The site is a 600 meter by 300 meter irregular mound, with a low spur reaching northward at the northwest corner and small outlying mounds to the north and south, heavily marked by robber holes. The site was surrounded by a city wall, only partially excavated, with at least one large gate. The wall had a width of 8 meters and in the gatehouse of the entrance gate two
cuneiform tablets were found. To pre-empt this activity, the Iraq expedition of the
Oriental Institute of Chicago conducted two seasons of excavations there between 1934 and 1936. The expedition was led by
Henri Frankfort and the work at Ishchali was handled by
Thorkild Jacobsen and architect Harold Hill, all of the Oriental Institute. The architect died before publication leaving only an outline and a few chapter drafts. The excavation only covered the Kitītum Temple, a non-public area south of that temple called the "Serai" by the excavators, a short portion of the city wall with one gate, and the Shamash Temple adjacent to that gate. Excavations only reached the Isin-Larsa level before excavations ended. A number of cuneiform tablets from the Old Babylonian period were found and later published. For a few tablets the provenance is in dispute between Ishcali and
Khafajah. Of the 280 tablets excavated, 138 went to the Oriental Institute with the remaining 142 assigned to the
Iraq Museum. Among them was a fragment of the
Epic of Gilgamesh. The tablets illegally excavated from Ishchali are in many locations including the
Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at Berkeley, the
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire in Geneva, Iraq Museum, Oriental Institute, and the
Free Library of Philadelphia. The archive of the chief administrator (sanga) of the Kititum temple is represented by 155 purchased Free Library tablets and 55 excavated Oriental Institute tablets as well as others in the Iraq Museum.
The Serai South of the Kitītum Temple was a large private residence (thought to have originally been two residences later joined) which the excavators named the Serai. In 1919 a shepherd found two bronze statues here (in a bronze bowl) and they were sold, through a dealer, to the Oriental Institute Museum (A7119 and A7120). Local residents directed the excavators to the site and this was where work began. A number of
cuneiform tablets and clay sealings were found at the Serai as well as
hematite weights, terracotta figurines and plaques and a bone
cylinder seal. The main, western, temple was at an elevation 4 meters above the surrounding neighborhood while the remaining part of the Kititium Temple was only raised by 2 meters. A cylinder seal, found in the main temple, was inscribed "Mattatum, daughter of Ubarrum, for her recovery to Kititum presented (this seal)" as well as a building brick with an inscription of
Eshnunna ruler
Ipiq-Adad II dedicated to
Ištar-Kititum. Small finds included terracotta plaques and a copper lamp in the form of a lion found in the antecella of the main temple. The many tablets found at the Kitītum Temple give an excellent picture of temple life. A number of cylinder seals dating from the Early Dynastic to the
Larsa period were also found there, assumed to be relic donations to the temple. Cylinder seals, from the Isin-Larsa and Old Babylon periods, were also found at the Shamash temple and in private homes. Based on texts found there the excavators suggested that there was also a shrine of
Ištar-Kititum "e-dINANNA k i - t i" at Eshnunna . The temple, lying next to the main gate in the city wall to the east of the Kitītum Temple, was only excavated down to the level of Phase 2 of the Kitītum Temple. ==Artifacts from Ishchali==