Notes on Object Descriptions
The Nuzi artifacts now in the collection of the Harvard Art Museum/Arthur M. Sackler Museum were accessioned in two
groups, one in 1928 and the second in 1931. Registrarial records attribute all to
the “Harvard-Baghdad School Expedition,” a shorthand reference to the 1927–31 expeditions conducted
by Harvard’s Semitic, Peabody, and Fogg museums in conjunction with the Baghdad School of the American Schools of
Oriental Research and the University Museum of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania Museum).
The Nuzi artifacts in the Art Museum’s collections are grouped here by the Nuzi archaeological
settlement phase or stratum. Readers may also access many objects through the Settlement Maps link,
where artifacts are grouped by findspot room number.
Where possible, the original expedition field catalogue entries are provided (courtesy of the Semitic Museum, Harvard University).
The 1927–29 expeditions recorded the objects by material type in separate books, with
each medium given its own numerical sequence. The subsequent seasons maintained a
single object catalogue, regardless of material type. The catalogue number for an object excavated
during the latter years appears as a string of three numbers, for example,
30.12.335 (depicting the year 1930, month of December, and 335th object recorded that month).
The findspot location for each object was also recorded. In the early years, the site was divided into
areas C, A, and T, for the main central mound and the private houses first excavated by Edward Chiera;
in addition, rooms were numbered sequentially as they were exposed. Later, Richard Starr,
director of the expeditions after Chiera and Robert H. Pfeiffer, implemented a grid system and renumbered the areas.
The grid system allowed rooms to be more easily located on a plan. The original object catalogues were
written in ink, and new location designations and descriptions were annotated in pencil at later (unknown) dates.
Often, rough inked sketches were included that approximated the full artifact.
The artifacts themselves were occasionally marked in pencil with the room number, date, or field number.
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