Wilhelm König


Wilhelm König was an Austrian archaeologist and painter.
A painter by profession, in 1931, König was elected assistant to the German leader of the Baghdad Antiquity Administration with the title of a "Direktor". At the excavation of a Parthian settlement in modern day Khujut Rabu, he discovered the alleged Baghdad Battery. In February 1939, he returned to Vienna, due to blood poisoning, where he published a book Im verlorenen Paradies. Neun Jahre Irak.

Controversy

In March 2012, Professor Elizabeth Stone, of Stony Brook University, an expert on Iraqi archaeology, returning from one of the first archaeological expeditions in Iraq since 20 years, stated that she does not know a single archaeologist, who believed that this was a "real battery", where the definition of a "real" battery was not discussed.

Works

Plaster castings

The plaster castings of objects from the Iraq museum, which are exhibited in the "Vorderasiatisches Museum" in Berlin, were made by König.

Publications