. this was how the excavations at Susa were begun.”15
The trenches grew deep quickly, but they were achingly empty. Fourteen feet of nothing. A few funeral urns were found here and there, each with a skeleton curled up inside, but aside from that the dirt was barren. Rain continued to pour, and the team stood mired in tacky mud, working long hours all day with only two things to look forward to: a wet tent and hope for tomorrow’s discovery. This was the stuff of typical field archaeology. For each day of glory and spectacular finds there are long weeks— and sometimes entire seasons—of toil and tedium.
Luckily for the team, Dieulafoy soon had cause to shout, “Heaven be praised!”
One of the workmen had scraped the surface of some bricks glazed in colorful enamel. The workers redirected the trenches and opened them wide: two hundred feet long and twenty-six feet across. A month of careful excavation followed, and they were rewarded with the find of a lifetime: the Lion Frieze. They assembled this ancient masterpiece, fragment by bright fragment, on the floor of their tent. It was by Dieulafoy’s own account “magnificent,” with each lion measuring more than eleven feet long. Dieulafoy wrote of her find: “The animal stands out against a turquoise blue background; the body is white, the head surrounded by a sort of green victorine, the mustache blue and yellow, the flanks white, the belly blue. In spite of its extravagant coloration the beast has a terribly ferocious aspect.”16
The Lion Frieze ushered in a new pace of discovery. Soon there was an opal seal in Dieulafoy’s hand that belonged to Xerxes the Great, along with carved ivory, spear heads, bottles, bronze and terra-cotta lamps, engraved stones, coins, funeral urns, and a “thousand interesting utensils.” A life-size painting of a black man in rich robes was revealed and left the crew to ponder whether they were in the company of the ancient Ethiopians Homer once spoke of. In fact, much of what they uncovered let their minds run with theories and speculation about the ancient world. This was not a single dwelling or cave they were exploring; it was a cultural epicenter, a whole city. The Dieulafoys and team scraped away all they could to shine a light on the region’s sprawling past.
MIDWAY THROUGH THE excavations at Susa the Dieulafoys had accumulated so much cargo that they had to figure out how to transport it out of the country. There were fifty-four wooden boxes filled to the brim, and everything that didn’t fit in those was buried by night in a secret spot known only to the Dieulafoys.17Anxious to avoid a two-hundred-mile-long journey through a country where the objects they had collected were viewed as “belonging of the prophet” and therefore “treasures and talismans” that the locals would (naturally) want back, they made a dash for Turkey. An etching titled “Transporting Treasures Across The Jungle From Susa To The Persian Gulf” depicts seventeen villagers heaving a single cargo box through tall grass by rope. Their effort wasn’t helped by two men in pith helmets (or could it be Jane sitting beside Marcel?) who sat lounging on top of the cargo the workers were shouldering.18
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
