CLAY SEALINGS AND TABLETS FROM TELL ASMAR An Ancient
Mesopotamian Palace Reinvestigated By Clemens Reichel, Research
Assistant, Diyala Miscellaneous Objects Database Project The
Oriental Institute and the Department of Near Eastern Languages
and Civilizations The University of Chicago (This article
originally appeared in The Oriental Institute News and Notes,
No. 159, Fall 1998, and is made available electronically with
the permission of the editor.) "Started work after lunch with 12
men from Shergat. Dug trench at north and south end of deep pit
in order to find out: 1. whether that long low lying stretch of
ground could be used anywhere for dumping; 2. with what the pit
hangs together; 3. to get a baked brick building so that the men
could be trained first on easy work." When Henri Frankfort made
this entry into the excavation diary on 17 November 1930,
describing the first day of work at the Oriental Institute's
Diyala Excavations at the site of Tell Asmar, no one could have
predicted that, in the years to