ABSTRACT
MY last week at Ur was occupied in packing, aided by my seven Turkish carpenters, reinforced by a couple of Sikhs from Basrah, while an architect-officer sent from Baghdad, Lieut. O. D. O’Sullivan, R .E ., made, with the help of an Indian surveyor, the first modern general survey of the mounds and the first proper plan of the temple-building ‘B ’, of which I had been able to make only provisional plans myself. The Turks still went on with the clearance of the ziggurratface and building ‘B\ We had begun packing quite early, on 24 March, in a leisurely way and when opportunity offered. The Shahrain and al-‘Ubaid finds had been packed on the spot for their long journey to England to save time and trouble: they would have to be packed to go to Ur, so the work was done once and for all. The matter of their destination had been settled at al-‘Ubaid (p. 267). All sorts of old boxes were hurried up from the railway stores at Ur Junction and strengthened by battens and botched into shape, with Japanese beer-boxes from the military canteen there and at Nasirlyyah, and even some warped old boxes of Koldewey’s from Babylon that had carried our tools and camp necessaries from Hillah were pressed into service to bring back our antiquities to England. M y nine car penters wielded their adzes, axes, and hammers with devastating effect under the direction of the genial Ibrahim ‘ Ali, and though the results of their willing labour were sometimes remarkable, and could hardly be described as fine cabinet-making, at any rate they brought the things safely to the British Museum. ‘Amran and I did most of the actual packing ourselves. I had, of course, as all excavators do, carefully pre served all my matchboxes and other small boxes, tobacco-tins, &c., while even discarded biscuit-tins and fruit-cans from Australia and Japan had
been saved for this final use of packing small objects. Cotton-wool was valuable for medical purposes, and difficult to obtain, wood-wool unobtain able and wadding rare, but I got great quantities of cotton-waste from the railway people. Straw we could get, but most of our packing was done with the aid of the desert-sage and other plants torn up from the soil around us. It acted well, but it harboured insects of all kinds, and much to the astonishment of the Museum workmen when they unpacked in the vaults of Bloomsbury, many unknown entomological specimens appeared to view-beetles, flies, and various odd creatures, that had survived the journey: no doubt they had found plenty to live on in the packing, and Turkish carpentry had allowed plenty of air to reach them. The two Indian chauffeurs, superior in their knowledge of Western writing, painted the address of the Director of the British Museum on the boxes in sprawl ing childish capitals, and even Ibrahim ‘Ali gave an intelligent anticipa tion of the reform of the Ghazi Pasha ten years later by evincing an unexpected ability to paint European letters. Sergeant-Major Webb shook his head over the remarkable results of Indo-Turkish carpentry and calligraphy, but the whole outfit delighted me, and I would not have had their efforts, done with real good-will and enjoyment, bettered for worlds.
