tran 40 ( rec2) THE EARLY IRANIAN STONE “WEIGHTS” AND AN UNPUBLISHED SUMERIAN FOUNDATION DEPOSIT By Julian Reade London While archaeologists sensibly look for practical explanations of what they find, the anthropological literature is crammed with examples of types of object and modes of behaviour which have no intrinsic value to outsiders but have come to be accepted in their own cultures as conferring something akin to social or financial credit in ours (e.g. Cribb 1997). We should probably be looking for objects with this kind of symbolic value, especially before the introduction of silver as a medium of exchange, inthe early Middle East and, indeed, everywhere, Cowrie-shells are an obvious candidate, as they are not uncommon on Mesopotamian excavations, and they served monetary purposes from ancient China to medieval Afiica. It might also be worth considering the small hand-axes or celts, often beautifully ‘made of green stone, which tend to appear sporadically in the inventories of early historical sites, both complete and eventually as perforated amulets (e.g. from Tepe Gawra: Speiser 1935: 85 1994-11-5, 218, 237). Since hand-axes had been useful in prehistory, could have gone on being used, and are attractive enough to have been reused as omaments, it will be hard to demonstrate that they possessed an early symbolic value. Their distribution through time seems ‘odd, however, and it is remarkable that the early ‘Sumerian pictographic or cuneiform sign GiN meaning axe, whose shape is originally either oblong (like a hand axe) or L-shaped (like the end of a hafted metal axe), was also used for the term shekel (Babylonian sight). One might compare the Mexican axes that were used for exchange, the copper bar celts of second-millennium India, and the suggestion that stone hand-axes had a social function, o impress the opposite sex, in many pats of the prehistoric world (Kohn and Mithen 1999). There is another class of Middle Eastern objects that possessed evident high status and some resemblance to things that were genuinely useful, but whose very elaborate decoration appears to represent the ‘transformation of an everyday object into something of symbolic rather than practical value. These are the stone 249 “weights” or “handbags” of the mi¢-third millennium B.C., which have been found mainly in Iran, Afhanistan and Turkmenistan, They have been collected and discussed, with illustrations and a map, by Winkelmann (1977: especially 215-19). They are narrow, rounded pieces of solid stone with integral loop handles, and are carved in the “Intercultural” style which was familiar in southem Iran and surrounding regions, including the central Persian Gulf. They are about the size of small modem handbags, and are traditionally described as weights because they are solid, but few of them have ‘boon weighed and it is doubtful whether they conform to any standard; they bear no recognised resemblance to types of standard weight used subsequently, and would anyway have been inconvenient for this purpose since they cannot stand upright. It is possible that these objects were copied from genuine containers made of wood or fabric, but it seems more likely that they were exceptional loom-weights. ‘As pointed out by Winkelmann, there are other stone objects, less slim and usually plain but broadly comparable in shape, which come from the same general area and which range in date from the fourth to the early first millennium B.C. Winkelmann proposed a cultic use for them, since some have been found in graves and in places associated with worship. Robert Knox, however, tells me that there are many at the mid= fourth millennium site of Sheri Khan Tarakai in the Bannu province of northwestern Pakistan, and this strongly suggests that they had a utilitarian purpose. D. Collon has drawn my attention to a ceramic lid in the British Museum (1849-6-23, 41 = 93028: purchased; see Curtis 1993: 63) belonging to the much later Sasanian period, which is decorated in relief with a scene of acrobats who appear to be juggling with weights of a similar shape, but this can hardly account for the abundance of earlier examples (see Fig. 1) A specific hypothesis is that the decorated stone ‘weights were marriage gifts or symbolic dowries, which would help explain the appearance of some isolated250 JOURNAL OF PERSIAN STUDIES Fig. 1. Sasanian ceramic lid. Photograph courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum, examples outside their principal area of distribution in Iran. This kind of idea lies on the very edge of what can ever actually be tested. The present paper considers its compatibility with what may be deduced from the provenance of single unusual stone weight found at Ur in southem Iraq, The provenance has been forgotten, however, and has to be reconstructed by reference to the 19th-century records of the British Museum (Central Archive, Original Papers and Letters, volumes LIX-LXII for 1858-59) In 1855, when the main British excavations Assyria and Babylonia ended, 3828.13 kerans of Ottoman currency remained at the Baghdad consulate to the credit of the museum. It was eventually decided to spend the money on excavations at Ur, and the work was entrusted to John George Taylor, British consul at Basra, an able man who had already excavated at Ur and elsewhere. Sollberger (1972) has given a brief account of Taylor's life, but was unaware of his last season of excavations, which took place during January and February 1858. On 10 August, Taylor sent his field notes to Major A.B. Kemball, then Political Agent in ‘Turkish Arabia and H.M.’s Consul General at Baghdad, who forwarded them to London. They were bound as item 9951 in Vol. LXI of the Trustees” Original Papers. Ina leter of 7 March 1859, Taylor authorised Antonio Panizzi, Principal Librarian of the British Museum, to publish his “desultory notes” in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. On $ February 1959, however, Sir Henry Rawlinson, who had successfully passed himself off as prime decipherer of the cuneiform script and was the accepted authority on ancient Babylonia, had written another letter. “My dear Panizzi, Will you please let me have Taylor’s Memoir (enclosure to Kemball’s last despatch) for a few minutes in order to insert the localities where the new bricks have been found, the Inscriptions on which are being now printed on our Supplementary Chaldaean sheet? Yours sincerely, H.C. Rawlinson.” Taylor's notes have been cut out of the volume, and the provenances of inscribed bricks found by him are indeed given in Rawlinson’s Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, vol. 1 (London 1861), but the notes never retumed to volume LXI, nor do they appear to be among those of the Rawlinson papers which are preserved in the Royal Asiatic and Royal Geographical Societies. One possi ‘ were sent to be printed in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, and that for some reason this was not done. 1 have been told that the Society’s officers discarded many old records on moving house in 1947, so maybe they perished then. All that is left is Taylor's summary packing list, together with the Museum register entries for the collection (1859-10-14, 1-336) Which themselves contain a little information. It does not seem likely that there are any relevant documents such as a diary in private hands, since Avvocato John Gatti of Viareggio, who visited me in 1987, said that his own grandmother had been the last member of this branch of the Taylors. There was a family tradition that his forebear had done archaeological work in Mesopotamia, and he was looking for further information about it. Apparently Taylor’s son had emigrated to Italy to become pastor of a Protestant ‘community in northern Piedmont, ‘Taylor evidently recorded his last excavation at Ur with characteristic efficiency, reflected in the packing list. Besides inscribed bricks, inscribed cones including three fixed together on an inscribed circular mount, miscellaneous objects of various dates, an archive of 20 Old Babylonian tablets, two other tablet fragments, and a terracotta game-board, the bulk of the finds seem to have come from graves of the early first millennium B.C. The packing list specifies: “One coffin jar and cover marked M2 which contains two clay dishes containing fragments of linen shroud found in coffin, One jar found in coffin containing ditto ditto. 1 Parcel i wood found in coffin and several Parcels‘THE EARLY IRANIAN STONE “WEIGHTS” AND AN UNPUBLISHED SUMERIAN FOUNDATION 251 DEPOSIT containing beads, copper and iron rings and bangles found in jar coffins.” Objects like these are duly present in the 1859-10-14 collection, together with weapons, and the registrar has noted where particular items were packed together. Since about six separate groups consist fof both beads and metalwork, these should be the contents of individual graves. It is possible that the groupings, and some of the ungrouped but associated objects from the same cemetery, still contain a little new information, sincere there are no specific grave-groups recorded in this way among the broadly similar material (1836-9-8, 1-405; 1858-1-1, 1-25) from the earlier Ur excavations (Taylor 1855 a). The most unusual group of objects from the 1858 season dates from the third millennium B.C. The packing list entries are as follows: “One copper instrument like a headless nail obtained with the black stone instrument [recognisable sketch]. See notes. Small brick tiles and cones obtained at the same place as above Ditto Ditto [i.e. ‘See notes.” The next entry is ‘2 fragments of an elephant’s tooth’. but these may not have been associated] ... 1 Paper containing head in blue stone and the fragments of one face of the stone instrument as above ... | Black stone instrument one side defaced, the other bearing two lines of emblems viz on each 2 eyes and 2 stars.” The British Museum registrar has added a detail, concerning the blue stone head, that must have been written on one of the packages: “Found close to No. 79, just under it”, ie. just under the stone instrument. The “black stone instrument”, as shown in Taylor’s sketch, is a square weight of solid stone with loop handle, skilfully carved all over in low relief, now 1859- 10-14, 79 = 91700 (see Fig. 2). It is made of a black shale-like stone, the carved surfaces of which have become grey; one face has entirely flaked away, though a few loose fragments survive (91386). The total hei with handle is 21 em., the height ofthe bag 10.4 em., the width 19.5 cm, The maximum extant thickness is about 3.3. om., from which perhaps only 0.1 em. has been lost, but more has been lost elsewhere, so that the minimum surviving thickness is only 1.8 cm. The weight of the main fragment is 1610 g., representing at a rough estimate about 85% of the original total. The decoration ‘on the preserved face of the bag consists of four eyes and four stars or rosettes; fragments from the damaged face, showing two stars and at least one eye, could have belonged to an identical design. The handle and the four narrow sides of the bag are decorated with a diamond pattern and with binding, perhaps imitating plaited Fig, 2. Stone weight from Un Photograph courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museu, twine or basketry. The type of stone from which the weight is made probably originated in the nearby mountains of Iran, The weight was first published by Gadd (1934: 43-44, pl. XIL1), who recognised that the choice and style of decoration on the faces, comparable \with that on objects such as inlaid game-boards from the Ur royal graves (Woolley 1934: II, pl. 95), requited an Early Dynastic dates it could have been carved at Ur. He compared the weight to the buckets carried by magical spirits carved on Neo-Assyrian wall-panels. Dussaud (1935; 223) wondered whether it might not have been “un instrument portatif & valeur apotropaique”, and LL, Finkel has drawn my attention to a hymn of the mid- second millennium or later in which Gula, goddess of healing, states, “I gird myself with the leather bag containing health-giving incantations” (Lambert 1967: 121), Both are very remote parallels, though one could imagine an Early Dynastic stone weight of fine workmanship being discovered subsequently and adopted for cultic use. We can now recognise that the ‘object is most closely related to the Iranian stone weights carved in the “Intercultural” style, although those are less angular. The “head in blue stone” found with the stone weight isa plaque carved in relief with a woman's face,