The Cornell Expedition to Asia Minor and the Assyro-Babylonian Orient

Members of the Cornell expedition creating a copy of the Hittite lion sculptures from Arslantaş in the snow

The Cornell Expedition to Asia Minor and the Assyro-Babylonian Orient (Cornell Expedition to Asia Minor and the Assyrian-Babylonian Orient) , often shortened to the Cornell Expedition in archaeological literature , was an undertaking of the US Cornell University in Ithaca , New York , in the years 1907 and 1908. The aim was to explore and document the ancient history of Anatolia and parts of Mesopotamia .

staff

The expedition was inspired and organized by the historian and epigraphist John Robert Sitlington Sterrett (1851-1914), Professor of Greek at Cornell University. He had already traveled through Asia Minor in the last years of the 19th century and had earned a reputation as an expert on Greek inscriptions. He envisioned the goal, the "call of humanity to light on the issue of life of the people in the cradle of Western civilization" (call of humanity at large for light in regard to the life of man in the cradle of Western civilization) to answer.

As part of the expedition, Sterrett selected three former Cornell University students, the orientalist Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead (1880-1945) and two graduating students from 1906, Benson Brush Charles (1880-1969) and Jesse Wrench (1882-1958), who had already toured Palestine and Syria in 1904/1905 and were therefore trained in making copies of inscriptions.

procedure

Constantinople Ankara Ḫattuša Diyarbakır Mardin Baghdad

Important stations on the Cornell expedition

Contact paper on the rock inscriptions on Karadağ

Nişantaş

The three researchers met in Athens , from where they sailed together to Constantinople . They stayed there for some time to make preparations, go shopping, and hire porters and helpers. During this time they went on excursions in the area, including to Binbirkilise , where they met the British archaeologists Gertrude Bell and William Mitchell Ramsay . Since they, like Bell, were less interested in classical antiquity than in their forerunners and successors, their first destination was Demirli in the İhsaniye district of Afyonkarahisar province , in the center of the Phrygian Empire .

After that, an assignment from her university took her to Angora ( Ankara ). There they were supposed to make copies of the large inscription Res gestae divi Augusti , also called Monumentum Ancyranum , on the temple of the Roma and Augustus , the report of accounts of the Roman emperor Augustus . Although there were already plaster casts of them that Carl Humann had made for the Royal Museums in Berlin in 1882 , they were difficult to access for American scientists. Although they had the support of the governor and the chief of police, the work was difficult. The Latin text on the inside of the two antes of the temple was relatively easy to edit, but the outside of the building, which bore the Greek version of the inscription, was built in by three private houses so that the inscription was only accessible from inside the houses. In addition, one of the homeowners was away and unavailable. With the active help of the police and a former burglar provided by the officials, who meanwhile worked as the province's official house opener , they finally managed to get the copies. They had to remove whitewash from walls, dismantle a chimney and tear down walls. After using over 500 sheets of contact paper, the 92 sheets of copies they wanted could finally be sent to New York.

The next destination was the Hittite capital Ḫattuša . There her most important project was the eleven-line inscription Nişantaş in Luwian hieroglyphics . The script, which was then called Hittite hieroglyphs and was still illegible, could only be deciphered half a century later. In it the last king of the Hittite empire Šuppiluliuma II. Reports on his deeds. The further course of their journey also led them to numerous Hittite monuments with inscriptions. They copied and photographed, among others, the steles and rock inscriptions of Köylütolu (then known as Kölit Oghlu Yaila known), Karadağ (Qara Dagh) , Karaburna (Qara Burna) , Hisarcik (Asarjyk) , Tekirderbent (Tekir Devrent) , Bahçeköy (Boghcha) , Ivriz , Bulgarmaden (Bulghar Maden) , Eğriköy (Egri Köi), Fıraktın (Ferakhdin) , Kurubel (Quru Bel) and Arslantaş (Arslan Tash), where they had to make a fire in the snow to dry their contact paper . The further journey led via Gürün , İspekçür (Isbekjür) , Kötükale (Kötü Qale) and Malatya (Malatia) to Diyarbakır . There they witnessed local riots against devastation by tribal chiefs being put down by government troops. They continued south through the Tur Abdin mountain range to Mardin . Wrench in particular showed an interest in the medieval architecture of the Syrian Christians . In his notebook there is a sketch of the floor plan of the Deyrulzafaran monastery with a copy of a Syrian inscription, a few days later he drew the Mor Yakup church in Nusaybin . In Mardin they celebrated Christmas together with American missionaries from the American Board in Turkey. From Mardin, the travelers moved on via Nineveh and Nimrud to their final destination, Baghdad . After the cart carrying their bedding had fallen into a river on the last stage, the three researchers arrived in the lively metropolis of Baghdad on February 7, 1908, in a demolished condition after 1,500 miles and over 200 days. After a recovery period, they traveled their separate ways back to Istanbul, with Wrench once again exploring the monasteries of Tur Abdin. In June they met again in Istanbul.

consequences

Upon her return to the United States, their professional paths separated. Charles gained at the University of Pennsylvania to Ph. D. in Hittite , Olmstead took a scientist spot on Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and Wrench went to the University of Missouri , where he conducted research on the history of Missouri and president of the Missouri Archaeological Society has been. Although they met again occasionally, their planned travelogue was never published, only Charles published the Hittite monuments that they had documented on their journey as his doctoral thesis in 1911. The copies of the Monumentum Ancyranum were later digitized and are now accessible on the Internet.

literature

• Benson Brush Charles: Hittite Inscriptions. Certain Newly Discovered Inscriptions together with Revised Copies of a Number Hitherto Known and still in situ . Ithaca 1911 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : The Cornell Expedition to Asia Minor and the Assyro-Babylonian Orient  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Cornellians to Anatolia. In: cornell.edu. (English). 
• Cornell Collections of Antiquities: Cornell Expedition. In: cornell.edu. Archived from the original on March 4, 2021 . 
• Jill M. Iacchei: Epigraphic Squeezes: Part I. In: cornell.edu. December 13, 2013 (English). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Amherst College Archives & Special Collections: John Robert Sitlington and Josephine Quarrier Sterrett Family Papers MA.00361. Retrieved May 27, 2021 . 
2. ↑ JR Sitlington Sterrett: A Plea for Research in Asia Minor and Syria . Cornell University, Ithaca New York 1911 ( digitized version ).
3. ^ Henry W. Hamilton: Jesse Erwin Wrench 1882-1958. (pdf; 1.9 MB) In: American Antiquity. 29, 1, 1959, pp. 106-108 , accessed May 26, 2021 (English, reproduced on cambridge.org). 
4. ^ Cornell Collections of Antiquities: Squeezes. In: cornell.edu. Archived from the original on May 3, 2021 ; accessed on May 26, 2021 (English).