During the 2004 excavation season in the lower town (Operation G), we recovered a beautiful pebble mosaic pavement in a large Assyrian building which we think belonged to the treasury of a temple dedicated to the goddess Ishtar, based on a cache of cuneiform tablets found there. The mosaic comprised alternating squares of black and white river pebbles from the Tigris, each square contained dozens of small stone set edgewise in a mud mortar.
Into this courtyard mosaic, a number of features were set which disturbed the checkerboard pattern. These included four baked bricks set in a rectangular arrangement which was probably a stable place for a heavy bench or some other piece of furniture. There were also a few places where the small neatly laid black and white river pebbles had been dug up and replaced with much larger stones.
We hypothesized that some of these disturbances might be graves dug into the courtyard while the building was still in use. In two other areas of the site, in the Bronze Palace and in the Operation Q gate, we also found burials beneath the floors of public buildings, so it seems probable that some of these disturbances were burials.
In 2004, we did not have permission to disturb the mosaics, but this year we requested and received a government permit to test our hypothesis in Courtyard 11. Now, all this large building had been backfilled after our excavations in 2004, so after surveying this year, we set a small team of men to remove the backfilled earth down to the mosaic pavement. It was easy to find since we had covered the pavement in a thick plastic sheeting to protect it from the modern agriculture.
Here is what the stone feature looks like in 2012, immediately prior to excavation. John will start work today by removing the large stones and shoring up the pebble mosaic at the edges of the possible grave. I will let you know what he finds. It should be clear pretty quickly if this area was a grave, or served some other, yet unknown, purpose.
