brick
- Museum number
- 1821,0120.8
- Description
-
Part of a fired clay brick stamped with an Aramaic inscription; joined from two fragments.
- Production date
- 7thC BC (about)
- Dimensions
-
Length: 11 centimetres
-
Length: 4.25 inches
-
Thickness: 4 centimetres
-
Width: 6.20 centimetres
-
Width: 2.50 inches
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Baked clay brick, found at Babylon by Sir Robert Ker Porter in November 1818.
Part of a brick stamped with an Aramaic inscription. The brick would have been originally at least 1 foot square, but was cut down on all but the right side in the nineteenth century to make it portable. The inscription is damaged, but a sketch of it published by Ker Porter in 1822 makes it possible to reconstruct the text as BL?[D-], which may be analysed as bl-?-dn, a standard Babylonian name Bel-a?u-iddina, ("Bel has given a brother").
1821-1-20,8 c.7th century B.C.
(comments on inscription made by Terence Mitchell, April 2003)
- Location
- On display (G1/fc15/top/right/inside box)
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
2003- BM, Enlightenment gallery
- Condition
- Incomplete.
- Acquisition date
- 1821
- Acquisition notes
- M.L.A Register notes "Original list in "Letters on Antiquities" about 1818."
Ker Porter implies that he found this fragment at Babylon on 22 November 1818 (Sir Robert Ker Porter: Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, Ancient Babylonia, etc etc during the years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820, London 1821/22, vol. II, p. 423 where he describes it as "No. 8. shews other characters, something similar to the line of, apparently, common style of writing at e in Plate LXXVII; he illustrates it on pl. 79: 8.
- Department
- Middle East
- Registration number
- 1821,0120.8
