The Loftus Hoard of Old Babylonian Tools from Tell Sifr in Iraq

Abstract

Although W. K. Loftus is best remembered today for his pioneer excavations at Susa and Warka, one of his most remarkable single discoveries was made in April, 1854, at Tell Sifr in Iraq. For the first three months of the year, accompanied by Boutcher as artist, he had been engaged on excavations at Warka sponsored by the Assyrian Excavation Fund. He then moved his expedition to Senkara (Larsa), a site fifteen miles south-east of Warka, called to his attention through a rapid visit there by Baillie Fraser in 1834. Among the large mounds visible from Senkara across the ancient canal, Shatt al Kar, is that of Tell Sifr, which promising local reports of its contents induced Loftus to explore. Indeed the mound had already been honey-combed by a notorious group of clandestine excavators searching for gold in Parthian graves. It was they who had named the site ‘Sifr’ after the numerous copper objects they discovered there, much no doubt to their chagrin. Within a matter of days the party of Arabs despatched by Loftus had “cut some enormous gashes into the little conical mound, which crowns a low platform nowhere exceeding forty feet above the desert”. The discovery with which this paper is concerned was made on the south-east side of the tell and may best be described in the excavator's own words: “A trench was dug into the south-east side of the principal mound, according to instructions, and soon came against a brick wall, which, from its position, supported by a three-feet buttress, and its elevation in two-inch gradines, was evidently the exterior of a building. Its thickness was not ascertained, but it encased an internal mass of mudbrick, as explained by some other trenches. Following this wall for a distance of about six feet, the workmen discovered a number of copper articles arranged along it, which form a very curious and quite unique collection, consisting of large chaldrons, vases, small dishes and dice-boxes (?); hammers, chisels, adzes, and hatchets; a large assortment of knives and daggers of various sizes and shapes—all unfinished; massive and smaller rings; a pair of prisoner's fetters; three links of a strong chain; a ring weight; several plates resembling horses' shoes, divided at the heel for the insertion of a handle, and having two holes in each for pins; other plates of a different shape, which were probably primitive hatchets; an ingot of copper and a great weight of dross from the same smelted metal. (Here Loftus notes: ‘The whole of the articles obtained from Tell Sifr are deposited in the British Museum’). There was likewise a small fragment of a bitumen bowl overlaid with thin copper; and a piece of lead.” Loftus believed he had found the stock-in-trade of a copper smith, but was puzzled by their ‘connection with the public edifice, near which they were uncovered’. He inferred the date of this copper hoard from the Old Babylonian tablets and envelopes found close to them. This archive had been carefully stacked upon bricks with a cover of reed matting. Impending seasonal floods brought the work at Tell Sifr to a premature end. The site has never subsequently been scientifically examined.