Edgar James Banks

Edgar James Banks (May 23, 1866 – May 5, 1945) was an American diplomat, antiquarian and novelist.

Biography

Banks was an antiquities enthusiast and entrepreneurial roving archaeologist in the closing days of the Ottoman Empire, who has been held up as an original for the fictional composite figure of Indiana Jones. Starting from his position as American consul in Baghdad in 1898, Banks bought hundreds of cuneiform tablets on the market in the closing days of the Ottoman Empire and resold them in small batches to museums, libraries, universities, and theological seminaries, several in Utah and the Southwestern United States and across the United States. These tablets had been dug up by locals at sites like Telloh and the many other tells of central Mesopotamia. Banks purchased many more cuneiform inscriptions from a dealer in Constantinople. His export of antiquities was an infringement of Article 8 of the 1884 Ottoman Antiquities Law.

He wrote a book, published in 1912, about his excavations of the ancient Sumerian city of Adab, located in what is now Bismya/Bismaya in Iraq. The book contains lively accounts of his excavations in Adab and discoveries of a sequence of buildings from the prehistoric into the reign of Ur-Nammu in the ancient Sumerian city. It details also his extensive expeditions in the region and struggles with the Ottoman bureaucracy which, though he had been funded for an expedition to the site of Ur, had refused permits for digs at Babylon, Tell Ibrahim, or other prominent sites. In 1903 it was decided that his excavations were to be at Bismya, the site of ancient Adab, in Iraq.