D-1140: Excavation of Samarra (Iraq): Airplane Photographs Compiled by Survey Party, Mesopotamian Expedition Forces

Object Details

Local Numbers: D-1140 FSA A.06 05.1140
General: - Title is provided by Xavier Courouble, FSg Archives cataloger, based on Joseph Upton's Catalogue of the Herzfeld Archive.
Date/Time and Place of an Event Note: Notes related primarly to the two campaigns of excavation at Sāmarrāʼ (Iraq), carried out by Ernst Herzfeld on behalf of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin between the years 1911 and 1913.

Place: Asia; Iraq; Mesopotamia; Sāmarrāʼ (Iraq); Iraq -- Salah ad-Din -- Samarra

See more items in: Ernst Herzfeld Papers; Ernst Herzfeld Papers / Series 5: Drawings and Maps

Archival Repository: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives

Collection Citation: Ernst Herzfeld Papers. FSA.A.06. National Museum of Asian Art Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Gift of Ernst Herzfeld, 1946.

Arrangement: Journals, letters, and sketchbooks are arranged roughly in sequential number sequences, housed in document boxes.

Collection Rights: Permission to publish, quote, or reproduce must be secured from the repository.

Scope and Contents: Finding aid caption reads, "Samarra. Photographic mosaic map." [Joseph M. Upton's Catalogue of the Herzfeld Archive, compiled in 1974]; Additional information reads, "It was now well on in May I9I7, and the little survey party which had followed the fortunes of the 3rd Corps was at last broken up. I (G. A. Beazeley) was transferred with my computer, to take charge of a detachment of two officers and eight surveyors to carry out a large-scale survey of Samarra and its neighbourhood. The scale selected was the 6-inch, and it was decided to call in the aid of air photographs, which were adjusted to a framework of points fixed by triangulation and plane-table intersection. The congregated photos were then reduced to the 6-inch scale, blue prints prepared and issued to the surveyors, who transferred the detail to their boards and carried out supplementary survey including contouring. The total area surveyed was I20 square miles and included A1 Kaim and Istabulat." [G. A. Beazeley: Surveys in Mesopotamia during the War. The Geographical Journal, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Feb. 1920), pp.109-123. Published by Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)].