An archaeological remains related to the famous novelist Agatha Christie

London is a large city with many interesting sites and attractions steeped in history. Some of them are older than the city itself.

Highgate: the exotic and gloomy cemetery where 170,000 residents of London rest
An underground and not very idyllic tour along the millenary Tyburn River, London

London’s famous museums house many ancient artifacts from other countries, many of which predate the founding of London almost 2,000 years ago in ancient Rome. However, there are other very ancient artifacts that aren’t even in museums, but are accessible to any passerby.

Specifically, there’s an ancient slab from the Babylonian Empire near the famous St. Paul’s Cathedral. It’s not in a museum or a monument, but in a pretty little courtyard accessed through a door from the street. A month ago, London Visited published a video showing this courtyard and the curious historical gems it contains:

One of the ancient details of this courtyard is a Roman mosaic, an ancient pavement from ancient Londinium that was found about 5 meters below St. Matthew’s Church, an ancient temple that was located on Friday Street, near St. Paul’s Cathedral, and that was demolished in 1886. But the most interesting thing in the video is this stone slab, located in a niche:

It appears to be an old, dirty slab, but its surface bears Assyrian cuneiform characters. On June 23, 2021, Stephen Liddell wrote an interesting article about this courtyard, which he discussed in his book “Secret Gardens of the City of London”. Liddell comments on that slab as follows:

“The lump of stone is actually a baked brick and it is from a 9th century BC Zigurrat in modern day Iraq. It was presented to Canon Mortlock, marking his work with novelist Agatha Christie and her husband, archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan and was found during his 1950-65 dig on the site.

The brick bears the name of Shalmaneser who reigned from 859 to 824 BC. A zigurrat is type of ancient pyramid like building used for mainly religious purposes and Cuneiform was a writing script used in the ancient Near and Middle East originating in around 3400BC. Along with Egyptian hieroglyphs is one of the earliest known writing systems.”

To give you an idea, ancient Londinium was founded in 50 AD, so that slab could be about 900 years older than the city it is in.

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Main image: London Visited.