Joseph Svoboda: Selling Clay Tablets in Nineteenth-Century Baghdad

by Nadia Ghanem

From the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century, tens of thousands of archaeological artefacts from Iraq found their way into the collections of European and American museums. A substantial number of them did not come from publicly or privately funded excavations, but were bought by museums from antiquities dealers. Some dealers had turned this trade into a career, while others only sold artefacts occasionally. The first part of this series explored the activities of a professional: the antiquities dealer Ibrahim Elias Géjou who throughout his career, described himself as a ‘specialist purveyor’ of Assyrian, Babylonian, and Sumerian artefacts which he sourced directly from excavations that were ongoing during his lifetime. In this second part, the activities of Joseph Svoboda, an occasional trader of archaeological artefacts found in Iraq, will be explored in a series snapshots of Joseph’s life. Joseph was a steamship officer, born and raised in Baghdad, who witnessed how artefacts were traded and documented the transactions he observed in his personal diaries written between 1862 and 1908.

1896: BM 22740, the only clay tablet of its kind in a UK museum

Monday 11 May 1896
At 1pm went up to Jeboory Asfar for some business, also gave him a box containing Tablets to be shipped to London to Mr. Budge in the British Museum

Svoboda Diary 42, p.25-26

On 11 May 1896, Joseph Svoboda entrusted his good friend Jeboory Asfar with a case containing 117 clay tablets. They were to be shipped to Wallis Budge, keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum who was looking to purchase tablets for the BM from London. The parcel would be safely received a few weeks later, and the purchase of the lot was finalised in 1897. Joseph could not have known that among the tablets he sent, one was especially precious. Tablet BM 22740, as it came to be known, turned out to be inscribed with a list of ancient predictions (also called ‘omens’) written in the Old Babylonian language – a language used in Iraq between 2004 and 1595 BCE. The predictions are unusual: they are based on observing red spots on birds’ bodies. Diviners treated the red spots they observed as clues to decipher. From them the future of the individual(s) who had come for a reading could be told. Some of the omens of BM 22740 are clear enough, even today: they speak about the possibility of war, and the army’s military losses and gains as in this example: “if many red spots are present on the bird’s breast, on the right and left – my army and the enemy’s army who had confronted each other will not do battle” (BM 22740, reverse, lines 18-25). But other omens in this text link red spots to the ‘position’ (manzāz in the Akkadian language) of a number of gods and goddesses, statements that still puzzle scholars today, like this these two predictions for example: if left side has a red spot – position of Enlil (lines 9-10), If a red spot is set below the position of Enlil lower down – position of Ninlil (lines 11-13).

By the time BM 22740’s predictions were deciphered, translated and published by the French assyriologist Jean Nougayrol in 1967, 70 years after the tablet’s purchase, four other tablets similar to BM 22740 had emerged. Three had been bought by the Yale Babylonian Collection in 1913. One was donated in 1938 to the Museum of Arts and History in Geneva by the scholar who had originally purchased it, most probably from Ibrahim Elias Géjou. Like BM 22740, each of these four tablets was inscribed with predictions in the Old Babylonian language, made by reading red spots on birds’ bodies, but also their inner organs, a practice called ‘bird extispicy’. Today, scholars are aware that six more ‘bird extispicy’ tablets from the Old Babylonian period have surfaced. Four, dated to the end of the Old Babylonian period (c. 1700 to 1595 BCE), have recently appeared in the collection of the Hirayama Ikuo Silk Road Museum (HISM) in Japan. One of the four now in the HISM, as well as two others whose present location is unknown, were seen by the late professor Wilfred Lambert in a London auction house he did not name in the 1980s. Professor Lambert was one of the most renown assyriologists of his generation, also well-known for his regular visits to London auction houses to study clay tablets put up for sale there. These six tablets are said to come from the ancient city of Tigunānum whose precise location is unknown. The site from which they come was secretly and illegally excavated, and information on where it is located has not been shared. This ancient city-state is presumed to be located on the banks of the Tigris river, either in the extreme south of present-day Turkey or in the north of Iraqi Kurdistan. These tablets seem to come from the palace of Tunip-Teššub, ruler of the city circa 1630 BCE. It is possible that other ‘bird extispicy’ tablets are today in Iraq’s museum collections, but if so, they have not yet been reported. As far as we know today, only eleven tablets from the Old Babylonian period attest to the practice of predicting the future from birds’ bodies.

Clay tablets inscribed with lists of predictions written in the second and first millennium BCE have fascinated modern scholars, especially those who study prophecies, from the moment they were deciphered and translated. These texts not only attest to the practice of divination in Southwest Asia, they also document a type of vibrant intellectual enquiry founded on observing events with microscopic precision, and imagining infinite possibilities.

The study of predictions written in the second millennium has great limitations however because we do not know where most of them were excavated. Buyers and sellers did not share, or did not know, the find-spots of the artefacts exchanged. The eleven bird extispicy tablets for example were bought on the antiquities market but from which ancient building do they come from? Were they unearthed in a home, or a school? If in a palace, in which rooms were they found, and with which other artefacts? Answers can be conjectured, but none can be given on the basis of archaeological context.

Yet, beyond the text, BM 22740 has much to tell us about the many people it has met. Its story is not entirely lost, and to retrace the modern chapter of its eventful existence, we must rewind the clock to 1840.

Joseph Svoboda: steamship officer and diarist

Impressively, Joseph’s diary entries all follow the same pattern, a testament to his methodical mind. Next to the date, Joseph would note the ship’s route, meteorological information, the arrival time at each port, types of cargo and the number of passengers with names that had caught his attention. Then came the events that had shaped his day. Among his most amusing records are those that recount his shooting trips hunting partridges, doves, and hares in the country, and his disputes with superiors when they would not allow him to bring aboard the wild boars he had hunted. Joseph naturally recounted many anecdotes about places and people over the years, and he also kept detailed notes of the archaeological artefacts he sold. These sales were occasional, Joseph was not a professional antiquities dealer, but he did partake in the trade at a time when numerous ancient sites were being simultaneously excavated in Iraq.

Large-scale excavations and exportations: the early years  

Joseph Svoboda was seven years old when, on 1 May 1847, the Louvre Museum in Paris first exhibited the monumental statues in the shape of winged-bulls with a human face (protectors called lamassu in the Akkadian language) and palatial wall panels unearthed in the village of Khorsabad, 16 km northeast of Mosul, Iraq. Below Khorsabad’s ground rested Dur Sharru-kin, the ancient city and palace of Sargon II of Assyria (721-705 BCE).

The artefacts had been found during excavations led between March 1843 and October 1844 by the French consul to the city of Mosul, Paul Emile Botta (1802-1870) and a team of 300 workmen from Mosul, which included many Assyrians who had just fled persecution further north. Botta had initially begun to excavate on the mound of Kuyunjik in December 1842, looking for ancient Nineveh, but had found little of interest, he felt. Three months later, he had moved to nearby Khorsabad, following the advice of a local resident, a cloth dyer who had brought Botta bricks bearing inscriptions in cuneiform. The people of Khorsabad had known about the presence of such inscriptions for some time, because they themselves had discovered many when building new homes.

By November 1845, the British explorer Austen Henry Layard (not yet Sir) was conducting his own excavations in the ancient city of Nimrud, financed by Sir Stratford Canning, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul. In December 1846, monumental wall panels and delicately carved ivory objects unearthed there were being sent to the British Museum.

Layard also excavated the mound of Kuyunjik, and found ancient palaces, much to the despair of Emile Botta who had been unsuccessful during his initial search. There, Layard and his team unearthed the Southwest palace of the Assyrian king Sennacherib and rooms bursting with inscribed clay tablets. When Layard left to pursue a diplomatic career in 1851, the British Museum appointed the young Iraqi archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam, who had seconded Layard since 1846. It was Rassam who, from 1852 to 1854, found the North palace of king Ashurbanipal, Sennacherib’s grandson, and its equally rich tablet-filled rooms which today make up what we known as ‘the library of Ashurbanipal’, held since its discovery in the British Museum.

Research institutions in the USA and Germany would also jump in the race to collect and appropriate, but did so later from 1889 (Nippur) and 1899 (Babylon) respectively. Meanwhile, excavations were also being conducted by Iraqis. Since 1869, the Ottoman Empire’s antiquities law had been clear: local people had the right to excavate their own land and to keep the objects they found. The Ottoman authorities’ antiquities laws became more careful and specific with time, but it still remained favourable to local landowners for some time. In 1874, the law stipulated that out of the finds a landowner had made one third had to go the authorities. Individuals could also sell artefacts if they wished – selling antiquities locally was legal until 1906. By the time Joseph reached adulthood, those around him, regardless of status or creed, were digging, exchanging, collecting, and selling tens of thousands of archaeological artefacts. The activity had not only become widely practiced and integrated within all social circles, it was also tremendously tempting given the fabulous profits to be made.

1876: a coin collection for £67 (equivalent to £7,930 today)

1877: marriage and family

The following year would have a lasting impact on Joseph’s life, and it would have nothing to do with collecting artefacts. On the evening of Thursday 11 October 1877, Joseph Svoboda married Eliza Marine, a widow. The marriage caused a violent rift between Joseph and his father Anton. Joseph’s family had hoped he would marry Eliza’s daughter, but when he chose Eliza instead, Anton warned he would never give his blessing. On the morning of the wedding, father and son came to blows and passers-by had to intervene. Anton had tried to stop Joseph from strangling his sharp-tongued older sister (also called Eliza) by hitting him with his walking stick. In retaliation, Joseph had thrown a narghile at her, and had run to his room to get his gun threatening to shoot all those who had gathered to insult his bride (a colourful episode recounted in his diary number 18, p.141-144). When Anton passed away almost a year later, on 7 September 1878, father and son were still estranged and Joseph’s all-engulfing sorrow at having missed the chance to reconcile still echoes in his accounts.

Despite the family feud, Joseph quickly settled in a new house with Eliza, and continued what he had always done: cruise from Baghdad to Basra on a steamship, and write his diaries. In 1881, he recorded a detailed account of his visit to an excavation site that would give him the opportunity to select archaeological artefacts from the very spot where they had been found.

1881: a day’s visit of the excavation at Abu Habbah, ancient Sippar

It is during this trip that Joseph met Abdulahad Toma, the brother of Abdulkerim Toma, the assistants of Hormuzd Rassam, who was excavating there for the British Museum. The brothers, who were from Mosul, spent many years looking after excavations for Rassam, and became highly skilled. They also accumulated a large collection of artefacts for themselves over the years, which they sold on the antiquities market.

Joseph returned from Sippar with cylinder-seals: small barrels, no bigger than a thumb, made of semi-precious stones carved with illustrations, often accompanied with an inscription of the owner’s name. From the 4^th millennium to 5^th century BCE, cylinder-seals were part of everyday life in Southwest Asia. They would be rolled on wet clay to stamp an imprint that functioned like a signature. Holes in their centre indicate they would be hung on a string, carried around the neck presumably like a necklace, or tied in clothing. Because they are so light and small, cylinder-seals (like coins) were easily traded and were scattered across the world. Today, many can be viewed in national collections. The Met Museum’s online collection, for example, showcases over a thousand (a list can be browsed here). For each item, information on the stone type, period, and size is given, as well as provenance indicating who sold, donated, or excavated the object, and the date it entered the Met’s collection.

Joseph would sell his cylinder-seal collection in 1891 to the British Museum.

1891: 25 cylinder-seals for £130 (equivalent to £16,943 today)

Meeting and leaving Joseph

To be continued…

---

SOAS History Blog, Department of History, Religions and Philosophy, SOAS University of London