Beginning of the Christian era India

Social Structure

We can present a rough picture of the social structure that developed in this period. Society was dominated by princes and priests. The princes claimed the status of brahmanas or kshatriyas though many of them were local tribal chiefs promoted to the second varna through benefactions made to the priests. The priests invented respectable family trees for these chiefs and traced their descent from age old solar and lunar dynasties, This process enabled the new rulers to acquire legitimacy in the eyes of the people.

The priests were mainly brahmanas, though the Jaina and Buddhist monks should also be placed in this category. In this phase priests gained in influence and authority because of land grants. Below the princes and priests came the peasantry, which was divided into numerous peasant castes. Possibly most of them were called sutras in the brahmamcal system. If the peasant and artisan castes failed to produce and render services and payments, it was looked upon as a departure from the established dharma or norm

Such a situation was described as the age of Kali. It was the duty of the king to put an end to such a state pf affairs and restore peace and order which worked in favor of chiefs and priests. The title dhamamaharaja therefore is adopted by the Vakataka, Pallava, Kadamba and Western Ganga kings. The real founder of the Pallava power, Simhavarman, is credited with coming to the rescue of dharma when it was beset with the evil attributes typical of the Kahyuga, Apparently it refers to his suppression of the Kalabhras who upset the existing social order

India’s Cultural Contacts with the Asian Countries

Medieval lawgivers and commentators ordained that a person should not cross the seas. This would imply that India shunned all relations with the outside world. But this is not so, for India maintained contacts with its Asian neighbors since Harappan times. Indian traders went to the cities of Mesopotamia, where their seals belonging to the period between 2400 B.C. and 1700 B.C have been found.

From the beginning of the Christian era India maintained commercial contacts with China, Southeast Asia, West Asia and the Roman Empire. We have seen how the Indian land routes were connected with the Chinese Silk Route. We have also dwelt on India’s commercial intercourse with the eastern part of the Roman Empire. In addition to this India sent its missionaries, conquerors and traders to the neighboring countries where they founded settlements.

Into this, the tempered clay is dumped and the surplus normally smoothed off with the side of the hand. The mound is then lifted and the brick left to dry in the sun. It is this concluding process, which sets a geographical limit to countries in which mud bricks can be used, since cloudless skies and hot sunshine are indispensable to their manufacture. In almost all countries of the Near East such conditions are favorable during at least a part of the year, and up to comparatively recent times, kiln baked bricks have consequently been considered a luxury.

It is for this reason that today, in those countries, a proper understanding of the nature and uses of this material, particularly in Iraq, has become as indispensable to a twentieth century excavator as it was to the architects of antiquity. In neighboring countries where stone is available, a wall may have stone foundations or even be built up to a height of several feet in stone before the brick begins. In Anatolia particularly, the structure above this may be a framework of wooden beams, forming panels, which are filled with mud brick. In all cases the wall is finished inside and out with a plastering of mud and straw. Outside at least, this has to be renewed every year.

The Pallava king Narasimhavarman

Pallava capital

In his conflict with the Pailavas he almost reached the Pallava capital, but the Pailavas purchased peace by ceding their northern provinces to Pulakesin II. About A.D. 610 Pulakesin II wrested from the Pailavas the region between the Krishna and the Godavari, which came to be known as the province of Vengi. Here was set up a branch of the main dynasty, and it is known as the Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi. However, Pulakesin’s second invasion of the Pallava territory ended in failure.

The Pallava king Narasimhavarman (A.D. 630668) occupied the Chalukya capital at Vatapi in about A.D. 642, when Pulakesin II was probably killed in fight against” the Pailavas. Narasimhavarman assumed the title of Vatapikonda or the conqueror of Vatapi. He is also said to have defeated the Cholas, the Cheras’, the Pandyas and the Kalabhras.

Towards the end of the seventh century there was a lull in this conflict, which was again resumed in the first half of the eighth century A.D. The Chalukya king Vikramaditya II (A.D. 733745) is said to have overrun Kanchi three times. In 740 he completely defeated the Pailavas.

His victory ended the Pallava supremacy in the far south although the ruling house continued for more than a century afterwards. However, the Chalukyas could not enjoy the fruits of their victory over the Pailavas for long for their own hegemony was brought to an end in 757 by the Rashtrakutas.

Temples

Besides the performance of Vedic sacrifices, I the worship of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, especially of the last two, was getting popular. From the seventh century the Alvar saints, who were great devotees of Vishnu, popularized the worship of this god. The Nayannars rendered a similar service to the cult of Siva. The Pallava kings constructed a number of stone temples m the seventh and eighth centuries for housing these gods.

The most famous of them are the seven rather temples found at Mahabalipuram, at a distance of 65 km from Madras. These were built m the seventh century by Narasimhavarman, who founded the port city of Mahabalipuram or Mamallapuram This city is also famous for the Shore Temple, which was a structural construction. In addition to this the Pallavas constructed several structural temples at their capital Kanchi. A very good example was the Kailasanath temple built in the eighth century.

The Chalukyas of Badami erected numerous temples at Aihole from about A.D. 610. Aihole contains as many as 70 temples.

Understanding of ancient materials

In theory, these could not fail to locate any conspicuous architectural remains. However, today, with labor costs enormously increased, they would be prohibitively expensive and involve a great deal of work, which would be likely to prove pointlessly repetitive.

The truth is that the disposal of trial excavations, their area and shape, can only be determined by practical considerations, depending on inferences made from the conformation of the mound itself. In addition, the nature of these can only be adequately explained by citing a variety of practical examples, as it is intended to do in the pages, which follow.

However, for the moment it may be well to return to the subject of wall tracing and the understanding of ancient materials.

In the very early stages of community life in the Near East, walls were often built of pies, which is the equivalent of the South American term, adobe; that is, simple clay mixed with straw and built up in convenient lumps or slabs. After this came the almost universal use of sun dried mud bricks, prismatic in shape but of widely varying dimensions. Mud brick, as is now generally known, is made with the aid of a four-sided wooden mound, having no top or bottom.

Presuppose capacity to pay on the part of the peasantry

Rural Expansion

This whole list of imposts would show that .the state made heavy demands on the labor and produce of the peasantry. Most of these demands are covered by the 18 types of immunities granted to the brahmanas from the fourth century A D. Later more and more demands were made on the peasantry

These numerous demands made by the king on the agrarian population presuppose capacity to pay on the part of the peasantry. Collection could not have been possible unless there was increase in agricultural production. In this pseudo we witness formation of new states in the Trans Vindhyan regions. Every state had a number of feudatory chiefdoms, which were small states within a large state.

Each of these states, big or small, paramount or feudatory, needed its own army, its own taxation system, its own administrative machinery, and a good number of priestly and similar supporters. Every state therefore needed resources which could be obtained from its rural base, Therefore the state could not multiply without the proliferation of rural communities or increase in agricultural production in the existing villages. It seems that m tribal areas the brahmanas were granted land, and the tribal peasantry learnt the value of preserving cattle and better methods of agriculture from them.

In certain areas there was dearth of labor power. In order to keep the economy of such areas going it was also found necessary to make over some sharecroppers and weavers to the brahmanas, as is known from an early Pallava grant. Therefore the large number of grants made to the brahmanas played an important role m spreading new methods of cultivation and increasing the size of the rural communities.

Three types of villages

In this period we come across three types of villages in south India, ursabha and nagaram, Ur was the usual type of village inhabited by peasant castes, who perhaps held their land in common; it was the responsibility of the village headman to collect and pay taxes on their behalf. These villages were mainly found m southern Tamil Nadu. Theban type of village consisted of brahamadeya villages or those granted to the brahmanas, and of agrahara villages.

The brahmana owners enjoyed individual rights in the land but carried on their activities collectively. The nagaram type of village consisted of the villages settled and dominated by combinations of traders and merchants. This happened possibly because trade declined and merchants moved to villages. In the Chalukya areas rural affairs were managed by village elders called mahajana. On the whole the period circa A.D. 300A.D. 750 provides good evidence of rural expansion, rural organization and better use of land.

Afghanistan and Central Asia

The two other great centers of Buddhism in ancient times were Afghanistan and Central Asia, In Afghanistan many statues of the Buddha and monasteries have been discovered. Begram and Bamiyan situated in the north of this country are famous for such relics. Begram is famous for ivory work, which is similar to Indian workmanship m Kushan times. Bamiyan hats the distinction of possessing the tallest Buddha statue cut out of rock in the early centuries of the Christian era. It has thousands of natural and artificial caves m ‘which the monks lived Buddhism continued to hold ground in this country till the seventh century A.D. when it was supplanted by Islam.’

A similar process took place in the Central Asian republics of the USSR. Excavations have revealed Buddhist monasteries, stupas and inscriptions, and manuscripts written in Indian languages at several places in the Central Asian parts of the USSR As a result of the extension of the Kushan rule Prakrit written in Kharosthi script spread to Central Asia, where we find many Prakrit inscriptions and manuscripts

belonging to the fourth century A.D. Written language was used for official and day to day correspondence as well as for the preservation and propagation of Buddhism In Central Asia Buddhism continued to be a dominant religious force till it was replaced by Islam around the end of seventh century A.D.

Vedic sacrifices

Pallava capital

In his conflict with the Pailavas he almost reached the Pallava capital, but the Pailavas purchased peace by ceding their northern provinces to Pulakesin II. About A.D. 610 Pulakesin II wrested from the Pailavas the region between the Krishna and the Godavari, which came to be known as the province of Vengi. Here was set up a branch of the main dynasty, and it is known as the Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi. However, Pulakesin’s second invasion of the Pallava territory ended in failure.

The Pallava king Narasimhavarman (A.D. 630668) occupied the Chalukya capital at Vatapi in about A.D. 642, when Pulakesin II was probably killed in fight against” the Pailavas. Narasimhavarman assumed the title of Vatapikonda or the conqueror of Vatapi. He is also said to have defeated the Cholas, the Cheras’, the Pandyas and the Kalabhras.

Towards the end of the seventh century there was a lull in this conflict, which was again resumed in the first half of the eighth century A.D. The Chalukya king Vikramaditya II (A.D. 733745) is said to have overrun Kanchi three times. In 740 he completely defeated the Pailavas.

His victory ended the Pallava supremacy in the far south although the ruling house continued for more than a century afterwards. However, the Chalukyas could not enjoy the fruits of their victory over the Pailavas for long for their own hegemony was brought to an end in 757 by the Rashtrakutas.

Temples

Besides the performance of Vedic sacrifices, I the worship of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, especially of the last two, was getting popular. From the seventh century the Alvar saints, who were great devotees of Vishnu, popularized the worship of this god. The Nayannars rendered a similar service to the cult of Siva. The Pallava kings constructed a number of stone temples m the seventh and eighth centuries for housing these gods.

The most famous of them are the seven rather temples found at Mahabalipuram, at a distance of 65 km from Madras. These were built m the seventh century by Narasimhavarman, who founded the port city of Mahabalipuram or Mamallapuram This city is also famous for the Shore Temple, which was a structural construction. In addition to this the Pallavas constructed several structural temples at their capital Kanchi. A very good example was the Kailasanath temple built in the eighth century.

The Chalukyas of Badami erected numerous temples at Aihole from about A.D. 610. Aihole contains as many as 70 temples.

Propagation of Buddhism

The propagation of Buddhism promoted India’s contacts with Sri Lanka, Burma, China and Central Asia. Most probably the Buddhist missionaries were sent to Sri Lanka in the reign of Asoka m the third century B.C. Short inscriptions in Brahmi script belonging to the second and first centuries B.C. have been found in Sri Lanka. In course of time Buddhism came to acquire a permanent stronghold in Sri Lanka. In the early centuries of the Christian era Buddhism spread from India to Burma.

The Burmese developed the Theravada form of Buddhism, and erected many temples and statues in honor of the Buddha what is more significant, the Burmese and Sri Lanka Buddhists produced a rich corpus of Buddhist literature, not to be found m India. All the Pali texts were compiled and commented upon m Sri Lanka. Although Buddhism disappeared from India it continued to command a large following in Burma and Sri Lank*, which is the case even now.

Beginning with the reign of Kaiushka a large number of Indian missionaries went to China, Central Asia and Afghanistan for preaching their religion. From China Buddhism spread to Korea and Japan, and it was in search of Buddhist texts and doctrines that several Chinese pilgrims such as Fahsien and Hsuan Tsang came to India. Eventually this contact proved fruitful to both the countries. A Buddhist colony cropped up at Tun Huang, which was the starting point of the companies of merchants going across the desert. The Indians learnt the art of growing silk from China, and the Chinese learnt from India the art of Buddhist painting.

In addition to land tax, which was a part of the produce

Badami and Pattadakal

The work was continued in the adjacent towns of Badami and Pattadakal. Pattadakal has ten temples, built m the seventh and eighth centuries. The most celebrated of these are the Papanatha temple (c. 680), and the Virupaksha temple (c. 740). The first, although 30 meters long, has a low and stunted tower m the northern style the second was constructed purely in southern style. It is about 40 meters in length and has a very high square and storied tower (sikkara). The temple walls are adorned with beautiful sculptures representing scenes from the Ramayana

We have no clear idea how these early temples were maintained. After the eighth century land grants to temples became a common phenomenon m south India, and usually they were recorded on the walls of the temples. But earlier the temples seem to have been constructed and maintained out of the taxes collected by the king from the common people. Some temples in Karnataka under the Chalukyas were erected by the Jaina traders. Although the common people worshipped their village gods by offering them paddy and toddy, they may also have made offerings to these temples to acquire status and to satisfy their religious cravings.

Demands on the Peasantry

There is no doubt that for carrying on wars, for cultivating art and literature, for promoting religion, and for maintaining the administrative staff, enormous resources were needed, These were apparently provided by the peasantry The nature of burdens imposed on the agrarian .communities is more or less the same in the Vakataka kingdom and the Pallava kingdom although the former belonged to Vidarbha and Maharashtra, and the latter to southern Andhra and northern Tamil Nadu.

In addition to land tax, which was a part of the produce, the king could demand benevolence in the form of cereals and gold, and could bore certain trees, such as the palmary, for obtaining salt and moist substances such as sugar and liquor, all derived from plants. Of course all the deposits and hidden treasures in the villages belonged to him further, he demanded flower and milk, wood and grass, and could compel the villagers to carry loads free of charge. The king was also entitled to forced labor or vista.

In connection with the visit of royal officials, who would appear m the villages either for collecting taxes or for punishing the criminals, and also in course of the march of the army, the rural communities had to perform a number of obligations. They had to supply bullocks for carts and provide cots, charcoal, ovens, cooking pots, and attendants.

 

Regard to Turkey

Stoically calm in Constantinople

His position was most delicate as he was representing a nation which had been defeated on the battlefield and had to contend also with the inherent enmity that the ever grasping imperialistic western powers have always felt in regard to Turkey. His was a pitched diplomatic battle against the Greek Venizlos. Reshid Pasha was too modest to add what everybody knows: that he came out the victor, having turned the tables on Venizelos to such a degree that the Greek statesman came away from London with his reputation as a diplomat greatly imperiled.

Unfortunately, subsequent events had put back Venizelos to the fore, and after numerous shifts of policy the Greeks had succeeded before our arrival in having the great powers present to Turkey the terms of the Treaty of Sevres. Naturally, past, present and future politics were the subject of all conversations. Feeling was running high in Turkish circles. Everyone was incensed both against the Allied powers and against the Turkish Government of the moment.

Grand Vezir or Prime Minister

The Grand Vezir or Prime Minister, was being severely criticized and accused of trampling on the dignity of the nation by accepting the Treaty of Sevres. The Nationalist movement had already started and while the Turks remained stoically calm in Constantinople for fear of reprisals by the Internalized fleets upon the innocent population of the city, the tide of despair was rising in Anatolia.

The Nationalist movement was as yet not thoroughly organized. But the set purpose of preventing the application of the terms of the treaty was already noticeable in the activities of the Turkish Nationalist bands who had sworn to die rather than to lose their independence. They have, since then, stuck most efficiently to their patriotic aim.

During those critical days following the publication of the terms of the Treaty of Sevres, and during the first weeks of the conception of the Turkish Nationalist movement, many a time have we watched from Prinkipo the smoke of firearms indicating encounters between Turkish Nationalist bands and British Colonial troops, on the hills dominating the nearby shores of Anatolia?

Once we witnessed a big forest fire engineered for the purpose of destroying the hiding places where the Nationalist volunteers would take refuge after their successful raids against the armies of occupation. These Anatolian hills lie to this day, their once smilingly green slopes bare a silent example of the work of destruction undertaken in the name of civilization by the western powers who champion the rights of certain small nations by destroying the properties of others.

Secondary and subsidiary purpose

This then accounts for the primary theme of the book. However, it has a secondary and subsidiary purpose, which I am also most anxious to make effective. For, in the category already mentioned, of handbooks dealing with the subject of archaeological method and sometimes with the history of its evolution.

Due to the writers’ efforts to draw an effective contrast between the orderly progress of efficiency in Europe and the misguided vandalism in the past of untrained diggers in other parts of the world, less than justice has been done to some of the great figures in Near Eastern archaeology during our own time.

A secondary purpose of the book then, is to recall that, in the Near East also, there have been great and methodically brilliant archaeologists since the time of General Pitt Rivers.

Mound Formation and Excavation

In the Near East, even a peasant mentality sees in the familiar aspect of its mounds some dim relationship to the elementary principles of life and death. Alternatively, their summits may accommodate the activities of village life or provide dignified isolation for a graveyard.

For more sophisticated western travelers on the other hand, their silhouettes become the emblems of prolonged human survival. If their character is to be properly understood, it will be necessary first to consider how they come to exist at all; and secondly why they are to be found only in this particular part of the world. For this purpose it is momentarily essential to adapt one’s mind to the peculiar conditions of life in these antique lands.

It is of course in the nature of human habitations that their prolonged occupation results in the accumulation of debris, and that, particularly if they are repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt, an elevation is gradually created which did not previously exist.

However, the speed and degree of this process seems to be governed by two regionally distinctive factors. One is the habits and traditions of the inhabitants and the other the form of building material which they habitually employ.

Here in England for instance, many dwelling houses have been occupied without interruption for a score or so of generations. A large part of my own home was built of stone in the fourteenth century and remained unchanged for more than four hundred years. But when, in about eighteen hundred, it was added to and largely rebuilt, as much care was taken to remove the resulting debris as has been taken ever since to dispose of domestic refuse.

Nationalists in Anatolia

Prinkipo Constantinople prisoners

These Anatolian hills are at this day, desolate and sad but a proud monument commemorating the unsuccessful attempt of the so-called civilized governments to pass a death sentence upon a small nation whose will to live independently could not be conquered either by fire or by blood. The prologue of the greatest crime perpetrated in history since the partition of Poland was thus gradually unfolding itself almost under our very eyes, while the Turkish circles of Prinkipo and Constantinople prisoners in their own capital had to watch, aloof. It was an edifying show of real Oriental restraint to see all these people stand stoically and without a murmur so that their brethren in Anatolia might have time to organize. In the face of the worst adversities and while their hearts were bleeding, they furnished to Anatolia the breathing spell it required.

To the cry of “chase the Turk out of Europe” shouted in their very face, the Turks of Constantinople were opposing a passive and dignified resistance. A friend of mine summarized one day most clearly the motive underlying their passive resistance. We were on the Prinkipo boat going to Constantinople the boat which in the old days was full of Turkish dignitaries going to their offices. Now only a few Turkish business men were distinguishable in the crowd. A few foreign officers were lounging comfortably on benches “reserved for Internalized officers” large enough to accommodate twenty people while crowds of men and women were standing all around for lack of place to sit.

Armenians – Greeks

The boat was filled with noisy Levantines, Armenians and Greeks, eating dates and pistachio nuts, throwing the seeds and the shells on the deck, making of the floor a place not fit for animals, and rendering themselves generally obnoxious. My friend pointed to them and said: “These are the people who want to take Constantinople away from us in the name of civilization! But we have to overlook their impudence, we have to close our eyes on their misbehavior, we have to stand and bear it all. What else can we do?

If we weaken and join “end masse” the Nationalists in Anatolia, we would leave in Constantinople a majority of these people and the Western Powers would take advantage of this majority to detach the city completely from the rest of Turkey. If we can’t control our patience, and rise against the foreigners and the usurpers in our own city, the Western Powers will interfere and their battleships will destroy our homes. But if we stand pat and ignore them they cannot do us any harm. Our duty is to preserve our city for Turkey. And we can only do it by remaining (here and by opposing to those who plot against us a passive and silent resistance.”

Paradox in stratification

Further rebuilding therefore caused the mound to extend its coverage in that direction without any increase in its maximum height. It will be seen how this sequence of events could create a typical paradox in stratification, since traces of the same occupation, (Level VI in the diagram), could be found near the summit of the original mound, or conversely at plain level in the extended sector.

This is in fact one of those cases where it is easy to imagine how much wrong information could be obtained, if an archaeological sounding were made without previously apprehending the implications of the mound’s formation. In the third instance, the process of extending the settlement to accommodate an increasing population has taken a much simpler course and the resulting phenomenon is one more frequently to be seen throughout the Near East.

Indeed, for an example one need look no further than the city of Erbil, which we have already mentioned in another connection. Here, a tremendous increase in the importance of the city and its consequent space requirements has occurred late in the life of the mound, so that the capacity of the original fortified city has become very inadequate. An “Old City” has accordingly survived in a picturesquely elevated position, while a “Modem Town” has developed on the flat ground at the base of the mound.

Great technical interest

The fourth and last diagram represents a situation of great technical interest but of some rarity; since it can occur only in rive rain areas such as the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. Here, as the occupation level of the mound has risen, wind borne dust and the silt deposited by irrigation water or floods have caused the surrounding alluvium almost to keep pace with it; and soon, the remnants of the earliest settlement are buried deeply beneath.

O See p. 7L the contemporary level of the surrounding plain. Meanwhile, an increase in the population has necessitated an outward extension of the city over the accumulated alluvium. Now it can be seen that, whereas the foundations of the central buildings rest directly upon the summit of the ancient mound, those in the extended area are built at almost the same level on ground never before occupied.

A final alternative may be seen in Plate 3. Here, by Roman times, the actual height of the mound (150 feet) has made life at its summit impracticable, and a village has grown up around its base.

 

 

Protected the privacy of the gardens

Most pleasant season of Constantinople

We arrived in Erenkoy in the afternoon on one of those beautifully clear days which make of the fall almost the most pleasant season of Constantinople. The air was mildly heated by an autumnal sun shining in a marvelously blue sky. The leaves of the plane trees surrounding the station had turned golden red and had become scarce on the branches.

Even now some were vole planning to the earth on the wings of a gentle fall breeze. The square in front of the station, with its clean little shops each a diminutive bazaar of its own opened itself smilingly to us as we emerged from the train with our baggage. In the background we could see the little mosque where villagers were entering for their afternoon prayer.

We decided to walk to my aunt’s house, which is not far from the station. Besides, it was prayer time and we should avoid arriving while the whole household was at prayer. We heaped our luggage in a carriage a typically Asiatic conveyance with bright colored curtains hanging from a wooden canopy and with seats char banc fashion. It disappeared in a cloud of dust to the gallop of its sturdy little Anatolian horse.

My wife was delighted, this was at last Turkey somewhat as she had imagined it to be. But what would happen to our bags if the coachman was not honest? Had I a receipt? Didn’t the coachman give me a check? At least I had taken the number of the carriage, hadn’t I? I reassured my wife: the coachman was not a Greek he was not even a taxicab driver of one of the “civilized” western metropolises. He was a plain Turk, just an Anatolian peasant, and our luggage was as safe in his keeping as it would be in the strong box of a bank.

Glances of passersby

We leisurely followed the carriage through a little country road bordered by garden walls on both sides. High stone walls, white washed, protected the privacy of the gardens from the glances of passersby. A big gate here, a half opened door there would give us a glimpse of houses, small or large, surrounded with trees elm trees, plane trees, fig trees, cedars and cypresses whose dark branches enshrouded the houses in a mystery of falling leaves.

The only house of which we could get a full view from the road was a little old house, with a slanting brick roof, an enclosed balcony hanging high in the air and supported by arched pillars, a cobbled courtyard where a few hens were picking their feed while a big brown dog, a relic of the old street dogs, was peacefully sleeping.

Near Eastern excavator

After citing even these few instances of possible aberrations in the process by which a mound is formed, it will have become increasingly clear that the task with which a Near Eastern excavator is faced may well be an extremely complicated one. Ideally, the anatomical peculiarities of a site should be diagnosed before ever an excavation is begun; and this will mean that the archaeologist, after sufficient experience, should be capable of looking at an unexcavated mound and sizing up the sequence of developments, which have created it.

This of course is not always possible: but failure to attempt it may involve him in the embarrassing situation of having to reverse all his basic conclusions every time he starts a new season’s digging. However, with all these possible permutations of strati graphical evolution, the central problem, which confronts him, will be one, which varies very little from site to site. He must expect to find himself dealing with successive superimposed layers, containing partially demolished buildings, filled with the residuary material of human habitation. His first care therefore will be to articulate and record the surviving architectural remains.

Therefore, for the first time, emphasis is placed on the all-important technique of wall tracing: a subject about which a good deal must presently be said. Meanwhile, regarding the incidental discovery of pottery and other objects within the confines of each strati graphical layer, these serve the purpose of dating, or alternatively can themselves be dated by the period of occupation to which they belong. It goes without saying therefore, that the whole of the digger’s care and ingenuity will be concentrated on correctly determining their strati graphical provenance.

Visualize an excavator

Let us then visualize an excavator’s approach to a hitherto unexplored mound, in detail and in approximately the correct order of procedure. We need not for the moment occupy ourselves with the preliminary identification and choice of a site, since much comment will be devoted to this in a later chapter. In addition, we must assume that a topographical survey has already been made, preferably with contours at every meter or half meter, showing the mound’s exact conformation.

The map will have been covered with a grid, probably of hundred meter squares, and the comers of these squares will have been permanently marked on the site. Wherever work is begun, they may again be sub divided and smaller squares marked out, with numbers and letters for correct identification. Broadly speaking, one now has a twofold purpose, which comprises both a vertical and a horizontal excavation.

The season of Prinkipo was at its end

In this atmosphere of suspense the last days of our stay in Prinkipo drew near. Our house in Stamboul would be ready now in about a month. I had promised my wife to take her to Erenkoy and to the Bosporus. My father wanted us to discharge our obligations towards the rest of the family. And besides he was soon going back to town himself. The season of Prinkipo was at its end. Constantinople and its surrounding are at their best in the early fall, but Prinkipo gets too cold. The bathing season was finished, the yachting season was at its end. The hotels were closing. One by one the villas were shutting their hospitable doors. The summer colony was disbanding. Prinkipo was preparing for its annual winter sleep.

We packed our bags and went to visit my aunts.

ERENKOY

Since our arrival at Constantinople my wife had been complaining that I had not shown her a “harem.” So she was very anxious to visit my aunts, in Erenkoy, when I told her that was there that she could see one, at least in the Turkish sense of the word.

Harem in Turkish means nothing less, but nothing more, than the special house or the special section of a house reserved to the ladies of the family. In the old days when the ladies did not associate with men they used to live in the main house or in a part of the house, generally the best, where they had their own sitting rooms, dining rooms, boudoirs, etc., distinct from the sitting room, dining room or den of the men of the family. When I speak of “ladies” and “men” in the plural it is well to remember it was and still is the custom in Turkey for all the members of the same family to live together under the same roof. The Turkish family is a sort of a clan.

Always many ladies in a family

So while there are always many ladies in a family, foreigners must not imagine that there are many “wives.” This is a true narrative of Turkey and the Turks as they really are, so I have to speak the truth even at the risk of shattering many legends. I am bound therefore not to fall in line with the traditions established by other writers who never fail to refer to a servant in a Turkish household as being a “slave,” and to the ladies of a Turkish family as being “wives.” The truth is that slavery was not generally practiced in Turkey even before the Civil War in America, and the “wives” referred to by most of the foreign writers either exist only in their imagination or else are the sisters, sisters-in-law, daughters or cousins of the head of the family which foreign writers innocently or purposely represent as his wives.

Near Eastern excavating

In the early days of Near Eastern excavating, mud brick walls were simply not understood and in some cases, their very existence was hardly suspected. The normal practice was to go on digging until one reached the stone foundations, or even, in the case of Assyrian public buildings, the upright stone slabs with which the lower part of the walls were reverted.

There are still pictures which have become familiar in every textbook on excavation, like those of the Hittite palace at Sakjegeuzi, where mud brick walls six feet thick have been laboriously cut away and removed, leaving only the sculptured slabs standing, which had adorned their faces.

A French excavator in Babylonia, as late as the nineteen thirties, complained of finding no walls at all: and even in the architectural records of some Greek excavations, the supposed stone walls sometimes appear too thin to have been anything but the foundations for mud brick upper structures, the remains of which were never recognized by the excavator.

German archaeologists

It was German archaeologists in Iraq at the beginning of the present century Walter Andréa, Robert Koldewey and others, working at Babylon and Ashur, who discovered and perfected the technique of wall tracing and indeed devised a routine of other specialized practices adapted to the requirements of Mesopotamian excavating.

Furthermore, they first set about training a group of Arab artisans who could attend to their manual operation. These men came at first, as in Egypt the “Qufti” artisans do, from one particular village, Sherqat, near the site of Ashur. In addition, it was from a small remnant of Sherqati workers, by then elderly men, that I myself learnt the craft of wall tracing when I first went to Iraq in 1929.

Together we taught younger men and the “guild” which we created was afterwards greatly expanded by the Iraq Antiquities Department when they began to undertake their own excavations in the late nineteen thirties. Today the Sherqati workers are still an indispensable asset to foreign expeditions, including that from the British School in Baghdad, which has recently been excavating at Nimrud.

The tools, which wall tracers use, have varied in time and still vary from country to country according to local practice. Sir Leonard Woolley, for instance, because of the circumstances under which he started excavating in Iraq at the end of the First World War, used to prefer the ordinary army entrenching tool.

The Sherqatis use two picks one a small, single pointed implement with a fine balance for tracing, and the other an ordinary double pointed pick axe for heavier work. In Anatolia, packmen use one of these for preliminary work, a flat shovel for scraping and a long rigid knife for finer work.

Anyhow I warned my wife that she would see

Of course there might be several wives in the same household but not the wives of the same man. For instance, when we were visiting my father in Prinkipo, there were four “wives” living together: my father’s, my uncle’s, my cousin’s and my own wife. Anyhow I warned my wife that she would see in Erenkoy a “harem” in the Turkish sense of the word and not the kind of private cabaret which exists only in the fertile imagination of scenario writers, and in the ludicrous pages of sensational newspapers or dime novels.

Erenkoy is a little village at about half an hour ride from Constantinople and on the Asiatic side. The shores of Anatolia are here covered with country estates uniting small villages all the way from Scutari to Maltepe a distance of about fifteen miles. And all except Cadikeuy and Moda are peopled with Turks. The Turks living here are mostly conservatives.

They are not old fashioned and narrow but they have kept to the Turkish ways of living more accurately than the Turks living in other sections or suburbs of Constantinople. It really cannot be explained but there is here an indefinable something that makes you feel that you are in Turkey more than you do in any other suburb of Constantinople. Perhaps it is only due to the fact that you are on the hospitable soil of Anatolia.

Suburban trains running on the famous Bagdad railroad take you to Erenkoy. I again had a jolt on these trains. In the old days the company belonged to the Germans and was run by the Germans. But it endeavored not to arouse the susceptibility of the Turks by flaunting in their faces that it was a foreign company. All the employees on the train wore the fez, the national Turkish headgear, and the greatest majority of them were Turks.

Humiliating the Turks

Now the Allies have replaced the Germans and have taken over the railroad as part of Germany’s war indemnity towards them. The result is that their systematic campaign of humiliating the Turks has been practiced even here. The new Allied administration employs mostly Greeks and Armenians and all the employees of the company now wear caps. Really the difference between caps or fezzes is only one of form, but it has a psychological effect.

For instance, even in my case, although I dislike the fez as a most unpracticed cable and unbecoming headgear, and although I have worn hats the greater part of my life I could not help resenting the change: it rubbed me the wrong way. It made me most vividly feel as if we were not the masters in our own homes at least temporarily in Constantinople and its environs.