The Kish Collection

The Kish Project 2004-2006

The Status Quo

For the eight decades since their excavation, the collections from Kish have remained divided, with forces of fate, scholarly predilection, geography, and international politics precluding the production of a synthetic site report for the city. Accounts of The Field Museum-Oxford University Joint Expedition to Kish were originally published in the 1920s and 1930s by both Langdon (1924, 1930, 1934), who wrote a popularly oriented series, and Mackay (1925-1929 and 1931), who was responsible for a series of more scientific publications. However, Watelin died in 1934 and Langdon in 1937, with the result that no final site report was ever produced. McGuire Gibson (1972) and Roger Moorey (1978) both revisited the products of the excavation in the 1970s, and since these seminal publications, the archaeological assemblage from Kish frequently has been the subject of scholarly inquiry. Works have been produced on the private houses and chariot burials at Ingharra (Algaze 1983-84), on cuneiform texts from the

city (Dalley and Yoffee 1991), on the physical character of its inhabitants (Rathbun 1975), and, most recently, on the nearby site of Jamdat Nasr (Englund and Grégoire 1991, Matthews 2002). Forthcoming works on the previously excavated Kish collection focus on the cylinder seals (Gibson, in preparation), and additional cuneiform tablets (Dalley, in press). However, a synthetic site report resulting from the 1920s and 1930s excavation is still lacking. As Kish may have been one of the first true cities of the world, and one of the first places to hold any sort of regional power, the lack of a final site report stands as a significant gap in the archaeological record of Mesopotamia.

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