Sceptre

During Robert Koldeweys’ excavations in Babylon, two baskets filled with pearls and objects made of other minerals came to light in the ruins of a house belonging to the Parthian period, in the third century. Because of the proximity of Esangila, the main temple of Markduk, it is supposed that they were once part of the temple treasure and that later, along with other pieces, they came into the possession of a private individual who perhaps intended to re-use or rework them. This treasure included such important pieces as the lapis-lazuli seals of the gods Marduk and Adad,; club bosses with dedicatory inscriptions from earlier kings, gems, scarabs, weights, fragments of lapis which had once been used for the eyes, hair, and beards of statues of deities, so-called onyx eyes, which were used as ornaments, marked with dedicatory inscriptions, to beand fixed as ornaments to the robes of deities, and as well as a quantity of broken slabs of onyx, pearls, and other raw materials. Amongst the most remarkable pieces in this hoard is the so-called ‘sceptre’, which, when it was discovered, had come to pieces on account of the corrosion of the bronze staffrod which was inside it. Its reconstruction, which one cannot be completely sure is correct, has led to its being called a sceptre. The black agate must have had to be imported from afar. In antiquity, it was already known how to treat it using heat in order to produce decorative colourings. Because of its costliness, the stone was used chiefly to make ornaments and offerings for the gods.