Fragments of stucco thought to be lost have been found in the Ancient Near Eastern Collection.
English archaeologist Dr. St John Simpson was astonished when he first saw the ten boxes in the steel cabinet of the Ancient Near Eastern Collection at Goethe University’s archaeological institute. He hadn’t expected the contents of these boxes, as these finds were believed to be lost.
Dr. Simpson is the lead curator at the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum in London. His area of expertise is the archaeology of Iran and neighboring regions during the so-called late periods, particularly the Sasanian to early Islamic eras of the first millennium AD. Currently a Volkswagen Foundation Fellow, Simpson is conducting research in Frankfurt. The mentioned boxes contained fragments of stucco decoration from the Sasanian period (224–637 AD), originating from palaces near the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon, located about 35 kilometers from present-day Baghdad. Between 1928 and 1931, Ctesiphon was the site of a German excavation expedition, and the findings were divided among museums in Baghdad, Berlin, New York, and London. Very little has been published about these discoveries, and much of the original excavation documentation was lost due to war. Dr. Simpson, who has already studied the previously known finds, was all the more surprised to come across stucco remnants from this very site during his research in Frankfurt.
The fragments were brought to the Ancient Near Eastern Collection in Frankfurt in 1943 by Professor Friedrich Wachsmuth, the first representative of the field of Near Eastern Archaeology in Frankfurt. Architectural researcher Wachsmuth participated in the German excavations at Ctesiphon in 1928/29 and 1931/32, and served as technical director during the second campaign. It must have been during this time that he brought the stucco fragments back to Germany. As Selim Pascal Zillich-Ünal demonstrated in his 2018 bachelor’s thesis at the Institute for Archaeological Sciences, the fragments are part of wall panels and feature decorative vine and foliage motifs. A larger fragment was clearly part of a half-column or covered a beam, while another larger leaf fragment was likely part of a “false window.” In total, eleven hand-sized fragments from various buildings in Ctesiphon are now in Frankfurt, originating from the rubble of these structures.
Apart from this student paper, the Frankfurt Fragments have so far remained unpublished and are therefore invisible to research. Dr. Simpson is particularly interested in the coloration of such stucco works, which, unfortunately, is barely preserved on the Frankfurt Fragments. Originally, a fine, thin white coating was applied over the coarser plaster, which was painted in color during antiquity. This coating has largely flaked off the Frankfurt pieces, with the color lost. Simpson proposed further investigation to gain new insights, for example, into the pigments and aesthetics. The preservation of the Frankfurt Fragments is reasonably good; however, the storage conditions are not ideal. The holdings of the Ancient Near Eastern Collection are housed in the attic of the IG Farben Building, which is not adequately insulated. The collection’s storage room is too damp and experiences significant temperature fluctuations between summer and winter. The high humidity in the room causes salts in the stucco’s plaster to crystallize, which can lead to the detachment of the outermost plaster layer. Having been stored under these conditions for some time, the artifacts need to be professionally desalinated and conserved.
The intensified collection work at Goethe University and the review of the Ancient Near Eastern Collection are bringing to light such and comparable pieces. Those responsible for the Ancient Near Eastern Collection have been working for some time to improve the artifacts’ storage conditions. A collaboration with the Mainz Leibniz Center for Archaeology (LEIZA), which has a highly professional restoration department, would be highly desirable. However, securing funding is essential to initiate conservation efforts. The Frankfurt pieces are now set to be published as part of a smaller contribution, making them known and accessible to archaeological research. The Frankfurt Ancient Near Eastern Collection includes more than 4,000 objects, many of which have not yet been academically studied – and may hold the potential for similar scholarly discoveries.
Dirk Wicke, Institute for Archaeological Sciences
