creating the German Oriental Empire, which was to be reached by way of the Baghdad
Railway
(Budge 1925: 293 in Larsen 1987: 100).Archaeology in Mesopotamia was encouraged by the German consuls in
Baghdad. Consul Richarz repeatedly asked the Foreign Ministry to send an
archaeological expedition to Mesopotamia. In 1896 he suggested the excav-
ation of the ancient city of Uruk (Warka). As he explained:
Frenchmen, Englishmen, and North Americans have overlooked it just as if by fate’s
decree, the act of unearthing these cultural centres, these schools which produced
thousands of years of ancient wisdom, were reserved for the nation of poets and
thinkers, the docta Germania.
(in Marchand 1996b: 307).One of the key German excavations at the turn of the century was that of
Babylon (Iraq), conducted from 1899 to the First World War by the German
Robert Koldewey (1855–1925). Having been trained as an architect, he had
early experience in the archaeology of Greece and the Near East. He intro-
duced stratigraphic excavation methods and, as a consequence, he was able to
observe the sun-dried clay walls that formed most of the Mesopotamian
buildings. He also uncovered numerous tablets mainly of the neo-Babylonian
period, including some alluding to the Jehoiachin of Judah mentioned in 2
Kings 25:29. He also found the Ishtar Gate, which he managed to move to
Berlin, although due to the political situation it only went on display years
later, in the 1930s (Bernbeck 2000). Another archaeologist who worked in
collaboration with Koldewey, Walter Andrae (1875–1956), excavated in Ashur
from 1903 to 1913, a site that provided information about Assyria before its
government moved to Nimrud and Nineveh (Moorey 1991: 45).
In addition to Germany, the other country that became involved in Meso-
potamian archaeology at the end of the nineteenth century was the US. The
newly developed interest has been partly explained by German scholars who
had emigrated to the US (Larsen 1987: 101; 1992: 128–9). At a meeting of the
American Oriental Society in 1884, a resolution was adopted that explained
that ‘England and France have done a notable work of exploration in Assyria
and Babylonia. It is time for America to do her part. Let us send out an
American expedition’ (in Cooper 1992: 138). Under the direction of William
Hayes Ward, aWrst exploratory expedition was immediately sent in that same
year, 1884, with positive results. ItWnally led to the start of American
involvement in the Near East with the excavations, in Iraq, of Nippur (iden-
tiWed as Calneh, Genesis 10:10), which led to theWnding of the Sumerian
archives as well as many artefacts. The components of the team show how
146 Archaeology of Informal Imperialism