros mountains. Much of the research of the 1920s and 1930s
in Lower Mesopotamia was aimed, however indirectly, at addressing the
issue of Sumerian origins, the so-called ‘Sumerian question’. Having
identified the presence in south Iraq of a pre-Akkadian, non-Semitic
people, the Sumerians, archaeologists and Assyriologists were inter-
ested, within the remit of culture history, to discover their geographical
origins.
The next significant development came with the large-scale deploy-
ment in Mesopotamia of teams from the Oriental Institute of the
University of Chicago, starting in the late 1920s with work at
Khorsabad. In the 1930s a regional approach was taken to the excava-
tion of four sites in the Diyala region northeast of Baghdad, where
many important discoveries were made. In particular, the excavations at
Khafajah, Tell Asmar and Tell Agrab provided a detailed picture and
chronological framework for the Early Dynastic period of
Mesopotamia, which remains largely intact today. At the Diyala sites
further refinements in mud-brick tracing were developed under the
skilful supervision of Pinhas Delougaz (Lloyd 1963: 33–43). At the same

time, work in Upper Mesopotamia continued, with Americans at the
prehistoric site of Tepe Gawra and the British, under Max Mallowan, at
Nineveh, Arpachiyah, Tell Brak and Chagar Bazar. Conferences in
Baghdad in 1929 and Leiden in 1931 sought to make some sense of the
mass of excavated material that had by then been extracted from the
Mesopotamian soil. The culture historical periods, or pottery-based
phases, were agreed upon in the sequence Ubaid, Uruk, Jemdet Nasr
and Early Dynastic I–III. Later work in Upper Mesopotamia added
Hassuna, Samarra and Halaf to the earlier end of the sequence. Slowly
a pan-Mesopotamian framework was being constructed, strictly along
culture historical lines. In the 1930s stricter new antiquities laws,
severely restricting the amount and nature of finds which could be
exported from Iraq, led to a large-scale emigration of foreign archaeolo-
gists, including Woolley, Parrot, Mallowan and the Chicago Americans,
to Syria and other lands. Iraqi archaeologists continued with work at
Islamic sites such as Wasit, directed by Fuad Safar, and Samarra.
Seton Lloyd had worked closely with the Chicago teams in the
1930s, and during the Second World War, as Advisor to the Iraq
Government Directorate General of Antiquities, he instituted excava-
tions at several sites, including the prehistoric mound of Hassuna near
Mosul, specifically selected in order to address issues of early prehistory.
In collaboration with Iraqi colleagues, in the 1940s Lloyd also exca-
vated the late prehistoric site of Tell Uqair, south of Baghdad, Eridu in
the far south, and the Kassite city of ’Aqar Quf to the west of
Baghdad. The Uqair campaign was interrupted by the pro-German
uprising of Rashid ’Ali in 1941 (Lloyd 1963; 1986).
Lloyd’s carefully planned and executed programmes of fieldwork set
the stage for the next major development in the discipline, the arrival of
economic and anthropological archaeology. This step, which started in
the late 1940s and blossomed fully through the 1950s and beyond, was
initiated by Robert Braidwood of the University of Chicago. With the
Iraq-Jarmo project as its hub, a host of innovative programmes was set
in train, all sharing an interest in ancient economy and environment
above all (see next section). Sites of extremely early date, such as Barda
Balka, Palegawra and Karim Shahir were all explored in detail, while
the work at Jarmo itself yielded an immense amount of information on
Neolithic developments in the Zagros foothills (Braidwood and Howe
1960; L. S. Braidwood et al. 1983). Other Braidwood-centred prehistoric
projects included excavations at the Hassuna sites of Gird Ali Agha and
al-Khan, the Samarra site of Matarrah, and the Halaf site of Banahilk.
In the meantime, the British under Max Mallowan had returned to

Nimrud, the Danes were digging at Shimshara, and the Americans were
once more at work at Nippur. Major Palaeolithic discoveries in north-
east Iraq were made in the 1950s by Ralph and Rose Solecki at
Shanidar Cave, including an assemblage of Neanderthal skeletons still
unparalleled in Mesopotamia and all of Southwest Asia.
Through the 1960s the pace of discovery continued to increase, with
prehistoric explorations at Bouqras, Telul eth-Thalathat and Choga
Mami. Large-scale research projects characterised the 1960s and 1970s,
with the British still at Nimrud, Umm Dabaghiyah and many other
sites, and Soviet teams working at a suite of prehistoric sites on the
Jazirah west of Mosul, including Maghzaliya, Sotto and Yarim Tepe, as
well as the start of long-term British investigations at the Sumerian city
of Abu Salabikh, amongst many other projects too numerous to
mention. These years also saw a florescence of Iraqi archaeologists,
many trained at Western universities, with the prehistoric settlement of
Tell es-Sawwan being excavated by Behnam Abu al-Soof, Ghanim
Wahida and colleagues, as well as a host of other field projects. At the
same time, the execution of coherent and extensive survey projects on
the Lower Mesopotamian plains, principally by Thorkild Jacobsen and
Robert Adams, generated a new and highly specific appreciation of the
history of settlement in these now largely abandoned regions of Iraq.
From the late 1970s onwards a new development was an increasing
emphasis on rescue or salvage archaeology, an aspect that has
continued to dominate the profession in subsequent decades. As in
other parts of the world, large-scale civil engineering projects have
provided the driving force behind much archaeological exploration and,
of course, destruction. In Liverani’s words, ‘archaeology has become a
salvage operation, the fallout and the cultural embellishment of the
extensive neo-capitalist intervention in regional planning’ (Liverani
1999: 7). Within Mesopotamia such projects have taken place princi-
pally in the form of dam construction and land irrigation programmes
associated with the major rivers of the region, including the Hamrin
region of the Diyala river in east Iraq, the Haditha stretch of the
Euphrates in west Iraq, the Tigris region to the north of Mosul, the
Upper Jazirah in north Iraq, stretches of the Euphrates and Habur
rivers in Syria, and much of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, among
others, in Turkey. Frequently working under tight constraints of time
and funding, archaeology in these circumstances has developed to
become more of a regional survey exercise with limited excavations.
Thus great quantities of new sites of all periods have been located, but
very few of them have been subjected to detailed, long-term excavation.

The late 1980s witnessed a return to major research excavations at
many sites in Iraq, including Nimrud, Nineveh, Kish, Jemdet Nasr,
Hatra and Seleucia to name only a very few, while work in northeast
Syria and southeast Turkey continued with an emphasis on survey and
rescue. These projects employed a range of modern techniques of
archaeological investigation, and many of them were planned as open-
ended long-term commitments. Foreign investigations in Iran had
already been halted by the revolution of 1979. Following Iraq’s invasion
of Kuwait in August 1990 almost all foreign, and most Iraqi, work
inside Iraq came to a halt. Since that time foreign fieldwork in Iraq has
been minimal, and the local antiquities authorities have been occupied
principally in attempting to control the plague of illicit digging and
dealing, as well as more recently running a few research operations. In
field terms the discipline has been on ice for over a decade, but ongoing
publication of earlier work, as well as the production of general
syntheses of aspects of the Mesopotamian past, continue to demon-
strate the commitment felt by many to the study of the past of this
uniquely significant part of the world.
By the turn of the millennium, then, Mesopotamian archaeology
had evolved over a period of some 150 years from a museum-backed
antiquity-finding exercise with its roots in biblical interest to a thor-
Figure 1.6 Rescue archaeology. Excavations at Tell Mohammed ’Arab on
the Tigris river, north Iraq

oughly modern discipline utilising and generating the latest in
approaches, methodologies and techniques. We can also see that the
progress of the discipline has occurred in fits and starts, with frequent
halts to activity brought about by political factors, as is the case today.
There can be no doubt that a full return to fieldwork and research
within the modern state of Iraq would rapidly repay the interest and
commitment of the world-wide group of people who look forward to
that time with enthusiasm and expectancy.
Theories and approaches: culture history
and anthropological archaeology
Mesopotamian archaeologists are seldom explicit about theoretical
stances, but in general terms there are two major theoretical contexts
within which most practitioners work – culture history and anthropo-
logical archaeology, the adoption of either of which does not exclude
the practice of the other. Indeed, it could plausibly be argued that the
wealth of information and interpretative possibilities encapsulated
within the surviving evidence from the Mesopotamian past uniquely
encourages a profitable blending of the approaches of both culture
history and anthropological archaeology, and that it has been the rela-
tively successful combining of these approaches that has kept
Mesopotamian archaeologists fully occupied and confident in the
overall direction of their discipline, without feeling the need to engage
in professional debate about the theoretical significance and meaning of
what they do as archaeologists. That would be a charitable view,
anyway. A starker view is: ‘the bulk of the work conducted on these
(and other) periods in Mesopotamia remains starkly atheoretical’
(Pollock 1992: 301). Although there is much mixing of approaches,
culture history is largely a European tradition while anthropological
archaeology has a predominantly North American academic context.
The trajectories of a theoretical framework in Mesopotamian
archaeology can be delineated only by spending a moment in consider-
ation of the development of archaeological theory in general. Accounts
of this field are readily accessible (Renfrew and Bahn 2000; Trigger
1989), and here we present only some major points. Following an early
concern with the definition of cultures and cultural assemblages, the
development of economic archaeology from the 1940s onwards, in
which Mesopotamian archaeology was a world leader (see below), led to
a concern with improved field, scientific and analytical techniques in
order to recover maximum economic and environmental information.

The development of the New Archaeology of the 1960s grew out of
these scientific and methodological advances, its grand aim to become a
science of culture that could relate material remains to universal laws or
rules of human behaviour and social processes. In reaction to these
processual and universalising aspirations, there has developed from the
1980s until today a diverse school of attitudes that can broadly be
grouped under the heading of interpretive or contextual archaeology,
concerned with the specifics of past societies and of the contexts within
which they, and their associated material cultures, are situated. There
has been a move away from the search for laws or codes of human
social behaviour, a willingness to accept ambiguity and polysemy in the
archaeological record, an increased awareness of the embeddedness of
the researcher within a specific social context, and a desire to explore
the meanings and structures of social and symbolic interactions, all
exemplified in the following quote from Ruth Tringham:
Rather than shy away from these topics because they cannot be
‘found’ in the archaeological data, I prefer to change my strategy of
archaeological investigation by celebrating the ambiguity of the
archaeological record, by considering multiple interpretations of
the same data, and by a more explicit use of creative imagination.
(Tringham 1995: 97)
Culture history has been the dominant paradigm of European
archaeology in Mesopotamia, as with many other parts of the world,
since the inception of the discipline in the nineteenth century. The
origins of culture history, as an intellectual approach to unfamiliar
peoples and places, can be traced back to the Father of History,
Herodotus (also claimed as ‘the first anthropologist’ – Thomas 2000: 1)
and his accounts of the human societies, their mores and manners, that
impinged on his direct and indirect knowledge. Today, for the majority
of Mesopotamian archaeologists of European background, culture
history remains the preferred approach (see Niknami 2000 for a discus-
sion of the rule of culture history over the archaeology of Iran,
Mesopotamia’s neighbour to the east). There are still many senses in
which we work to establish, even at quite basic levels, the chronological
and spatial boundaries of cultural entities within and around
Mesopotamia. For example, in the later Neolithic of north
Mesopotamia and south Anatolia, in the sixth millennium BC, there
exists a phenomenon widely known as ‘the Halaf’, by which we mean
an apparently coherent assemblage of material culture attributes that

we can isolate and identify, with varying degrees of confidence, across
certain geographical and chronological spaces. These attributes include
high-quality painted pottery, engraved stamp seals, architecture in
circular forms (‘tholoi’), and a distinctive settlement pattern of a
bimodal nature with a few very large settlements (10 hectares and more)
as against a large number of very small settlements (generally 1 hectare
or less) in any given region.
Despite the best efforts of a significant number of archaeologists in
the decades since the Halaf was first detected as a phenomenon, we are
still some way from defining the nature of the Halaf even within the
remit of culture history. What really defines a Halaf site? When and
where does the Halaf begin and how does it develop from a local
context? How and where does it disappear? These simple but important
questions are being addressed by means of the culture history approach
in the belief that more or less definitive answers can be teased out of
the almost infinite available evidence. In a study of early Mesopotamian
prehistory (R. Matthews 2000a), I treated the Halaf phenomenon in
this way, splitting its physical manifestations into manageable geograph-
ical units and looking for signs that would enable detection of the
origins, spread and demise of the culture, without making too much
headway on these issues, as it now seems. Not surprisingly, there are
several problems with this approach. In the first place, the cultures
themselves refuse to sit still. They shift and change shape as we try to
pin them down in space or time. A Halaf site in north Iraq differs in
some important respects from one in north Syria or one in east Turkey,
and the Halaf phenomenon at one site changes through time. What
then is truly Halaf? Is the term at all valid or useful?
Other prehistoric cultural entities of Mesopotamia, such as the
Hassuna, the Samarra, the Ubaid, and the Uruk are treated in much
the same way, with a concern to isolate and characterise the specifics of
each culture so that chronological and spatial developments might be
traced and explicated. Or so the hope goes. The high point of this
approach is epitomised in the brilliant survey of Mesopotamian prehis-
toric cultures presented in Anne Perkins’ book The Comparative Archeology
of Early Mesopotamia (Perkins 1949). By means of assembling and evalu-
ating an enormous totality of excavated data from several decades of
fieldwork all over Mesopotamia, and without conducting any fieldwork,
Perkins aimed to ‘provide in one work all necessary information on
significant culture elements’ (Perkins 1949: vii). Half a century on,
Perkins’ book, with its neat pottery figures and chronological tables, still
stands as a highly detailed and informative guide through the maze of

the painted pottery cultures of early Mesopotamia, and their chrono-
logical correlation with each other, but we would not look here for
discussion of ancient economics or prehistoric social structure or ritual
behaviour.
In the view of the New Archaeology of the 1960s, culture history
was restricted to notions of cultural influences, imprecisely caused by
movements of peoples, objects or ideas across space and time, and thus
totally failed to bridge the gap between stylistic archaeological traits and
genuine anthropological attributes (Lyman et al. 1997). By stressing the
importance of ‘culture’ as an agent of change or stability, culture
history appeared to relegate the individual to a role of minor or no
significance, culminating in a history peopled not by humans but by pot
styles, lithic assemblages, burial practices and settlement patterns. The
debate over culture history as a valid approach in modern archaeology
has recently been rekindled in the work of Ian Morris (1997; 2000).
Morris has shown how naive were the views on culture history held by
Binford and others in the 1960s and 1970s, and how cultural history, as
theorised and practised in recent years, shares many of the aims and
traits of interpretive, post-processual archaeological approaches, with a
concern for meaning, agency and context in accessing the past.
The application of the second major paradigm in Mesopotamian
archaeology, anthropological archaeology, has been enormously influ-
ential. The origins of this approach to the Mesopotamian past, rooted
in North American academe, predate the early development of the
New Archaeology of the 1960s, for it is during the late 1940s that we
see the first appearance of anthropological archaeology in
Mesopotamia. Anthropological archaeology is a very broad and diverse
set of ideas and approaches, but consistent elements include a convic-
tion that humans and human communities can be studied in a range of
scientific ways; that hypotheses about human behaviour can be ratio-
nally formulated and tested through rigorously constructed research
programmes; that there are processes, structures and systems external
to the human individual that can be investigated through the applica-
tion of scientific methods; and that culture is above all a means by
which humans adapt to their environments in the widest sense. Before
we look at how interdisciplinary anthropological archaeology evolved in
the Mesopotamian context, it is worth spending a moment in awed
appreciation of the work of Raphael Pumpelly, who as early as 1904
led a multidisciplinary team of experts to Anau in Turkestan in order to
investigate agricultural origins and other issues. During Pumpelly’s
excavations animal bones and plant remains were systematically

retrieved according to stratigraphic position, studied and published in
exemplary fashion, with full academic discussion of the results
(Pumpelly 1908). It is little exaggeration to say that Pumpelly was a full
half-century ahead of his time in terms of archaeological vision, plan-
ning and practice.
The fruits of the application of anthropological archaeology, or
archaeologies, in Mesopotamian contexts are rich indeed, and they
feature prominently in the chapters to follow (see also Hole 1995). We
have already seen how culture history has attempted to grapple the
Halaf phenomenon of north Mesopotamia in the late Neolithic. Let us
now see how the same set of issues can be tackled from an anthropolog-
ical approach. The Halaf period site of Girikihacıyan in southeast
Turkey was excavated in 1968 and 1970 by two of the foremost practi-
tioners of the paradigm of anthropological archaeology, Patty Jo Watson
and Stephen LeBlanc. In their final report, published quite a long time
after the excavations (Watson and LeBlanc 1990), there are some impor-
tant divergences from the culture history tradition. In the first place, in
the introductory chapter there is a clear exposition of the research goals
of the project. Second, the nature of those research goals is distinctive,
with emphasis on ‘systematic recovery of botanical remains (via flota-
tion) and of faunal remains’. Third, beyond subsistence, there is a
concern to investigate the issue of Halaf society, exploring whether it
might be ‘egalitarian or significantly hierarchical’. Fourth, there is exten-
sive use of statistical approaches in analysing data: an entire chapter is
devoted solely to statistical analyses of recovered information, and statis-
tical tables feature prominently throughout the volume. These elements
are all very different from the culture history approach.
It is important to note, however, that much of the significance of the
research at Girikihacıyan can best be appreciated when accommodated
within a framework provided by the culture history approach. One of
the research issues is phrased in purely culture history terminology:
Probably the most obvious aspect of the Halaf culture is the exten-
sive distribution of the characteristic architecture and ceramics. By
what mechanism were these traits distributed? Did an original
group migrate or expand over the Halafian range, or were
Halafian traits adopted by previously culturally distinct groups?
(Watson and LeBlanc 1990: 4)
It is no doubt significant that it is these very questions that are least
satisfactorily addressed or resolved by the anthropological approaches

employed in the project. But the point is that issues from both culture
history and anthropology are to the fore and that, however uncomfort-
able and implicit the partnership may be, both approaches benefit from
collaboration.
The inspiration behind the application of anthropological approaches
in Mesopotamia was Robert Braidwood, whom we have met earlier
in this chapter. During the course of a long and highly productive career
in Near Eastern archaeology, Braidwood addressed a range of major
issues in human development, including the earliest human presence, the
origins and development of settled villages and of farming and herding,
and the evolution of more complex societies in later prehistory. A major
forum for his approaches was the Iraq-Jarmo project in northeast Iraq.
In 1947, no doubt at the time that Anne Perkins was working on her
volume The Comparative Archeology of Early Mesopotamia, the first season of
fieldwork took place at Jarmo. In the final report on the first three seasons
of excavations, in a chapter entitled ‘The general problem’, Braidwood
launches the ship of anthropological archaeology with an eloquent
polemic:
Usually archeologists working in the Near East concern themselves
with some particular site, such as Ur of the Chaldees or Roman
Antioch, or with a particular thing, such as the tomb of
Tutankhamon or the palace of the Assyrian king Sargon at
Khorsabad. The expedition described here is different in that it is
working toward the solution of a general problem: How are we to
understand those great changes in mankind’s way of life which
attended the first appearance of the settled village-farming
community?
(Braidwood and Howe 1960: 1)
Braidwood goes on to explain how ‘it takes every tool in the prehis-
toric archaeologist’s bag, plus all the help he can get from his
natural-scientist colleagues’ to extract the necessary information from
prehistoric sites in order to address these important issues.
He concedes, moreover, the considerable difficulties faced by the
prehistoric archaeologist in attempting to apprehend what he terms ‘the
moral order’ of past societies, and advocates a programme of close
collaboration with natural scientists so that aspects of ancient environ-
ment, resource exploitation and technology might be identified and
‘disengaged’ from other less material aspects of past communities that
would then be isolated for future study, but the process ‘can go forward

only with much more imaginative archeology than we have had up to
now’. With a passing nod to ethnology and social anthropology,
Braidwood concludes his manifesto with the visionary lines:
We envision not the familiar old-fashioned archeology of digging
royal tombs for fine-arts museums but an ‘idea archeology’ aimed at
broad culture-historical problems, in which antiquities as such are
meaningless save as tools for understanding the ways of mankind.
(Braidwood and Howe 1960: 7–8)
Hereinafter seeds and bones were to be as important as crowns and
chariots. The achievements of the Iraq-Jarmo project and its anthropo-
scientific approaches were immense, and they can be fully enjoyed in
the voluminous final publication that eventually emerged (L. S.
Braidwood et al. 1983).
In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis on feminist or
gender archaeology as a means of approaching the past. Within the
Mesopotamian arena, as elsewhere, one direction has been to investigate
concepts and constructions of women, sex and gender in historical and
art historical terms, as most coherently and effectively essayed by Zainab
Bahrani (2001). Another direction has been a concern to re-formulate
the domestic household and its occupants as major active participants in
the political and socio-economic contexts of their times (Pollock 1999:
24–5; Tringham 1995). There is a concern to show how the conduct of
domestic activities within households both impacts on and is impacted
by the socio-political world at large, even if these impacts and interac-
tions might be difficult to trace archaeologically. The point is not
necessarily to stress the role of women in past societies, but rather to
demonstrate that interpretations of the past rooted in decades of
masculinist approaches are seriously lacking in their appreciation of the
integrity and interconnectedness of human communities at all levels,
from baking the daily bread to burying the royal dead. It is not primarily
a question of identifying gender-specific activities in the archaeological
record, but rather an issue of correcting and transcending an existing
masculine-induced bias in our ways of looking at the past, through
demonstrating that activities and roles within past societies have a gender
aspect to them that needs to be considered in any holistic approach.
Susan Pollock puts it thus:
A feminist-inspired enquiry might then ask how broader political,
economic, and social changes impact social reproduction and

household organization: what strategies households employ to
respond to changing external demands and how these affect
gendered divisions of labor. The basis of these questions is that
changes in economic, social, and political spheres profoundly affect
relations between men and women, adults and children, and that
changes in households also contribute to larger-scale social trans-
formations.
(Pollock 1999: 25)
It only remains to add that the obligation of all archaeologists is to
strive to be aware of and to correct for the masculinist bias of the disci-
pline that has for so long shaped the way in which we look at the past,
until a state is reached where we no longer see this approach as ‘femi-
nist-inspired’ but genuinely and roundedly ‘humanist-inspired’.
In sum, then, both culture history and anthropological archaeology
have had their successes within the arena of Mesopotamian archae-
ology, but it is their application in concert that is most beneficial.
Without culture history we lack the spatial and chronological coordi-
nates within which to situate the specifics of economics and society that
only anthropological approaches can apprehend. For the foreseeable
future it is likely that most archaeologists working in and around
Mesopotamia will continue to research within an inexplicit framework
built of culture history and anthropological archaeology lashed together
with bindings of common sense and assorted approaches of cultural
anthropology (Hole 1999) at appropriate points.

Things and ideas: approaches to
archaeological research
In this chapter we look at how the discipline of archaeology is currently
practised in the lands of Southwest Asia. We shall not restrict ourselves
to Mesopotamia, much of which is out of fieldwork bounds for the time
being, but will range over adjacent lands as appropriate. The overall
aim is to show how archaeology in this part of the world has blossomed
into a fully modern, interdisciplinary profession that can hold its head
high amongst its peers. After some general comments, we look at
approaches to excavation, focusing on one major, long-term project.
Next we examine the case for survey, considering some of the major
regional projects that have taken place in Southwest Asia, their tech-
niques and results. Finally, the complex but stimulating question of the
relationship between archaeology and text-aided history in the study of
the Mesopotamian past is considered.
All archaeological research, whether it be excavation, survey, or
historical enquiry of any kind, can be distilled to three essential areas of
concern (after Collis 1999: 81):
(a) research agenda
(b) nature of the evidence relevant to (a)
(c) means of accessing (b)
It may seem a truism to state that all archaeological research must begin
(and end) with a research agenda (for a dissenting view, see Faulkner
2001/2), but many excavations lack an explicit programme and appear
to stagger from season to season without much in the way of clear
strategic goals. Jean Bottéro has ruthlessly pilloried such aimless activity:
Tools of the trade
Scope and methods of
Mesopotamian archaeology
Chapter 2

Thus I have visited many archeologists, even a certain number of
philologists, and in the beginning I was amazed (later I became
used to it) to see to what degree even the smartest among them
could undertake their activities with some kind of psychological
automatism that was extremely surprising to notice. They worked
with some kind of burrowing instinct that could be compared to
that of moles, by all appearances without ever in their lives having
had the slightest conscious idea of the real and the final purpose of
their work, of the deep sense of their research, of the place and the
value of their discoveries for knowledge in general.
(Bottéro 1992: 17)
Within the UK at least, increased competition for funding and more
thorough-going academic review policies have encouraged much
sharper definition of research programmes in recent years. Particularly
vulnerable to the charge of lack of research drive are rescue or salvage
excavation projects, where sites are excavated in advance of destruction
simply because they are there, and tomorrow they will not be there. For
that reason some research funding bodies will not consider applications
on behalf of rescue projects. But in truth it should be no more difficult
to frame a research agenda for salvage projects than for non-salvage
projects. All excavation should be research driven. It is just a question of
how much time is available to do it in.
Having a research agenda means devising a question or, more
commonly, a suite of interconnected questions, that can reasonably be
asked of the archaeological record. Of course archaeological questions
do not come from nowhere, and any modern research concern will be
heavily intertwined with a skein of past and existing research threads,
more and more so as the discipline develops. In the last chapter we saw
how Robert Braidwood had a very specific and clearly articulated
research agenda when he set to work in the Zagros foothills of north-
east Iraq: ‘How are we to understand those great changes in mankind’s
way of life which attended the first appearance of the settled village-
farming community?’ (Braidwood and Howe 1960: 1).
Braidwood’s research issue here is often termed a ‘big question’. It
relates to a fundamental episode in the development of human societies
whereby hunting and seasonal movement gradually changed to year-
round farming and permanent sedentism. It is worth stressing that
Mesopotamia and environs are uniquely suited to the investigation of
big questions. In a recent survey, Clive Gamble identified five big ques-
tions that regularly draw archaeological attention on a major scale: the
28 Tools of the trade

origins of hominids; the origins of modern humans; the origins of agri-
culture and domestic animals; the origins of urbanism and civilisation;
and the origins of modernity (Gamble 2001: 157). Arguably all five of
these issues could be tackled, if indirectly, in a Mesopotamian arena,
and at least two of them, the origins of agriculture/domestic animals,
and the origins of urbanism/civilisation, can be tackled in uniquely rich
and pristine contexts within and around Mesopotamia. In the previous
chapter we saw how in the fourteenth century Ibn Khaldun also
defined five ‘big questions’ as worthy of scientific historical enquiry: the
transformation of primitive culture into a civilised condition, the state,
the city, economic life, and the development of the sciences. Again, the
arena of the Mesopotamian past is especially suited for the investigation
of these major issues.
The three simple concerns of (a), (b) and (c) noted above are of
course interconnected. In the words of Henry Wright, ‘Research
strategy depends upon what one wishes to explain’ (Wright 1978: 66).
There is no validity in having a research agenda that cannot be
addressed by any surviving evidence. One might as well daydream.
Daydreaming is a part of archaeology, but ideas will be more effective,
and more attractive to funding bodies, if tied to a pragmatic research
strategy. Furthermore, research agendas need to take into consideration
the practicalities of how the available evidence can be accessed. Time
and money are precious resources, and research agendas need to be
constructed on the basis of targeted tactics towards specific ends. These
issues relate to the ‘operationalisation’ of research, whereby the
mechanics of addressing a research problem are thought through,
quantified, costed, and assembled in a research design. Although a
project begins with a research agenda, the very generation and investi-
gation of evidence relevant to that agenda will themselves modify the
research issues as the project proceeds, although hopefully not beyond
recognition. There is thus a relationship that is ‘always momentary,
fluid and flexible’ (Hodder 1997) between question, evidence, and
means of approach.
If the aim of archaeological research is the investigation of ancient
societies, what exactly is it that is investigated? There are as many answers
to this question as there are archaeologists, and here is not the place to
provide a lengthy exposition of an already well covered subject, but a few
comments are in order. The social theorist Anthony Giddens has charac-
terised society and culture thus: ‘A society’s culture comprises both
intangible aspects – the beliefs, ideas and values which form the content
of culture – and tangible aspects – the objects, symbols or technology
Tools of the trade 29

which represent that content’ (Giddens 2001: 22). In archaeology we
have a society’s tangible elements, or rather we have an idiosyncratic and
highly partial selection of its tangible aspects scattered through a range of
physical contexts, some of which might come to be excavated. The chal-
lenge is to use those fragmentary tangible elements in order to approach
intangible aspects of society, to consider the mechanisms and processes
whereby ‘social facts’, in Durkheim’s phrase, are materialised as elements
of physical culture. In order to pursue this aim through interpretive or
contextual archaeology, a major area of debate is therefore the question
of how to connect the tangible with the intangible, how to assign and
evaluate meanings and values to objects and symbols, and how to
construct social relations on the basis of recovered physical remains.
These fundamental concerns cannot be answered in any definitive and
global sense. Rather, it is through the pursuit of defining, formulating,
testing and expanding approaches to these issues that the discipline itself
takes shape, regroups and moves ahead.
Archaeologists work with ‘things’. An archaeological thing can vary
from an entire city to a wild pig’s vertebra, a multi-period landscape to
a grain of barley, a queen’s palace to a speck of dust on a white
plaster floor. But a thing of itself has no meaning or significance until
we grace it with an idea, and so archaeologists also work with ideas,
either implicitly and vaguely or, better, explicitly and precisely. Where
should an archaeologist look for ideas about things? The answer is all
around us. Within the disciplines of sociology and social anthropology
there is an increasing body of research focusing on the meanings of
material culture within its social contexts. Sociologists such as Tim
Dant have explored and illustrated the many social levels on which
things operate:
Things are useful in a variety of ways; they allow us to do what we
need and want to do, they allow us to communicate and they
enable us to express our sense of cultural togetherness as well as
our individuality within that collectivity.
(Dant 1999: 14)
Or, to quote the words of an archaeologist:
Material culture becomes both the product of actions which are
articulated through social relationships and, at the same time, one
of the means through which social relationships are constructed,
produced and transformed. Material culture ceases to be a passive

element in social practice and a passive reflection of identity and
becomes an active intervention in the production of community
and self.
(Moreland 2001: 82; italics in original)
By thinking about things that we see all around us, how they are
used, shaped, emphasised, negated, transformed through what we do
with them in the course of human action and interaction, we gain
insights into the range of meanings and messages conveyed by things,
and in so doing we can perhaps return to our archaeological things with
a fresh idea or two. Here is an area of infinite research potential for
archaeologists and anthropologists alike.
A further important consideration is the nature of the archaeological
record itself. By no means all material remains from the past make it into
that record, nor once there do they necessarily survive until excavated in
modern times. Valued items and materials, such as metals and precious
stones, are likely to be recycled or cherished over long time periods and
may enter the archaeological record principally in the form of burial
goods rather than in other contexts that might more directly inform on
their significance within contemporary social relations. In addition, we
are aware from textual sources, and occasional archaeological survivals,
of whole ranges of organic materials that only rarely endure in the
archaeological record, including textiles, carpets, garments, skin, woods,
plants, mats, furniture, and numerous other items and commodities.
Archaeologists working on wetland sites in other parts of the world,
where organic remains do survive, often recover organic materials as
75–90 per cent, even sometimes 100 per cent, of all recovered finds
(Renfrew and Bahn 2000: 68), some indication of what we are undoubt-
edly missing from the archaeological record of ancient Mesopotamia.
These attributes of the archaeological record – its tangibility and its
incompleteness – can all too easily be viewed as drawbacks to the value
of archaeology in approaching the past, especially in contrast to the
surviving written record. We should not view them in this way, however.
The written textual record of the Mesopotamian past, represented by
thousands of cuneiform texts on clay tablets, suffers from similar and
connected problems of bias, incompleteness and ambiguity. In addition,
the written record hosts a potential bias that rarely distorts the archaeo-
logical record, that of deliberate falsification of the evidence. In his
poem ‘Archaeology’, W. H. Auden characterises history, in contrast to
archaeology, as being made by ‘the criminal in us’ (Auden 1976: 663).
Indeed, there might be numerous reasons for writing a text in such a way

that it distorts or reshapes reality, as every tax-form filler or politician
knows, but there is no value to be had from distorting the nature of one’s
physical environment with an eye to remote posterity, even if one is able
to do so. The archaeological record qua historical source, however
patchy and concrete it may be, is unaffected by its makers’ intentions or
desires as to the nature, survivability and recoverability of that record,
even if it reveals something of those intentions within their contempo-
rary social contexts. Working together wherever possible, however, there
is every prospect of archaeology and textual history arriving at fuller and
more satisfying interpretations of the Mesopotamian past, as we shall
see in the final section of this chapter. But archaeology must employ its
own means and methods for accessing and interpreting things from the
past, whether historic or not, and that is the subject of this chapter.
Excavating the past into the present
In the spring of 1936 Mortimer Wheeler made a brief tour of archaeo-
logical excavations in Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, with the
aim of expanding his first-hand knowledge of Near Eastern archae-
ology in advance of becoming the first director of the new Institute of
Archaeology in London. He did not like what he saw, and his typically
forthright comments are worthy of quotation:
from the Sinai border to Megiddo and on to Byblos and northern
Syria, I encountered such technical standards as had not been
tolerated in Great Britain for a quarter of a century. With rare and
partial exceptions, the methods of discovery and record were of a
kind, which, at home, the Office of Works would have stopped by
telegram. The scientific analysis of stratification, upon which
modern excavation is largely based, was almost non-existent. And
the work was being carried out upon a lavish and proportionately
destructive scale … the fundamental canons of the craft were
simply not comprehended. I left the Near East sick at heart, fero-
ciously determined to make my new institute in London first and
foremost an effective medium for the enlargement of technical
understanding. Without that, archaeology of the sort which I had
witnessed was in large measure destruction.
(Mortimer Wheeler 1956: 110; italics in original)
As late as 1953 André Parrot published his book Archéologie
mésopotamienne. Technique et problèmes, in which he provided an account of

how to run an excavation in Mesopotamia. Parrot’s suggestion for the
staff of a field project comprised the following list (Parrot 1953: 20):
1 chef de mission
1 assistant archéologue
1 architecte-dessinateur
1 photographe
1 réparateur
1 épigraphiste
1 chef de chantier
1 inspecteur
Parrot also confessed that on his excavations at Telloh in 1931 the
only staff had been a director, an architect and a field director, and that
they had barely been able to cope because of the demands of photog-
raphy. Anyone visiting Telloh today and witnessing the immense holes
made in it by Parrot, and others, will quite understand how he found it
difficult to cope (see Figure 1.3). Should Wheeler ever have encountered
Parrot’s book it would no doubt only have confirmed his worst suspi-
cions about archaeology in the east.
The excavation of an archaeological site is not a procedure to be
undertaken lightly. I say this, for one thing, as someone who has just
completed, along with a dozen collaborators, the writing and editing of
a final report on three years’ excavations at the multi-period site of Tell
Brak in northeast Syria, one of the most important settlements of Upper
Mesopotamia over a period of several millennia (R. Matthews in press).
From completion of the fieldwork to completion of the final volume
took five full years. Many major excavations in Mesopotamia remain
unpublished, except in scant preliminary form, several decades after
their completion. Some excavators have continued digging, moving
every few years from one site to another, without publishing any final
reports, but those days are changing and most countries of the region
now have strict provisions to ensure satisfactory progress on publication
before the re-issue of fieldwork permits. Other excavators have been
conscientious in the extreme about publishing swiftly and fully.
A further angle is that many authorities hold that if an archaeolog-
ical site is not under threat it should not be excavated at all. Within the
context of Israeli archaeology, calls have recently been made for a
complete cessation to excavation in order to enable a massive publica-
tion backlog to be brought under control (Kletter and De-Groot 2001).
In essence such is the view of the Turkish Directorate General of

Monuments and Museums, which is directly responsible for the issue of
fieldwork permits and whose current policy is not to grant permits for
new research projects, while issuing them more freely for rescue excava-
tions. A similar policy prevails in Syria. Why? Partly it is a question of
staffing problems, with the local authorities being barely able to cope
with the massive numbers of foreign teams coming to work in Turkey,
Syria and adjacent lands, all of them needing a government representa-
tive permanently in attendance. There were over one hundred
archaeological field projects in Syria in 2001, and more than twice that
number in Turkey, for example. Another aspect is the growing feeling
that if an archaeological site is not under threat, whether from flooding
by dam construction or from illicit digging or any other cause, then it
should be left in peace. In addition, some people feel that as archaeolog-
ical techniques are always improving we should as far as possible leave
sites alone until techniques are more advanced.
While appreciating the weight of these arguments, I am wary of
such attitudes on several counts. First, it is only through the active prac-
tice of field archaeology that techniques advance at all (Lucas 2001a). If
we do not dig we do not learn how better to dig. Second, I am too
impatient and curious to allow all the discoveries to be the privilege of
future unknown generations. Third, finite as the archaeological record
Figure 2.1 Excavating buildings of later-third-millennium BC date at Tell
Brak, northeast Syria

is, it is nevertheless phenomenally rich and, properly managed, there is
enough to go round for today and tomorrow. The complete and total
excavation of a site such as Tell Brak, for example, should it ever be
desired, is a task for centuries not decades. In 1857 the great cartogra-
pher Felix Jones made some interesting calculations about Nineveh in
this regard. He estimated that the mound of Kuyunjik, the citadel of
Nineveh, contained some 14.5 million tons, and that if 1,000 workmen
excavated each day a total of 330 tons it would take 120 years
completely to excavate the mound (Pallis 1956: 297). Given that current
field projects employ workers in tens rather than hundreds, and that the
application of increasingly refined techniques has sharply reduced the
volume of earth daily removed from archaeological excavations, to kilo-
grams rather than tons, we can increase Jones’ figure of 120 years by a
factor of at least fifty in a modern context and probably much more. To
my knowledge, no one has yet come up with a 6,000-year plan for the
total excavation of Kuyunjik, itself only a part of the entire city of
Nineveh. Incidentally, 6,000 years is about how long it took for the
mound of Kuyunjik to form as the archaeological entity we see today,
so there is a nice symmetry of construction/destruction in these figures.
Fourth, although it is possible to generate research programmes
centred on rescue and salvage contexts, there is no doubt that the really
big and important projects take place as pure research exercises gener-
ally over periods of decades, timespans which are simply not available
in the world of salvage archaeology. A major full-blown excavation
project today requires a commitment of at least ten years and prefer-
ably much longer. Many ongoing research projects in Turkey and Syria
are committed to twenty-five-year plans, and many erstwhile projects in
Iraq were of similar duration or even longer. In this chapter we there-
fore focus our attention on one major excavation project of pure
research, of long-standing duration, with the aim that it serve as a
concrete exemplar of how archaeology may currently be conducted in
practice in Southwest Asia.
We shall discuss the current programme of research at the site of
Çatalhöyük on the Konya plain in south central Turkey (see Figure 1.1).
The site belongs to the Neolithic period and is occupied from about
7,200 to 6,000 BC. Although not in Mesopotamia, the site is only a few
hundred kilometres west of the Euphrates, and the approaches and
field techniques applied there could as well be applied in a
Mesopotamian context at contemporary sites such as Bouqras or Umm
Dabaghiyah. The Çatalhöyük project is of such significance to the
broader discipline that we cannot afford to ignore it. In this chapter we

use Çatalhöyük as an example of how archaeologists go about their
work. There is not the space here to present even a small proportion of
the results that have emanated from the project, and interested readers
are encouraged to follow up the references provided, especially on the
project website (http://www.catalhoyuk.com). As a modern entity, Çatal-
höyük began as a surprise, and has gone on to serve as a springboard
and testing-ground for two pioneers of modern archaeology, James
Mellaart and Ian Hodder. Conveying a then widely held belief, Seton
Lloyd wrote in 1956 that ‘the greater part of modern Turkey, and espe-
cially the region more correctly described as Anatolia, shows no sign
whatever of habitation during the Neolithic period’ (Lloyd 1956: 53).
Only a few years later, Lloyd’s colleague James Mellaart commenced his
excavations at the mound of Çatalhöyük, now known to be the largest
Neolithic site in Turkey and one of the most important anywhere in
Southwest Asia. Excavations there in the 1960s revealed evidence for a
rich and symbolically charged society, living in closely packed mud-
brick houses in a community of at least several thousand.
Figure 2.2 Building VI.A.10 at Çatalhöyük, south central Turkey
Source: after Mellaart 1967: fig. 40.

James Mellaart believed he had excavated a priestly quarter, where
high-status individuals lived in houses varying in their architectural fine-
ness and decorative elaboration (Mellaart 1967). After the 1965 season
Mellaart’s excavations at Çatalhöyük came to a halt.
But, once stirred from its millennia-long sleep, the site was not to lie
quiet for long. ‘Çatal Höyük and I, we bring each other into existence.
It is in our joint interaction, each dependent on the other, that we take
our separate forms’ (Hodder 1990: 20). With these prophetic words, a
leading archaeological theorist opened an engagement with Çatalhöyük
that continues to this day and that will probably continue for the
remainder of his career. Ian Hodder’s interest was sparked by the rich
symbolism attested in the wall-paintings and relief sculptures found in
many of the buildings at Çatalhöyük. Looking at Mellaart’s book on the
site (Mellaart 1967), Hodder confessed, ‘the violence of this imagery
made a vivid impression on me’ (Hodder 1990: 4) and he went on to
propose a system of rules underlying the representation of the art at the
site, with oppositions and interactions between polarities such as male
and female, inner and outer, death and life, wild and domestic. At about
the same time a French archaeologist and theorist, Jean-Daniel Forest,
was having his own thoughts about the art of Çatalhöyük. In a couple
of highly stimulating articles, Forest took it as his premise that the loca-
tion, or architectural context, as well as the content, of the Çatalhöyük
art was always deliberate, never random, and proceeded to discern
rules of kinship, lineages, ‘an axis of life and death’, and male/female
tensions as structuring principles behind the art (Forest 1993; 1994).
The current programme of research at and concerning Çatalhöyük
was thus from the start rooted in an environment of enquiry about the
nature of symbolism and art and their significance in social terms.
‘What means this art?’ might be understood as the prime research ques-
tion. As work has progressed since 1993, a complex web of research
issues has steadily been spun, many of its strands already regular
concerns in archaeology, such as ancient diet, burial practices or specific
material culture studies, and others rather newer to the discipline, such
as the study of the significance of Çatalhöyük to interested parties of
today (local villagers and officials, foreign excavators, ‘Mother Goddess’
enthusiasts), or the conscious effort to develop a ‘reflexive methodology’
in approaching the site (Hodder 2000). In essence, Çatalhöyük has itself
become a research laboratory where ideas are generated, explored,
tested and discussed by means of survey, excavation, analysis and inter-
pretation. And much of this complex and protean process can be
witnessed more or less in action via the regular publications of the

project or, more directly, by accessing the project’s ambitious and
rewarding website.
How then do archaeologists go about approaching the past at Çatal-
höyük? Before examining the nature of these approaches, it is worth
stressing that for Hodder, research at Çatalhöyük, like all archaeological
endeavour, is not a study of the past but a study for the present. As ‘the
poet of the Neolithic’, Hodder aims ‘to erode the idea of a separate
present’, focusing on ‘the degree to which our thoughts and actions are
created through the past’ (Hodder 1990: 279). ‘The artifacts from the
past, excavated in material contexts and ordered partly by material
constraints, provide a wealth of experience through which the present
can be thought about and thus changed’ (Hodder 1990: 19). Ten years
after these words were written their practical implications have become
much clearer:
The archaeological site at Çatalhöyük does have an impact on
diverse communities in the present. It mediates between these
various groups and individuals and their constructions of the past.
… The archaeologist is involved in an on-going negotiation, one
that penetrates into the laboratory and into the trench.
(Hodder 2000: 14)
I shall never forget the excitement of that first morning at Çatalhöyük
in September 1993 when, with Turkish government permit in hand, we
began our new investigations of the site. Walking over the massive bulk
of the great mound, a sleeping giant from the most distant past, it felt
like we and the site together had the ability to generate something very
powerful for the present and the future entirely out of our interaction
with the evidence from the past, its interpretation, and propagation.
With a site like Çatalhöyük and a research project led by Ian Hodder,
that excitement has not abated in the years that have since gone by.
In this study of archaeology in action at Çatalhöyük we are going to
hold up a series of lenses to the site, each lens in turn bringing succes-
sively into faint focus the region, the settlement, its buildings, occupants,
objects, and the smallest components of its dust and debris. As the
emphasis in this book is on approaches to the past, we are as much
interested in the nature and construction of the lens itself as in what we
might discern as shifting shades on the far side.
The first and coarsest lens allows us to look at Çatalhöyük on the
regional scale. What contemporary sites existed on the Konya plain?
How did Çatalhöyük fit into the regional settlement pattern during the

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“Ave, pia anima!” fluisterde Schäufelein vroom en hij begon daarop ook de
afgestorvene te prijzen en zooveel goeds van haar te zeggen, dat zoowel
meester Dürer als de anderen de tranen in de oogen kregen.
Later, nadat de maaltijd was afgeloopen, zonder dat er veel woorden waren
gewisseld, moest Schäufelein vertellen, wat hem zelf gedurende zijn
afwezigheid was wedervaren. Hij had daarbij opmerkzame toehoorders, die
zich hartelijk over al het goede, dat zijn deel was geweest, verheugden en
over zijn vooruitgang op het gebied der kunst. Met gespannen aandacht
luisterde Dürer, toen hij vertelde, dat hij ook te Rome was geweest en hem
had gezien, dien allen verafgoodden, den heerlijken Rafael.
“Hoe?” riep Dürer, “hebt gij hem van aangezicht tot aangezicht gezien? O,
wat zijt gij gelukkig! Reeds lang heb ik vurig verlangd hem te mogen
aanschouwen, hem, den eenige, den onvergelijkelijke, den lieveling des
pausen en den bewonderde der gansche wereld!”
Er kwam een bijzondere glans in Schäufeleins oogen. “Hoor, hoe twee
groote mannen denzelfden wensch koesteren! Want gij moet weten, dat
Rafael eveneens vurig verlangt hem te zien, dien hij den Duitschen Apelles
noemt.”
Een hoogrood bedekte Dürers gelaat, en zijn oogen werden vochtig, terwijl
hij halfluid vraagde: “Hoe weet gij dat?”
“Uit zijn eigen mond,” verzekerde Schäufelein. “Ik had den toegang tot zijn
werkplaats gekregen en mijn hart begon sneller te kloppen, toen ik onder de
vele schilderijen, ook verscheidene bekende tegenkwam, met het
monogram A. D. En toen ik zeide, hoezeer mij dat verraste en verheugde,
omdat ik langen tijd bij meester Dürer als gezel was werkzaam geweest,
greep Rafael op eens mijn hand en sprak: “O, dan zijt gij mij dubbel
welkom en mijn blijdschap zou volkomen zijn geweest, als hij u had
vergezeld.” Toen heeft hij u nog hoog geprezen en mij verteld, dat hij reeds
door Marcantonio Raimondi, die sedert vier jaren zijn werken op koper
graveert, de uwe had leeren kennen. Deze is het ook, die uw kleine Passie
op koper heeft nagegraveerd en nog meer andere werken. En luister; ik wil

u nog iets zeggen” en daarbij schoof hij zijn stoel nog wat nader: “Ik zag in
Rafaels werkplaats een tekening, die bijna voltooid was, en waaraan hij
juist bezig scheen geweest. Ternauwernood durfde ik mijn oogen
vertrouwen, want wat zag ik daar? Het was een kruisdraging van den Heer
Jezus, bijna geheel zooals gij die hebt voorgesteld in de groote Passie. De
Heiland onder het kruishout neergezonken en steunend op zijn arm, scheen
mij volkomen gelijk behandeld zoo als gij het deed, lieve meester. Eveneens
de overige figuren en de rangschikking; het kwam mij voor, dat Rafael u
daarin heeft gevolgd. In elk geval heeft hem uw werk voor den geest
gezweefd en zijt gij zijn voorbeeld geweest.”
Bewogen greep Dürer Schäufeleins hand: “O, ik dank u, beste Schäufelein,
ik dank u! Wat gij mij daar zegt is als een lichtstraal in den nacht van mijn
rouw. Maar nu is mijn begeerte, om dien heerlijken kunstenaar te zien, nog
grooter geworden. Ach, dien wensch zal ik mede in het graf moeten nemen,
want hoe zouden Neurenberg en Rome bij elkaar kunnen komen?”
En nu drong Dürer er bij Schäufelein op aan, hem nog meer van Rafael te
vertellen, van zijn uiterlijk en zijn werken, van zijn verhouding tot den paus
en van zijn leven, totdat Wilibald Pirkheimer en andere vrienden en
vriendinnen kwamen om hun deelneming aan de treurenden te betuigen.
Intusschen ging Schäufelein met Hans en Sebaldus Beham, den gezel, die
juist uit de stad was thuis gekomen, in Dürers werkplaats en hij werd niet
moede te hooren van alles, wat de meester in de laatste jaren, sedert de
beide gezellen waren ontslagen, had gewerkt. Hans kwam er nooit mee
klaar; want telkens als hij dacht alles te hebben opgenoemd, schoot hem
weer iets te binnen, dat hij had vergeten. “Het is een onuitputtelijke bron,”
zei Schäufelein eindelijk. “Mogen al de lieve heiligen, die hij in zijn werken
verheerlijkt, hem beschermen en sterken en hem nog vele jaren levens
schenken!”— — —
Er was bijna een jaar na deze gebeurtenis voorbijgegaan, toen bij Dürer een
vreemdeling binnentrad, wiens uiterlijk zijn zuidelijke afkomst verried,

want twee ravenzwarte oogen keken uit zijn gebruind gelaat en dik, zwart,
krullend haar golfde om zijn slapen.
“Wees gegroet, Heer!” sprak hij met een beleefde buiging. “Zijt gij meester
Albrecht Dürer?”
“Die ben ik,” antwoordde de aangesprokene. “Wat wenscht gij van mij?”
“Ik kom van zeer ver,” zeide de man, “het is een lange weg van Rome naar
Neurenberg. Ik breng een boodschap van meester Rafael aan meester
Dürer.”
“Wat zegt gij?” riep Dürer, wiens penseel uit zijn hand viel. “O wees
welkom onder mijn dak. Wat zendt mij de meester aller meesters?”
“Zijn groet en ook dit,” antwoordde de man, terwijl hij een rol papier uit
zijn tasch nam. “Het heeft slechts kleine waarde,” sprak hij, die mij tot u
zond, “maar meester Dürer zal het vriendelijk van mij willen aannemen, als
hij hoort, hoe hartelijk ik verlang hem iets van mijn hand te geven.”
Met bevende vingers vouwde Dürer den rol open en aanschouwde een met
rood krijt geteekende figuur in krijgsdos. Zijn oogen bleven met een teedere
uitdrukking er op rusten; met diepen eerbied vervuld, beschouwde hij deze
teekening van den grooten man.
Na een lang stilzwijgen sprak hij: “Ik wil hem danken en gij, gij zult ook
mijn boodschapper zijn. Blijf nog eenigen tijd om de stad te zien, dan zal ik
u weder laten teruggaan met mijn tegengeschenk.”
Zes dagen later was Rafaels boodschapper weder gereed voor de terugreis.
In zijn reistasch had hij den dank van den Duitschen meester geborgen;
Dürer wilde Rafael niet de een of andere teekening, die hij had liggen,
zenden, maar zich zelf; hij wilde den buitenlandschen meester niet alleen
iets van zijn hand laten zien, maar zijn beeltenis zoodanig op doek
geschilderd, dat het op beide kanten zichtbaar was.

1
Een schittering kwam in Rafaels oogen, toen hij hem zag, dien hij zoo hoog
vereerde, en tot zijn dood toe hield hij het portret in hooge eer.
Dit was een afscheidsdronk der stervenden met hun bloedverwanten, in gebruik
gekomen sedert de middeneeuwen, en ontleend aan de afscheidswoorden van Jezus in het
Evangelie van Johannes. ↑

UIT DE DUISTERNIS TOT HET LICHT.
Het was een sombere Novembermorgen van het jaar 1517. Een dikke mist
belette de zon door te dringen tot in de straten en pleinen van Neurenberg.
Meester Dürer zat in zijn werkplaats te teekenen. Keizer Maximiliaan was
dit jaar weer in Neurenberg geweest en had den meester, over wiens “Poort
der Eere” hij hoogst tevreden was, opgedragen om op het tweede groote
stuk, “de Triomf,” als voornaamste deel een triomfwagen te schilderen naar
plannen, die Zijn Majesteit zelf had ontworpen. De zoo prachtig mogelijk
versierde wagen, door zes paarden getrokken, moest achterin voorzien zijn
van een hooge zitplaats, waarop de keizer zou troonen in vol ornaat, met
zijn jonge gemalin, Maria van Bourgondië; voor de beide Majesteiten moest
koning Filips de Schoone zitten tusschen zijn zuster en zijn echtgenoot,
voor hen zijn zoons, de aartshertogen Karel en Ferdinand en geheel voorin
hun zusters. Het was Wilibald Pirkheimer opgedragen om met Dürer deze
keizerlijke gedachten in artistieken vorm te gieten en meester Albrecht was
juist bezig de met vriend Wilibald veranderde plannen op het papier te
teekenen. Doch het werk wilde vandaag niet goed vlotten. Het licht was zoo
slecht, dat hij niets kon zien op de plaats, waar hij gewoonlijk zat, en aan
een kleine tafel dicht bij het venster moest gaan zitten om beter te kunnen
zien. Maar het was niet alleen dat, wat hem bij zijn schepping hinderde. In
zijn geheele wezen en in zijn gebaren lag een bijzondere rusteloosheid;
naast hem lag een boekje, waarin hij nu en dan een blik wierp en dan
verzonk hij in diep gepeins. Het boekje was getiteld: “Het heilige Onze
Vader, verklaard door Dr. Maarten Luther.”1 Hij had het gekregen van
Christoffel Scheurl, den man, die hem indertijd te Bologna had
verwelkomd, daarna tot professor in de rechtsgeleerdheid te Wittenberg was
benoemd en nu als rechterlijk plaatsvervanger in Neurenberg een
aanzienlijke plaats innam. Door hem had hij veel gehoord over dezen
merkwaardigen man, die in Saksen en ook verder in het land veel van zich
deed spreken, dien Augustijner monnik en professor in de theologie aan de,
door den keurvorst Frederik den Wijze gestichte, hoogeschool te

Wittenberg. Van het begin af aan had Dürer een levendige belangstelling
gekoesterd voor dezen uitstekenden geleerde en hij had ook vlijtig
bestudeerd de preeken van Pater Wenzel Link, die, in nauwe
vriendschapsbetrekking tot Luther staande, reeds sinds den tijd, dat ze
samen in het klooster te Erfurt waren, sedert eenigen tijd in het Augustijner
klooster te Neurenberg was. Deze preeken hadden een diepen indruk op
hem gemaakt en een hevigen storm in hem verwekt. Als een trouw zoon
zijner kerk en met een vroom hart had hij tot nu toe gewandeld volgens de
geboden van den pauselijken stoel en voor het oog der menschen
vlekkeloos geleefd; ja, hij had zich de grootste achting verworven, niet
alleen als kunstenaar, maar ook als mensch;—nu begon hij te twijfelen, of
de weg, dien de kerk aanwees, wel de rechte was. En zijn twijfel nam nog
toe, als hij dacht aan den gruwel der verwoesting aan het heilige gepleegd
en het diepgaande verderf der kerk zag, dat hem reeds jaren geleden stof tot
zijn teekeningen uit de Openbaring van Johannes had gegeven. En hij was
niet de eenige te Neurenberg die deze dingen bepeinsde; andere burgers en
juist de beste en edelste, voelden hun hart ook onrustig kloppen. Als hij naar
de prediking van Pater Link in de Augustijnerkerk ging, kon hij er zeker
van zijn den kanselier Scheurl, den voortreffelijken secretaris van den raad
en den syndicus Lazarus Spengler te vinden en van de patriciërs de heeren
Hieronymus, Ebner, Kaspar Nützel en Hieronymus Holzschuher. Ook
Wilibald Pirkheimer voegde zich bij hen; maar hij uitte zich op eenigszins
andere wijze. Hij behoorde tot de zoogenaamde Humanisten, een kring van
geleerden, die in het herleefd klassieke tijdvak de wereld vonden, waarin
hun geest zich bewoog en van dit standpunt uit trokken zij te velde, zoowel
tegen het wetenschappelijk ongevormde, als tegen het bijgeloof van hun
tijd. Men legde Pirkheimer ten laste, dat hij had meegewerkt aan de
“brieven van de mannen der duisternis,” die in goed geslaagde navolging
van het slechte latijn der monniken den bedelmonnik met zijn grenzenlooze
domheid en schaamtelooze onzedelijkheid aan de kaak stelden. Wilibald
Pirkheimer verkneukelde zich hierin en hij genoot van het algemeene
gelach, dat deze brieven verwekten. Zijn wapens tegen het verderf van den
tijd waren geestigheid en spotternij, en zijn hart nam er slechts in zoover
deel aan, dat hij zich verheugde over de nederlaag van zijn tegenpartij. Eens
was zijn gevoel opgekomen tegen Meester Wolgemuts “Pausezel” als tegen

een te ruwe, onridderlijke wijze van strijden, nu plaatste hij zich eigenlijk
op hetzelfde standpunt.
Bij Dürer was het geheel iets anders. Den hoog ernstigen, innig vromen
man stond het schreien nader dan het lachen; het gold voor hem iets, dat
hem diep ter harte ging. Dag en nacht hield de gedachte hem bezig: wat
moet ik doen, opdat ik zalig worde, en de vraag: is de weg, die de kerk
wijst, de goede weg?
Hoe langer hij naar de preeken van Link luisterde, des te meer begon hij aan
de waarheid der leer van Rome te twijfelen en bij dezen diep nadenkenden
en met ware vroomheid bezielden man, won de twijfel te meer veld omdat
hij reeds sedert langen tijd als bij instinct een duister voorgevoel der
waarheid van het evangelie bij zich had omgedragen. Wel is waar had hij tot
nu toe in zijn kunst in hooge mate de Maagd Maria, die volgens het
algemeene begrip van dien tijd, als koningin des hemels en der wereld werd
vereerd, verheerlijkt; men bad tot haar als tot de eeuwige beschermvrouw
van het menschdom, die ellendige zondaars de straf voor hun zonden kwijt
scheldt, ongeneeselijke kwalen geneest, de aarde doet draaien, de zon het
licht schenkt, de wereld regeert en de hel doet beven. Niet alleen in zijn
“leven van Maria,” maar ook in de talrijke afbeeldingen der Madonna,
waarvan er meer dan twintig bestonden, had hij de afgodische vereering van
dit kind der menschen, in de hand gewerkt. Maar als men deze werken
nauwkeuriger bezag, kon men zien, dat het niet in des kunstenaars
bedoeling lag deze afgoderij te bevorderen. Wie oogen heeft om te zien, ziet
dat de Maagd Maria in Dürers werken niet de hoofdpersoon is: het
goddelijke Kind is het waarom alles draait. Hij wordt door allen gediend,
door de engelen en de heiligen en tegelijk met Hem ook zij, die Hem ter
wereld bracht. Niet met een stralenkrans verschijnt Maria daar, maar als een
echt menschenkind, ja, als een ware Neurenbergsche huismoeder in
Neurenberger kleederdracht. In haar oogen leest men de liefde voor haar
kind. Zij laaft het met haar moedermelk in zalige verrukking, zij verheugt
zich met Hem, zij lijdt met Hem. Zij is niet verheven boven het algemeene
lot van vergankelijkheid en verval, zooals de Italiaansche schilders haar, als
in eeuwige jeugd bloeiende, voorstellen, maar zij wordt oud en zwak; met

gebogen gestalte omvat zij haar gepijnigden Zoon, onmachtig ligt de oude,
grijze vrouw neder aan den voet van het kruis.
Zoo had dus een godsdienstig juist gevoel meester Dürers hand bestuurd en
hier en daar waren deze onbewuste gewaarwordingen ook in woorden voor
den dag gekomen. Boven het eerste zijner rijmen, die hij in het jaar 1509
had gemaakt, stond geschreven: “Elke ziel, die het eeuwige leven heeft,
wordt verkwikt door Jezus Christus, die twee naturen in één persoon
vereenigt, de goddelijke en de menschelijke, hetgeen men alleen door de
genade kan gelooven en door het natuurlijk verstand nimmer kan worden
begrepen.” Bij zijn Passie-gravuren had hij dit gevoegd:
O almachtige God en Heer
Vol aanbidding kniel ik neer
Voor Jezus’ lijden, voor Uw Zoon,
Uw Eengeboorne, die het loon
Voor onze schuld gedragen heeft.
O God, ik bid, dat Gij mij geeft
Over mijn zonden, diepe smart
En leed. Och, reinig Gij mijn zondig hart!
Gij hebt des overwinnaars troon,
Ach, deel met mij uw eerekroon.
Dus had de vrome man door de diepte van zijn godsdienstig gemoed iets
van de waarheid gevoeld. En nu lag voor hem Luthers boekje over het Onze
Vader, hij kende het bijna geheel van buiten!
Ook nu hield het zijn geest bezig en stoorde het hem in zijn teekenwerk.
Daar begon de klok der Augustijnerkerk te luiden; hij stond op, deed zijn
met bont omzoomden mantel om, zette zijn zwart fluweelen baret op en
ging uit: hij wist, dat Wenzel Link zou preeken.
Over de Melkmarkt en de Wijnmarkt kwam hij spoedig aan het
Augustijnerklooster. De kerk was overvol, niet alleen met monniken, maar
ook met burgers, waarvan de voornaamste waren: Hieronymus Ebner, Hans
Schopper, Lazarus Spengler en eenige anderen.

Link had den verloren zoon tot onderwerp gekozen en sprak over de groote
liefde Gods, waarmee Hij in Christus den zondaar tegemoet komt en van
het vertrouwen, waarmee de berouwvolle, boetvaardige zondaar zich
zonder tusschenkomst van menschen in Gods geopende armen moet
werpen.
Toen de dienst was afgeloopen en de kerk uitging, bleef Dürer nog met de
aanzienlijke heeren achter, om met hen over het gehoorde, dat aller hart
diep had getroffen, te blijven praten. Op eenmaal trof een gedruisch hun
ooren; het was alsof er veel volk af- en aanliep.
Zij traden naar buiten om te zien, wat er te doen was en op het plein zagen
zij een dichte menschenmassa, die steeds grooter werd en hoorden zij een
stem, zonder evenwel te kunnen verstaan, wat die sprak.
“Wat is daar te doen?” vraagde Hieronymus Ebner aan den ouden Fröhlich,
meester van het koperslagersgild, die zich uit het gedrang losmaakte.
“Er is een reizende koopman in de stad gekomen,” vertelde deze, “die
vreemde tijdingen brengt. Hij zegt, dat een zekere monnik, Martinus Luther
uit Wittenberg, aan de deur van de slotkerk vijfennegentig stellingen heeft
aangeplakt, om te protesteeren tegen den aflaat, waarmee de paus de
geldbuidels ledigt en de zielen verderft. Dat heeft heel wat opzien verwekt.
De man zegt, dat waar hij ook kwam en dit bericht meedeelde, het bij
jongen en ouden, aanzienlijken en geringen, mannen en vrouwen grooten
indruk maakte, dat er eindelijk iemand was, die het had gewaagd zijn stem
te verheffen tegen die afschuwelijke geldklopperij en die niet vreesde den
paus te trotseeren. Op vele plaatsen was het nieuwtje hem al vooruitgegaan
en kende men reeds den inhoud der stellingen, die overal met vreugde
werden gelezen. De man voegde er nog bij, dat hij regelrecht uit Wittenberg
kwam en dat hij uit naam van een vriend van den monnik, verscheidene der
stellingen tegen den aflaat bij den heer Christoffel Scheurl had afgegeven.
“Bij mij?” riep de kanselier blij verrast. “Zoo, dan ga ik dadelijk naar huis!”
“Laat ons met u gaan,” vraagde Dürer en de heeren gingen gezamenlijk
naar de woning van den kanselier. Het was juist zooals de reiziger had

gezegd. De vrouw van Scheurl kwam hen tegemoet en zeide: “Zie eens,
man, wat een reiziger tijdens uw afwezigheid heeft gebracht!” Haastig
verbrak Scheurl het omhulsel en haalde eenige papieren te voorschijn. Het
waren tien stukken in het latijn geschreven en getiteld: Disputatie van Dr.
Maarten Luther ter verklaring van de kracht van den aflaat.
“Lees toch!” riep Kaspar Nützel den kanselier toe en deze begon terstond,
terwijl de anderen zich om hem schaarden om te luisteren.
Hij had nog slechts weinig gelezen, toen Dürer eensklaps uitriep: “O, God,
help mij, ik voel mij zoo angstig!” Hij liep naar het venster, de handen
tegen de borst gedrukt. Scheurl wenkte een bediende om een beker frisch
water te halen, doch Dürer weigerde. “Water kan mij niet helpen; lees
verder, verder!”
Scheurl ging door met lezen en bij elke zinsnede werd de spanning grooter.
Toen hij eindelijk ophield, heerschte er een diepe, plechtige stilte, waarna
Hieronymus Holzschuher het woord nam en sprak: “Deze eenvoudige
monnik is een profeet des Allerhoogsten, hij heeft zijn stem verheven om
der waarheid getuigenis te geven. Zie, het valt mij als schellen van de
oogen! Langen tijd heb ik mij reeds geërgerd over dien misdadigen
aflaathandel en het schaamtelooze bestelen van het volk. Nu begrijp ik ook,
dat de aflaat, zooals de paus die beveelt, uit den booze is, zelfs wanneer
men er geen geld voor behoeft te betalen.”
Hieronymus Ebner gaf zijn instemming te kennen en voegde er zeer ernstig
bij:
“Hus heeft men verbrand, evenzoo Savonarola, misschien wordt er weldra
een derde brandstapel opgericht. “Dat verhoede God!” riep Dürer uit en een
donker rood bedekte zijn gelaat. “Zou de tijd dan nog niet zijn aangebroken,
dat de Heer zich over het arme Christenvolk erbarmt? Reeds sinds den
eersten keer, dat ik van Maarten Luther heb gehoord, was mijn ziel het met
hem eens en er sprak in mij een stem: “hij is het, die de waarheid heeft!”
Zou God het nog eenmaal dulden, dat de Satan het werktuig in Zijn hand
verbrijzelt? O, ik wenschte steeds meer van Luther te hooren en mij door

hem in de waarheid te laten leiden. Want nu ben ik nog als iemand, die lang
in het duister heeft gezeten en met verblinde oogen hulpeloos in het schelle
daglicht rondtast.”
Kaspar Nützel, die tot nu toe in stilzwijgen en gepeins verzonken had
gestaan, richtte zich nu plotseling op en zeide: “Luther heeft een vreemde
taal gebruikt, omdat hij het allereerst voor de geleerden heeft gesproken;
maar zijn prediking is voor het gansche volk bestemd—ik zal hem te hulp
komen en haar in het Duitsch uitgeven.”
Dit vond algemeenen bijval en men drong er op aan, als het mogelijk was,
dat hij nog dienzelfden dag met het vertalen zou beginnen.
Nützel bleef den ganschen nacht doorwerken, zoodat hij den volgenden
morgen reeds naar Anton Koburger, den drukker, kon gaan en slechts
weinige dagen later wist geheel Neurenberg, dat Luthers stellingen tegen
den aflaat in het Duitsch waren verschenen.
Men haastte zich naar de drukkerij en in een ommezien was de geheele
voorraad uitverkocht. In de huizen, in de herbergen, bij de drinkputten, in
de werkplaatsen, overal hoorde men spreken over den Wittenberger monnik
en zijn stellingen, en de opgewondenheid werd nog grooter, toen men van
doortrekkende reizigers vernam, dat Luther met zijn prediking het gansche
rijk in rep en roer had gebracht. Wenzel Link, de Augustijner pater sprak nu
met nog meer vrijmoedigheid van den kansel en al de kloosterlingen
trokken partij voor hun ordebroeder in Wittenberg.
Dürers werkplaats bleef leeg; de meester liet zich daar niet zien. Hij zat
boven in zijn kamertje met afgesloten deur; zelfs zijn vrouw mocht hem
niet storen. Hij wilde alleen zijn met God in den strijd om licht en waarheid.
En ziet, de strijd eindigde in overwinning.
Dr. Maarten Luther had hem den blinddoek van de oogen genomen; nu wist
hij, wat het is, dat elk Christen voor zijner ziele zaligheid van noode heeft te
weten: dat ’s menschen hoop op de eeuwige zaligheid berust op Gods
genade in Christus alleen en op niets anders. Het stond daar immers klaar

en duidelijk: de paus kan slechts aflaat geven van die straffen, welke hij zelf
heeft opgelegd, dus de tijdelijke kerkelijke straffen. Zijn macht strekt zich
niet tot hemel en hel uit; het is een valsche meening, door de onwaardige
handelaars in aflaatbrieven, verspreid. De paus kan geen zonden vergeven
en niemand uit de hel verlossen; hij kan niets anders doen dan den
menschen verkondigen, wat God uit genade en ter wille van Christus voor
een boetvaardige ziel doet. Indien iemand oprecht berouw gevoelt, wil God
hem volledig zijn schuld en straf kwijt schelden zonder een enkelen
aflaatbrief.
Deze boodschap was voor Dürers ziel als morgendauw op de dorre weide.
Hij was steeds zulk een ernstig, ijverig Christen geweest; hij kon zich
beroepen op een groot aantal goede werken, die de kerk van hem vorderde
en had daardoor toch niet gevonden, wat zij zocht. Nu zag hij op eens de
leer der goede werken met geheel andere oogen aan: niet door verdienste,
maar door genade ontvangen, was Luthers prediking en dat was hem een
blijde boodschap. Zijn hart vond nu op eenmaal rust en zijn beangst gemoed
werd plotseling getroost. En nu, nadat alles hem duidelijk was geworden,
wilde hij het ook aan anderen openbaren en zijn vertrouwen in de waarheid
van Luthers prediking werd versterkt, toen hij zag, hoe vurig ook Agnes’
begeerte was om naar hem te luisteren en toen hij hoorde, hoe dankbaar zij
was, dat ook haar ziel vrede daarbij vond.
Zijn blijdschap nam nog toe, toen ook Pirkheimer voor Luther in geestdrift
geraakte, zoo zelfs, dat hij een brief aan Dr. Maarten schreef. O, hoe gaarne
zou ook Dürer zijn hart voor den man Gods hebben uitgestort!
Met groote spanning volgde hij nu de wederwaardigheden van Luther, wien
menige giftige pijl werd toegeslingerd. Kwam er een boekje uit van Luthers
hand, dan was hij er dadelijk bij om daardoor steeds duidelijker de waarheid
te leeren kennen, terwijl Luther zelf door de aanvallen zijner tegenpartijders
stapsgewijze verder kwam in de erkentenis der waarheid.
Dürer voelde zich zoo opgewekt, zoo blijde; zijn ziel verblijdde zich in zulk
een ongekend, zalig gevoel, als zelfs de hoogste lof der menschen over zijn

1
kunst nooit bij hem had kunnen opwekken. Hij voelde zich gelukkig door
den vrede Gods, die alle verstand te boven gaat.
In de vasten van het jaar 1517 had Luther het “Onze Vader” in preeken verklaard en
een zijner toehoorders had deze opgeschreven preeken spoedig daarna in druk doen
verschijnen. ↑

TE AUGSBURG.
Op een schoonen Junimorgen, toen de zon vroolijk scheen, reden drie
aanzienlijke heeren te paard de Vrouwepoort van Neurenberg uit, op
eenigen afstand gevolgd door zes kranige knechten, met zware valiezen
beladen. Het waren de vertegenwoordigers der stad in den Rijksdag, dien
Keizer Maximiliaan te Augsburg had bijeengeroepen: de raadsheer Kaspar
Nützel, de stadssecretaris Lazarus Spengler en meester Albrecht Dürer.
Eerst was het plan geweest, dat slechts de twee eerstgenoemden zouden
gaan, later besloot men den laatste ook te zenden, om den keizer, bij wien
Dürer in hooge eer stond, genoegen te doen.
“Het zal warm worden,” beweerde meester Dürer na eenigen tijd, “de zon
brandt reeds op mijn rug.”
“In Augsburg zullen we het nog warmer krijgen,” antwoordde Spengler
lachend. “De belasting, die de paus eischt voor den strijd tegen de Turken,
zal de hoofden der vorsten genoeg verhitten en de paus zal het ook benauwd
krijgen, als hij de lange reeks klachten van de rijksvorsten over de
geestelijkheid verneemt.”
“Zou men den heiligen Vader die belasting toestaan?” vraagde Nützel.
De stadssecretaris haalde de schouders op. “Men stelt hier den eenen eisch
tegenover den anderen. Als de paus aan de klachten der Duitschers geen
gehoor geeft, kan hij elke gedachte aan een oorlog tegen de Turken gerust
op zijde zetten. Ik voor mij geloof trouwens, dat de Turken slechts een
voorwendsel zijn, om op nieuw geld uit de zakken der Duitschers te
kloppen, nadat Luther voor de aflaatkramers de markt heeft bedorven. De
bedoelde Turken zullen wel in Italië huizen.”
“Nu gij toch van Luther spreekt,” zei Dürer, “zal het mij benieuwen of zijn
zaak in den Rijksdag zal worden behandeld.”

“In den Rijksdag?” vraagde Spengler. “We hebben genoeg andere zaken te
behandelen, maar als het mocht gebeuren, ben ik overtuigd, dat de
keurvorst van Saksen zich het lot van zijn landgenoot wel zal aantrekken,
want Luther staat bij hem hoog in de gunst.”
Nu het gesprek op de theologie was gekomen, raakten zij daarin zoo ernstig
verdiept, dat de lange rit hun bijzonder kort scheen.
Bij de poort van Augsburg scheidden zij om elk hun logies op te zoeken:
Kaspar Nützel begaf zich naar het paleis van den rijken Fugger, Lazarus
Spengler naar zijn collega Konrad Peutinger en meester Dürer naar het
Augustijnerklooster te St. Ulrich.
De Neurenberger vertegenwoordigers behoorden tot de eerste, die te
Augsburg verschenen. Elken dag kwamen er nu meer: de Duitsche vorsten
en prelaten verschenen met hun gevolg, allen in statigen optocht en
eindelijk kwam Zijn keizerlijke Majesteit.
Den volgenden dag kwamen allen, nadat zij gezamenlijk de mis hadden
bijgewoond, met den keizer bijeen in de groote zaal van het paleis en de
Rijksdag was geopend.
Eenigen tijd daarna keerde meester Dürer in opgewonden stemming naar
het klooster terug en deelde aan de monniken mede, dat hij overmorgen
voor Zijn Majesteit moest verschijnen, om diens portret te maken. De
monniken verheugden zich niet weinig hierover, en waren nu nog trotscher
op hun gast, met wien zij reeds tegenover andere geestelijke orden hadden
gepronkt.
Des Maandags na den dag aan Johannes den Dooper gewijd, werd meester
Dürer in het keizerlijk paleis ontboden.
Zijn hart klopte luid: nu zou hij de eer hebben, hem, den machtigen keizer
van het groote Duitsche Rijk, te mogen afbeelden, den vorst, voor wien hij
ook als liefhebber en beschermer der kunst hooge achting koesterde.

Met den dienaar, die hem begeleidde, ging hij door den tuin van het paleis
en trad, langs de menigte keizerlijke hofbeambten en dienaren met hun van
goud schitterende livreien, op het voorportaal toe. Zij gingen de breede trap
op, door een zaal heen en kwamen daarna aan klein kamertje. De bediende
opende de deur en liet Dürer binnen, die nu voor Zijn keizerlijke Majesteit
stond.
Toen hij eerbiedig boog, kwam de keizer minzaam op hem toe en reikte
hem de hand.
“Wees welkom, lieve meester! Het is mij recht aangenaam hem, die mij
reeds zooveel genot heeft bereid, te mogen zien. Wilt gij nu maar dadelijk
aan het werk gaan om keizer Maximiliaans beeltenis aan de wereld te laten
zien.”
Tegelijkertijd zette hij zijn fluweelen baret op, sloeg een lichten mantel om
en ging zitten. Dürer nam een papier te voorschijn en teekende met
houtskool het bijna levensgroote portret des keizers.
Nog geen uur was voorbijgegaan, toen de kunstenaar voor den keizer boog,
om hem te danken, dat het hem vergund was geweest den hoogstgeplaatsten
man der wereld in beeld te brengen. Hoogst verwonderd stond de keizer op.
“Hoe, zijt gij nu reeds klaar?”
Hij bekeek de teekening en zag toen zijn beeltenis, geniaal uitgevoerd, zoo
natuurgetrouw en zoo volkomen waar, dat hem een kreet van blijde
verrassing ontsnapte en hij in vervoering de hand des kunstenaars greep om
die hartelijk te drukken.
Dürer verzocht de teekening eerst mee naar huis te mogen nemen, om hier
en daar nog wat bij te werken; hij zou haar dan den volgenden dag aan Zijn
Majesteit zenden. De keizer keurde dit goed en liet den kunstenaar niet
vertrekken zonder hem nogmaals zijn bewondering te hebben betuigd.
Sedert dat oogenblik overstelpte men Dürer met arbeid, want door dit
portret was zijn tegenwoordigheid te Augsburg algemeen bekend geworden.
De rijke Patriciër, Jacob Fugger, noodigde Dürer uit bij hem te komen om

zijn portret te maken, en zoo deed ook een aanzienlijke Augsburgsche
dame, Sybilla Arztin. Een grootere opdracht gaf hem den geleerden en
kunstlievenden stadssecretaris en keizerlijken raadsheer Dr. Konraad
Peutinger, met wien hij later op zeer vertrouwelijken voet kwam, omdat hij
in hem iemand, die wat het godsdienstige betrof het geheel met hem eens
was, had gevonden. Zijn schetsboek vulde hij met portretten van de
belangrijkste personen, die hij gedurende de zittingen van den Rijksdag in
stilte teekende en waartoe behoorden: Keurvorst Frederik van Saksen,
Keurvorst Joachim I van Brandenburg en diens zoon van denzelfden naam,
de Paltsgraaf Frederik, Vorst Wolfgang van Anhalt, Bisschop Bernard van
Triënte, de Abten van St. Paul in Lavanthal en van het klooster Heilsbronn.
Het portret van Ridder Ulrich van Hutten teekende hij zelfs tweemaal.
De Augustijner monniken van St. Ulrich drongen er bij den kunstenaar op
aan, dat hij een geschenk als herinnering zou achterlaten; vriendelijk
willigde hij hun verzoek in en schilderde de portretten van een groot aantal
kloosterlingen.
Vele weken waren sinds dien tijd voorbijgegaan.
Op een avond in het begin van Augustus kwam Dürer in bijzonder
opgewekte stemming thuis en vertelde hij aan tafel: “Vandaag is mij weder
een groote eer te beurt gevallen: de Aartsbisschop van Maagdenburg en
Mainz, primaat en eerste kanselier van het Duitsche Rijk, die op den
Rijksdag hier van den heiligen Vader den kardinaalshoed heeft ontvangen,
heeft mij bij zich ontboden en mij gevraagd zijn portret te maken. Dat heb
ik nu vandaag gedaan en daarna hebben we nog eenige uren heel
vertrouwelijk gepraat. Welk een aangenaam man is hij! Met welk een liefde
en verstand spreekt hij over de kunst, waarvoor hij geen geld ontziet! Hij
heeft een aanzienlijke schat reliquieën in zijn kerk te Halle bijeengebracht
en voor het portret, waarover hij uiterst tevreden is, heeft hij mij terstond
twee honderd gouden guldens uitbetaald, en mij nog twintig el damast
gegeven voor een kleed, dat ik juist noodig heb.”
“En ziet, er is mij heden nog iets anders overkomen. Het is mij weer
vergund geweest bij den keizer te verschijnen om met hem te spreken over

den triomfwagen, dien ik voor hem heb geteekend. Er waren juist veel
vorsten bij hem, die allen even minzaam tegen mij waren. De keizer wilde,
dat ik een ridderhelm zou teekenen en toen ik daarmee bezig was, kwam hij
er bij, nam het stuk houtskool uit mijn hand en zei, dat hij het zelf ook eens
wilde probeeren. Maar terwijl hij zijn best deed, brak het stuk houtskool
herhaaldelijk en het wilde in het geheel niet gelukken—hij gaf het mij dus
maar weer terug en ik maakte de teekening gauw af. De keizer moest er om
lachen en vraagde: “Hoe komt het toch, dat bij mij de houtskool
voortdurend breekt en bij u nooit?” En omdat de keizer zoo minzaam en
gewoon met mij praatte, werd mijn moed groot en ik antwoordde:
“Allergenadigste Keizer, ik zou niet wenschen, dat Uw Majesteit even goed
kon teekenen als ik.””
De toehoorders zagen elkaar daarop bedenkelijk aan en een hunner zeide:
“Dat was een haastig, onbedacht woord. Hoe nam de keizer het op?”
Dürer glimlachte. “Hij begreep, dat ik er mee wilde zeggen: Gij, Keizer,
hebt over een ander rijk te gebieden en moeilijker plichten te vervullen dan
één van ons. Daarom reikte hij mij vriendelijk de hand en ik mocht
heengaan, zonder in ongenade te zijn gevallen.”
De prior was onder Dürers verhalen stil geworden; nu nam hij het woord en
sprak:
“Ik begrijp, dat ’s keizers gunst u verheugt en gelukkig maakt en ik verblijd
mij daarin met u; maar het verbaast mij, dat de vriend en volgeling van
Luther met zooveel lof over diens tegenstander spreekt en hem met zijn
kunst dient. Is het niet juist kardinaal Albrecht, die den eersten stoot aan de
geheele beweging heeft gegeven, toen hij Tetzel uitzond met die aflaatkist?”
Dürer zag den prior een oogenblik ontsteld aan, daarop sprak hij: “Ik heb
wel gedacht aan hetgeen de kardinaal, wat den aflaat betreft, heeft gedaan
en het diep betreurd. Het is jammer, dat de man zich daarmee heeft
afgegeven. Hij is overigens zulk een kiesch, uiterst ontwikkeld en
hoogdenkend man, een vriend van kunsten en wetenschappen. — — —”

“En een verkwister!” viel de prior hem met donkeren blik in de rede. “Zijn
geldbuidel is altijd leeg en hij heeft Tetzel uitgezonden alleen om zijn beurs
te vullen.”
“Misschien heeft hij niet geweten, wat hij deed,” zei Dürer
verontschuldigend, “en is daarom op hem het woord van onzen Heiland van
toepassing, dat men het hem moet vergeven. Misschien heeft hij zelf het
verkeerde reeds ingezien en stelt hij perk aan dien afschuwelijken handel.
Mij dunkt, dat hij meer vorst dan bisschop is en van de leer der kerk niet
veel weet, zooals vele anderen, die den bisschopsstaf dragen. Indien hij het
bestuur over wereldsche aangelegenheden had, dan — — —”
Hier werd de spreker in de rede gevallen door een monnik, die met een
uitdrukking van schrik en toorn op het gelaat, naar binnen stortte en riep:
“Er loopt een slechte tijding door de stad: de leeuw heft den klauw omhoog,
om den adelaar te verscheuren.”
Plotseling stonden allen van hun zitplaatsen op en verdrongen zich om den
binnengekomene met de vraag, wat dit moest beteekenen.
De monnik hief zijn gebalde vuisten omhoog en riep met donderende stem:
“Wee u, Leo, wanneer uw hand zich met het bloed der heiligen bevlekt!—
Gij moet dan weten, broeders, dat er uit Rome een gezant van den paus is
gekomen, om Luther te bevelen binnen zestig dagen voor den pauselijken
stoel te verschijnen—dat beteekent dus: in een gevangenis te verdwijnen—
en den paus nog dankbaar den voet te kussen voor de genade, dat hij hem
den brandstapel heeft bespaard!”
Er ontstond een groote opgewondenheid; aller gelaat gloeide en men sprak
wild door elkaar, want de Augustijner monniken van St. Ulrich te Augsburg
hadden allen partij gekozen voor hun Wittenberger kloosterbroeder en
waren trotsch op hem.
Dürer was eveneens diep getroffen. Hij ging naar zijn slaapvertrek en legde
zich te bed, om daar lang tot God te bidden en den bedreigde in de
bescherming des Almachtigen aan te bevelen.

Er heerschte een geweldige oproerigheid in Augsburg gedurende de
volgende dagen en de pauselijke gezant zag welk een groot deel van het
volk op Luthers hand was.
De opgewondenheid bedaarde dan ook niet, voordat men over Luthers lot
gerust kon zijn, omdat zoowel de Universiteit van Wittenberg als de
keurvorst Frederik van Saksen, voor den monnik beslist in de bres waren
gesprongen en het hadden doorgezet, dat zijn zaak op Duitsch grondgebied
zou worden uitgevochten en wel te Augsburg op den Rijksdag, terwijl de
pauselijke gezant, kardinaal Cajetanus, tegen wil en dank zich bereid moest
verklaren, aldaar den ketter te woord te staan.
Men was daarmee tevreden gesteld; vooral ook nu de pauselijke
zaakgelastigde, den keurvorst op diens aandringen, had beloofd met
zachtmoedigheid en rechtvaardigheid tegenover den Augustijner monnik te
werk te gaan.
Brandend van ongeduld wachtte Dürer het oogenblik af, waarop de man
Gods, die zijn ziel uit groote benauwdheid had gered, Augsburg zou
betreden; hij hoopte hem dan met eigen oogen te zien en misschien zelfs
met hem te spreken.
Maar de eene week na de andere verliep en Luther verscheen niet—men
hoorde zelfs beweren, dat hij pas zou komen wanneer de Rijksdag al het
andere zou hebben behandeld, en dat was nog heel veel. Dürer kon evenwel
tot zijn groote spijt zoo lang niet wachten; hij had van huis tijdingen
ontvangen, die hem tegen de helft van September naar Neurenberg riepen.

BEVREDIGD VERLANGEN.
Er waren bijna vier weken voorbijgegaan, toen op zekeren avond de meid
meester Dürer bij zijn thuiskomst berichtte, dat de secretaris van den Raad
er was geweest en ten hoogste had betreurd meester Dürer uit te vinden. Hij
had er bij gevoegd, dat in geval deze spoedig thuis mocht komen, hij
dadelijk naar het Augustijnerklooster moest gaan.
Terstond ging Dürer er dus weer op uit en liep met groote stappen naar het
genoemde klooster.
Hij vond al de broeders bij elkaar in de groote eetzaal.
“O, waarom waart gij zoo straks niet hier, Meester Dürer,” riep de prior den
binnentredende toe. “Nu is het te laat!”
“Wat is er gebeurd?” vraagde Dürer ontsteld.
De prior kwam naderbij, reikte hem de hand en zei: “Hij, dien gij zoozeer
hebt verlangd te aanschouwen, zat een uur geleden hier op deze plaats.”
“Luther?” vraagde meester Dürer snel.
“Ja, Luther,” bevestigde de prior. “Wij hebben hem gezien, wij hebben met
hem gesproken—o, ik zegen den dag, waarop de gezegende des Heeren
onzen drempel heeft overschreden.”
Dürer was ontroostbaar over de teleurstelling, dat hij op het juiste oogenblik
niet tegenwoordig was geweest en nu wilde hij ten minste alle nadere
bijzonderheden hooren. Hij vernam, dat Luther te voet van Wittenberg was
gekomen en doodmoe bij de broeders was aangeland. Men had hem toen
gespijsd en gelaafd en broeder Link had hem zijn pij gegeven, daar hij in
zijn eigen oude pij, door de stof op reis ontoonbaar geworden, onmogelijk
voor den gezant van den heilige Vader kon verschijnen.

Verder vertelde men, dat Link had aangeboden, hem naar Augsburg te
begeleiden en dat zij een half uur geleden samen waren afgereisd.
“En hoe was hij, Dr. Martinus?” vraagde Dürer met groote belangstelling.
Eenige oogenblikken zweeg de prior met terneergeslagen blikken; toen
vervolgde hij:
“Hoe zal ik u dat duidelijk kunnen maken? Eerst schrok ik, toen ik hem zag
aankomen, van zijn holle, bleeke wangen, waarop als het ware de dood staat
te lezen. En ik zag daaruit de gevolgen van zijn zelfkastijdingen in het
Erfurter klooster, waarvan men mij had verteld. Maar ik werd bijna
verblind, toen ik zijn oogen zag. Meester Dürer, als gij die oogen had
gezien, zoudt gij terstond hebben gezegd: dat is een man Gods, een profeet
des Allerhoogsten! En als gij die oogen moest schilderen—al zijt gij nog
zulk een uitstekend, hooggeroemd kunstenaar, zulke oogen en de ziel, die
daaruit spreekt, op het doek te brengen, neen, dat zou onmogelijk zijn. Ik
zie ze nog steeds voor mij, die groote, donkere, diepe oogen; het was mij
alsof hij daarmee tot in het diepst van ’s menschen ziel kon lezen. En dan
zijn stem, zijn taal—juist zoo stel ik mij Elias, den profeet van Jehova
voor.”
“En wat zeide hij van zijn gang naar Augsburg?” vraagde Dürer verder.
“Hij was op alles voorbereid,” antwoordde de prior. “Hij voorzag heel goed,
dat hij als offer was bestemd, dat de paus hem door list wilde vangen en
naar Rome sleepen; toch ging hij getroost in den naam des Heeren, die, als
hij verloren ging, uit elken steen een Martinus kon verwekken.”
In Dürers ziel kampten velerlei aandoeningen om den voorrang; diepe
ontroering en hartverheffende gedachten wisselden af met wrevel over de
teleurstelling Luther te hebben gemist. Eindelijk vraagde hij, of Luther niet
gezegd had, welken terugweg hij zou nemen, wanneer het misliep met de
booze bedoelingen van Rome. Doch men zei hem, dat Luther daarvan met
geen enkel woord had gerept.

Iedereen te Neurenberg, en Dürer in het bijzonder, wachtte nu in groote
spanning op tijding uit Augsburg; maar de berichten, die kwamen, waren
zeer met elkander in tegenspraak. Sommigen zeiden, dat Luther zeer
welwillend door den kardinaal was ontvangen; anderen beweerden, dat de
pauselijke gezant hem hard had bejegend en had gezegd, dat hij het beest
met de donkere oogen niet meer wilde zien.
Toen kwam op den 16den
October ’s avonds laat Wenzel Link, die Luther
naar Augsburg had vergezeld, terug—alleen, en vervulde door zijn
berichten de stad met vrees en beven. Hij vertelde, dat hij de vlucht had
moeten nemen, omdat hij zijn leven niet zeker was en wat er met Luther,
die nog een geschrift om te appeleeren wilde overreiken, zou gebeuren, dat
wist God alleen.
Ten huize van Kaspar Nützel kwamen vele aanzienlijken bijeen om te
beraadslagen, wat zij te doen hadden, in geval, dat het met Luther tot het
uiterste kwam, maar niemand wist wat hierin te raden. Aller gemoed was
bezwaard, niemand dacht aan arbeiden, zelfs de raadszittingen konden niet
doorgaan door de afwezigheid van het meerendeel der raadsheeren.—
Op Donderdag, den 21sten
October, reden ’s morgens vroeg twee ruiters de
Vrouwepoort te Neurenberg binnen; zij zagen er wonderlijk uit, ten minste
de een, want dat was een monnik in zijn pij, hetgeen al heel vreemd stond
voor iemand te paard, zoodat ieder, die hem tegenkwam, bleef staan en
verwonderd den rijdenden kloosterbroeder nakeek. De andere ruiter was
een man met een grijzen baard en een gerimpeld gelaat; hij was tot de
tanden toe gewapend. De ruiters vraagden den weg naar het
Augustijnerklooster en gingen, toen zij daar waren aangekomen, met het
paard aan den teugel, den tuin binnen. Even daarna werd de klopper
driemaal haastig op Dürers deur neergelaten. Het was een monnik, die de
boodschap bracht, dat meester Dürer terstond naar het klooster moest gaan.
Met een voorgevoel, wien het gold, snelde Dürer naar buiten, geheel zooals
hij was en in zijn haast ternauwernood zich den tijd gunnende om zijn baret
van den haak te nemen. Hij had zich niet bedrogen; de monnik vertelde hem
onderweg, dat Luther vergezeld van een gewapend ruiter uit Augsburg als

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