A team of archaeologists in Iraq, led by the British Museum’s curator of ancient Mesopotamia Sebastian Rey, has uncovered compelling evidence of the empire’s formidable bureaucracy. The discovery, first reported by the Observerearlier this week, was made last autumn at Tello in southern Iraq—the modern Arabic name for the ancient Sumerian city of Girsu—and includes more than 200 clay cuneiform tablets and 60 sealings.

The tablets contain details about everything from scholarly texts to sheep and barley rations. They date back to the Akkad period (2300-2150 BC), which, Rey tells The Art Newspaper, was “an extremely important period in Mesopotamian history—featuring charismatic kings such as Naram-Sin, the first to proclaim himself divine—and a crucial moment in world history, since it marked the rise of the very first recorded empire.”

Among the clay tablets are school texts, says Rey. “These are the remains of the scribal training process for the administrators of the state’s archives under Akkad imperial rule. It’s a fabulous discovery!”

The sealings, he says, are broken impressions on clay of the seal of Lugal-ushumgal, the governor of Lagash, a city close to Girsu, who was directly appointed by Naram-Sin and reported to him. Using the fragments Rey and his team were able to reconstruct the entire seal, revealing text that reads: “Naram-Sin, the mighty, god of Akkad, king of the four quarters (of the world): Lugal-ushumgal, the scribe, governor, your servant.”

“It says it all,” Rey continues. “Total control.”

Some artefacts found at the site—on a mound known as Tablet Hill—also reveal, Rey says, a standard metric system used across the empire (the Akkad-gur) to measure quantities of resources such as flour, as well as evidence of the “propagandistic programme and cult of personality” around Naram-Sin. On one clay tablet, for example, he is shown wearing a horned crown, resembling, Rey adds, “a god-like figure”.

Rey describes the discovery, in its totality, as resembling a “toolbox of empire”.

Tobin Hartnell, the director of the Center for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage at the American University of Iraq in Sulymaniyeh, says of the finds: “These tablets provide balance to the archaeological record, as the Akkadians are better known for their warlike tendencies as expressed through art and royal inscriptions. These finds also provides more context on how the Akkadians administered their empire, as many previous tablets came from looters but these finds come from the site itself. Finally, these finds demonstrate how the Akkadians managed a Sumerian city, especially one located on the frontier of the empire itself.”

Taher Quinn, an archaeologist from the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH), which worked on the site with the British Museum, says: “These discoveries, with their information, will once again bring to light the achievements of the people of Mesopotamia thousands of years ago, achievements that time could neither overcome nor conceal.”

An urban treasure

Girsu, Rey says, is one of the great treasures of Iraqi heritage. At its peak in the third millennium BC—from around 2600 BC to 2200 BC—it was a megacity covering hundreds of hectares, and revered as a sanctuary of the Sumerian heroic god Ningirsu and megacity. The city also “revealed to the world the existence of the Sumerians, who invented writing at the end of the fourth millennium BC”.

It was excavated by a team of French archaeologists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries but, says Rey, “most of the remains were unearthed at great speed and they were poorly recorded”.

The new excavations were made as part of the Girsu Project, led by the British Museum in partnership with SBAH. One of the aims of the project, which is funded by the Meditor Trust, is “to go back to these late 19th- and early 20th-century excavations to salvage what was left behind”, Rey says, and reinvestigate it. Unlike the artefacts unearthed in colonial times, the newly discovered artefacts will remain in country at the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad.

The Girsu Project builds on the legacy of the Museum’s Iraq Scheme, developed in 2015 and first funded by the British Government in response to the destruction of heritage sites in Iraq and Syria by Daesh (or Islamic State). It aims to address the damage caused by early excavations and modern looting via new technology and “rescue archaeology.”