Central Anatolia in the Middle Bronze Age is marked by a well-documented Old Assyrian presence during the kārum period (20th–17th century b.c.), a dynamic time of long-distance trade and cultural contact. One of the idiosyncrasies of the social history of this period is a special bigamous arrangement which allowed Assyrian men to enter second marriages on the condition that one wife remained at home in Aššur, and the other in Anatolia. In testing the extent to which a middle ground for cross-cultural compromise is recognisable in such Assyro-Anatolian marriage practices, this article considers whether the terminology used in reference to the first and second wives (amtum and aššatum respectively) can be interpreted as the crucial element of misunderstanding in middle ground formation.

Almost all modern writers agree on the list of the stations on the caravan road linking Mosul to Nisibin, as it was known to the Arab geographers of the classical age (ninth–eleventh centuries) and their successors of the Middle Ages. Starting from Mosul it includes: Balad, Bâ’aynâtha, Barqa’îd, Adhrama, Tell Farrâsha and Nisibin.

The first station, Balad, does not raise any problem; its identification with Eski-Mosul fixes it firmly on the map, on the Tigris, at a distance of 40 kilometres to the north-west of Mosul (see Fig. 1).

After Balad, questions begin to arise, and it may not be impossible that some of the proposed localisations could be revised.

These localisations are well known:

For Bâ’aynâtha, de Goeje proposed Abû Wadjnah, in Iraq, near the ’Ain Zâlah airfield of the Mosul Petroleum Company, and Dussaud suggested Tell al ’Uwaynât, also in Iraq, to-day on the railway line Mosul-Syria.

Barqa’îd was pushed back by de Goeje and Von Oppenheim beyond the Syrian border, to Tell Rumailân (or Rumaileh) near Tell Hâdi, with, as a corollary, the localisation of its replacement, Bashazza, at Tshilagha, 25 kilometres to the West of Qubûr al bîdh, also in Syria.

In the course of the excavation of a building which has become known as Fort Shalmaneser, a well preserved slab of greenish alabaster with an inscription from Shalmaneser III was discovered in a doorway leading into the room F.S., S. 4, where it served as a threshold. The slab measures 146 cms. in width (length) and 62 cms. in height (width); brickwork and bitumen covering which extended c. 10 cms. at either edge of the slab concealed the beginning and end of each line of the inscription. A rectangular socket hole near the upper edge of the slab was designed to receive a vertically sliding bar. There is a crack in the stone running from the upper to the lower edge; a natural flaw in the surface is responsible for the circumstance that the sign KUR, in line 5, was incised to a smaller scale than the other signs of the inscription. Part of the surface at the upper edge of the slab is worn; for this reason part of the first line of the inscription is lost.

The inscription is framed, and the individual lines of inscription are separated by ruled lines. The inscription continues beyond its frame at the end of the second line. The width of the inscribed panel is 141 cms., its height 53 cms. The distance between each ruled line is 5 cms. A copy of the inscription is shown in Plate XII. The following is a transliteration and translation of the text.

The Sargonic victory stele from Telloh is one of the most celebrated works of art from third millennium Mesopotamia. Two fragments, one inscribed (AO 2679 = Pl. III) and one with relief (AO 2678 = Pl. II), have been known since 1893, and all who have examined them agree that the two fragments very probably belong to the same monument. Because of the incomplete inscription, the monument has generally been dated on art historical grounds to sometime between the reigns of Sargon and Naram-Sin. The purpose of this study is three-fold: to publish a newly identified fragment of this stele, to offer a new interpretation for the entire monument, and to propose a precise dating and historical context for it.

YBC 2409 is of white limestone, and was at least twice reused (in antiquity ?) as a door socket. As a result, the stone is heavily damaged. To judge from its accession number, the piece was acquired by Yale before 1915. Remains of three bands of inscription are found on one side. A glance at the photograph (Pl. IV) will show that this stone is strikingly similar in appearance to AO 2679. Samples of AO 2679 and YBC 2409 were analysed by Catherine Skinner, Yale University (see Appendix II).

Four samples from Tell Brak were analysed for radiocarbon content at the British Museum Research Laboratory in 1987, with the results given below (Ambers et al., 1989). All results are quoted in the form recommended by Stuiver and Polach (1977) in uncalibrated years BP (before 1950) and corrected for measured δ13C variation. Calibrations are given based on 1σ error terms, following the curves of Pearson and Stuiver (1986) and Pearson et al. (1986), using Method A of revision 2.0 of the University of Washington Quaternary Laboratory Radiocarbon Calibration Program (Stuiver and Reimer 1986), and are quoted in the form recommended in Mook (1986); the end points of the calibrated date ranges have been rounded to the nearest five years.

Three of the samples (BM-2554, -2555, -2556), all of charcoal, were treated with dilute acid and alkali to remove contamination. A single grain sample from context CH 450 was separated into humic and humin fractions, which were measured independently. All samples were analysed by conventional liquid scintillation counting. Errors quoted are the counting error for the sample combined with an estimate of the errors contributed by the modern and background samples. This estimate includes both counting and non-counting errors, the latter being computed from differences in the overall count-rates observed among the individual backgrounds and moderns.

Qasr Serij lies near an old route running along the southern foot of the Jabal al-Qusayr between Mosul and Nisibis (cf. Wilkinson, 1990: 50–51, Route B; Wilkinson, 1993: 552). As the name suggests, the site comprises the partly standing remains of a church originally dedicated to St Sergius, a popular eastern saint (Fiey, 1961). It has been identified as the stone church said to have been founded between 559–75 by one Mar Ahudemmeh at a spot known as Ain Qenoye or Ain Qena (‘Spring of Reeds’) in the vicinity of Balad (Eski Mosul) (Fiey, 1958). Preliminary descriptions, accompanied by the first known photographs of the ruins, were made by Gerald Reitlinger (1938: 148–49) and Aurel Stein (finally published in 1985: i, 105–107, Pl. 31c) following their respective surveys of medieval and Roman sites in the Jazira during the wet spring of 1938 (see also Lloyd, 1938: 136, No. 15; Ibrahim, 1986: 74, Site 211). In his subsequent study of the still-unexcavated ruins, David Oates (1962; 1968: 106–17, Pl. XIII) drew architectural parallels with fifth century and later churches in North Syria. Recently, in a series of important articles on early church architecture, Okada (1990; 1991; 1992) has drawn attention to the contrast in plan and fittings of these basilica-type churches with Sasanian and Early Islamic churches in southern Mesopotamia, the Iraqi Western Desert and the Gulf.

It has been argued that the city elders constituted a certain institution of urban authorities in the Syro-Palestinian kingdoms in the Late Bronze Age, such as Alalaḫ, Ugarit and the Canaanite city-kingdoms of the Amarna period. While subordinate to the royal palace, as representatives of a city-community they were frequently involved in political, economic and legal affairs in the state administration. Now new sources on this issue have been provided from the eastern part of this region, i.e. Emar (Meskene-Qadime) on the Middle Euphrates.

The recently published texts from Emar and its vicinity reveal that it was a kingdom under vassalage of the Hittite empire from the 13th to the early 12th century B.C. The Emar dynasty in this period has been reconstructed as having the following five reigning kings for four generations: Iasi-Dagan, dIM(Ba'lu/Adad)-kabar, Zū-Aštarti, Pilsu-Dagan and Elli. Besides the kings, the city elders of Emar were also involved in real estate sales, legal agreements and religious ceremonies.

Their close association with the city god Ninurta in real estate sales is particularly noteworthy. They frequently sell houses, fields, etc., under their joint ownership. For example, Emar VI 126: 8–14 reads: “From Ninurta and the elders of Emar (dNIN.URTA ù LÙ.MEŠ.ši-bu-ut URU.e-mar.KI), the owners of the house, Ḫimaši-Dagan, son of Ilu-malik, has bought the house for 1,000 (shekels) of silver, the full price”. According to the stipulation concerning the payment of fines, one who should lay claim to the house is to pay 1,000 shekels of silver to “Ninurta” (1. 19) and the “city (URU.KI)” (1. 20), respectively. This suggests that the terms “elders” and “city” are interchangeable and thus it has been assumed that the elders were representatives of the city-community of Emar. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that, though only once, “Ninurta” is also paraphrased by the city of “Emar”.

Mesopotamian history tends to be phrased in terms of stages: Early Dynastic city-states replaced by imperial Akkad, bureaucratic Ur III replaced by the more individualistic Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian periods thanks to the influence of the Amorites, etc. Lost in this process is a sense of the longue durée of Mesopotamian civilization, the basic and largely unchanging aspects of its society, economy and politics. In this paper I will explore one of these transitions, that between Ur III and Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian times, by examining the nexus between the cuneiform and archaeological records.

My aim is to explore the circumstances that resulted in the unearthing of the textual record upon which our understanding of the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods is based. Where did these tablets come from and what were the circumstances that both led to their preservation and allowed them to be recovered so that we could read them? To answer these questions, it will be necessary to look at the interconnections between the survey data, excavated data and the written record.

The broad sweep of settlement and abandonment provided by the survey data collected and analysed by Adams and his students and colleagues (Adams 1965, 1972, 1981, Adams and Nissen 1972, Gibson 1972, Wright 1981) has a direct impact on our understanding of the archaeological contexts of the cuneiform texts. Sites are subject to forces of erosion so that periods of abandonment — even if temporary relative to Mesopotamia's four-thousand-year history — still selectively remove parts of the archaeological record. Since all texts derive from archaeological contexts they are by no means immune. Indeed unbaked clay tablets are some of the most fragile of the artifacts recovered from Mesopotamian sites, only surviving to the present when buried rapidly at the outset and remaining so until uncovered by the spade of the archaeologist or, more often unfortunately, the looter. Then there is also the issue of accessibility. In most instances both archaeologists and looters dig from the top of a site down, and generally not that far down. Thus most of our data, both archaeological and textual, derive from those levels closest to the exposed surfaces of archaeological sites.

Nippur was one of the most important cities in the Sumerian world. Here was situated the shrine of the Lord of the gods, Enlil; here the king's name was spoken by Enlil, lord of the earth, calling him into existence as king, at the great shrine é-kur, the mountain-house where the god abode amongst men, and where kings did him honour.

The site was in part excavated by an American expedition from 1889 to 1990, but much still remains to be done. The excavations yielded large quantities of tablets of which, there is reason to believe, not all have as yet been published. The first group, dating to the Third Dynasty of Ur, with which this study is concerned, were published in 1910 under the editorship of Professor Hilprecht, and consisted of 171 tablets and fragments, but not until last year did others of the Hilprecht Collection appear. A few have appeared elsewhere, so that, in all, about 400 tablets and fragments from Nippur are at present available for study. The collection now published for the first time at the end of this article adds thirty-seven more. These are considerably less than the number of tablets which have been published from other sites of the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, such as Drehern, Umma, and Telloh, but they are sufficient for a review of Nippur at this period, such as is attempted here.

Any one who has visited the Tall Ḫalaf Museum knows that the excavation s carried out by Max, Freiherr von Oppenheim, have produced a rich variety of material which would all repay detailed study. It is to the generosity of Baron von Oppenheim that I am indebted for permission to publish the object which is here discussed.

It is of white marble, height 14·5 cm., greatest width 7·7 cm., thickness 4 cm. (Plate VI, 1). One half is almost square in shape, the other half is a narrower prolongation with a rounded end. Where the transition from the square to the elongated part occurs there is a double moulding which is not alike on both sides (ib. 2). The square end is hollow to a depth of 5 cm., and two round holes are bored diagonally from the side with the more pronounced moulding as far as the roof of the cavity. Another hole is pierced diagonally from the top of the. rounded end to the upper part of the back. The back and sides are smoothed, and on them designs are scratched in summary fashion. On one side the forepart of a wild bull can be seen, on the other a stag; between them, on the upper part of the back surface, are two men in a light, two-wheeled chariot. It seems to be a hunting scene, and from the outline of the men's hair and beards the drawing might be dated in the Early Assyrian period. The chariot wheel seems to have eight spokes, and Professor Unger has pointed out that it is not until the time of Aššurnasirpal II that there are representations of Ghariots with eight-spoked wheels. But these rough sketches may have been added when the object had been long in use (Fig. 1). The front face is adorned with twenty sunken rectangles.

On the morning of April 27th last I was delighted and astonished to discover in the National Museum of Wales at Cardiff a tile inscribed in Neo-Punic letters. I published a summary account of the graffito in The Illustrated London News on August 12th, 1939. Here I should like to say a little more about the inscription, not so much to amplify the short account in The Illustrated London News as to leave a permanent record in an archaeological journal of a discovery which is unique in the annals of British archaeology.

Arabia has given Britain one inscription: as long ago as 1878, a fine Roman altar, inscribed in Latin and Palmyrene characters, was discovered in the Roman camp near South Shields, and is now to be seen in the Free Library at that place. But this is the first time that an inscription from the hand of a descendant of the old Phoenician branch of the Semitic race has been found in Britain (or rather, recognized as such, for the tile was found during the excavation of Holt in the years 1907–15).

Das erste als hochsumerischer Tempel erkannte Gebäude war der “Weiße Tempel” auf der Anuzikurrat in Uruk-Warka, der im Jahre 1930 freigelegt werden konnte. Er wurde damals etwa auf die Schicht Uruk VI datiert, spärer gelang es, mit einer in eindeutiger Lage gefundenen gemalten Djemdet Nasr Scherbe, das Alter des Tempels in die ausklingende Djemdet Nasr Zeit zu datieren. Die Tatsache, daß das Gebäude auf einer Zikurrat stand, gab die Gewißheit, daß es sich um einen Tempel handeln müsse. Gleichzeitig wurde mit dieser Anlage aber auch eine in Eanna 1929 freigelegte große Anlage aus Kalksteinblöcken als Tempelanlage gesichert. In der Folge wurden nun vor und nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg, vor allem in Eanna, eine ganze Anzahl weiterer Gebäudegrundrisse freigelegt, die alle miteinander verwandte Grundrißformen aufwiesen. Schon nach der Grabungskampagne 1933–34 hatte Ernst Heinrich versucht, die damals (die meisten nur sehr teilweise ausgegrabenen) verwandten Anlagen zusammenzustellen, er faßte sie unter dem Namen “der Langhoftempel in Uruk” zusammen. Später, noch bevor der Tempel C vollkommen freigelegt war, ist Heinrich von der Bezeichnung Langhoftempel zurückgetreten. Er nimmt nun an, daß alle Mittelräume überdeckt waren, der große T-förmige Teil des Tempels C, der sogenannte Rumpfbau war tatsächlich überdeckt (ich komme später darauf zurück). Bis auf den Weißen Tempel auf der Anuzikurrat gehörten alle Anlagen der Schicht Uruk IV an, auch der Kalksteintempel, der möglicherweise in Uruk V bereits entstanden war, in Uruk IVc und Uruk IVb aber weiter bestand. Im gleichen Aufsatz wird bereits darauf hingewiesen, daß der sogenannte Tempel B wahrscheinlich als Kultraum, nicht aber eigentlich als Tempel aufzufassen sei.

The bēt ḫilāni is one of the most famous features of Assyria's royal palaces as well as one of its most elusive. The term is mostly known from Assyrian royal inscriptions, which describe it as an architectural feature inspired by the architecture of Syro-Anatolia. Such explicit references to the architecture of other cultures is exceptional and provides a rare glimpse into the valuations of Assyria's architects.

Modern attempts to identify the bēt ḫilāni archaeologically are almost as old as the field of ancient Near Eastern Studies. Unfortunately, the discourse has become more convoluted over time through the integration of disparate architectural features into a single bēt ḫilāni discourse and a narrow view of how architectural exchanges occur. Past research has generally assumed a morphological correspondence between the Assyrian bēt ḫilāni and the external porticoes that typify Syro-Anatolian architecture. This article will argue that Assyrian architects had a different set of ideals and interests which led them to change the external Syro-Anatolian portico into an interior feature used to add monumentality and ornamentation to the rooms of Assyria's palaces. This changes the bēt ḫilāni from a morphological category into a decorative one and contextualises it within the architectural traditions of Assyria.

This catalogue of ancient Near Eastern seals is published and the photographs are reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The term “ancient Near East” is here used to cover the period from the prehistoric age until the end of the Achaemenid Empire. The majority of the seals in the Collection are Mesopotamian in origin but Achaemenid art is well represented and there are a few examples of Syrian, Anatolian and Phoenician glyptic; Egyptian seals have not been included. None of the seals was obtained through excavation and in only a few cases is it known where they were acquired. In consequence their classification has had to be based entirely on stylistic grounds. No attempt has been made in this article to give a general history of the development of Near Eastern glyptic art since this has been treated in a number of publications, notably H. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, A. Moortgat, Vorderasiatische Rollsiegel, E. Porada, Corpus of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in North American Collections, vol. I, H. H. von der Osten, Altorientalische Siegelsteine der Sammlung Mans Silbius von Auloch (Studia Ethnographica Upsaliensis, vol. XIII).

The seals have been classified according to form into three groups: I, cylinder seals; II, seal-amulets; III, stamp seals. Groups I and III have been subdivided according to region, but so far as possible a chronological arrangement has been followed in order to give a continuous presentation of the development of glyptic art.

Besides their significance in administrative procedures, cylinder seals also played an important role as amulets in ancient Mesopotamia. There are many references to them being used in medical and magical procedures, which sometimes determine their features of magical potential. Thus not only the imagery and inscription of cylinder seals but also the raw material of which they were made contributed to their medico-magical usage (cf. Collon 1987: 119; 1997: 19–20). This paper deals with the last-mentioned feature of cylinder seals, that is their raw material, which is treated in a short series known from BAM 194 viii’ 9’–14’, as well as from another three tablets published here for the first time.

The Chalcolithic period in Mesopotamia and Iran (c.6000–4000 b.c.e.) is characterised by larger cities replacing small farming settlements, technological developments including wheel thrown pottery and copper metal working, and people establishing long distance trade networks. The Halaf horizon (5900–5100 b.c.e.) developed out of the local late pottery Neolithic tradition and is found throughout western Syria, southern Turkey, and northern and central Iraq. This archaeological culture is defined by a finely painted pottery, dryland farming, round and rectangular houses, and the use of stamp seals. A comparable ceramic horizon, the J-ware horizon (5200–4700 b.c.e.) arose in the Mahidasht and Kermanshah valleys of Iran. The J-ware ceramics are finely painted, possibly deriving from the Halaf tradition, but also slipped and burnished. The Rowanduz Archaeological Program's (RAP) excavations elucidate links between northern Iraq and northern Iran from the Chalcolithic to the modern period. This paper explores the relationship between the Halaf and J-ware traditions at Banahilk, recently re-excavated by RAP, and the larger contacts during the Chalcolithic.

A statuette of a woman dating from the Second Dynasty of Lagash features exceptional gold, silver and copper bracelets that have been recently restored and analysed. The statue is remarkable for its refined dress, to date known only from a small number of female figures, almost all linked to the court of Lagash's Second Dynasty. Examination of the statuette and comparable pieces has revealed possible traces of polychromy, although these vestiges are particularly difficult to identify with any certainty. This paper presents these results within the larger corpus of female depictions from the Second Dynasty of Lagash, together with other very similar examples, to better understand the meaning of the specific costume they wear and the possible identity of the women wearing it.

In his article “Babylonian Music Again”, O. R. Gumey provides a welcome update on research on the tablets concerning music of the ancient Near East. Gurney's article also has a corrective effect on a rambunctious article by Martin West that appeared shortly before. Gurney seems to me to have the musical system almost right. West, while he seems to understand the system, presents it in ways that I find illogical, and that I fear will be confusing or misleading. Furthermore, while some of West's conclusions exceed the span of even my own irresponsible imagination, some of his other conclusions seem unnecessarily restrictive, conservative, or simply old-fashioned. Here I want to assert limits of the kind and extent of musical conclusions that we can expect to draw from the available data, but also to explore the kinds of ideas that we can entertain without fear of restriction by those same data.

Gurney as well as West report with approval a new reading proposed by Th. J. H. Krispijn. There is more to be said about this reading and about its effect on our understanding of ancient Near Eastern music. Krispijn's new reading is for the text UET VII 74, for which Gurney now gives an updated transliteration (p. 102). I reproduce here Gurney's paradigms for the instructions in Chapters I (ll. 1–12) and II (ll. 13–20) of UET VII 74.

(1–12) If the sammu is (tuned as) X and the (interval) Y is not clear, you tighten the string N and then Y will be clear. Tightening.

(13–20) If the sammu is (tuned as) X and you have played an (unclear) interval Y, you loosen the string N and the sammu will be (in the tuning) Z. [Loosening].

When first interpreting this text twenty-five years ago, it was assumed that Chapter I involved loosening the strings one by one, thus shifting the whole tuning gradually downwards; and in Chapter II, tightening the strings one by one, with the reverse effect. As we then read the text, it did not specify tightening or loosening, and so the choice was arbitrary. Gurney (p. 102) blames the choice on the assumption that the text referred to the harp, whose longest and lowest string was identified as “front”, therefore (according to Nabnītu XXXII) the “first”.

The major cities of Babylonia possessed, at least by the end of the fourteenth century B.C., hemerologies which indicated, for each month of the year, which days in that month were regarded as propitious. In the time of Nazimaruttash, king of Babylon, whose reign covered the turn of that century, the versions of Sippar, Nippur, Babylon, Ur, Larsa, Uruk, and Eridu were collated and excerpted to produce a single version, which was presumably regarded thenceforward as the standard version for Babylonia.

This standard version (preceded by a longer text of a rather different kind, which indicated which months of the year were regarded as favourable for the performance of various specified actions, such as founding a palace, changing one's occupation, or falling from a roof) was later—perhaps some two centuries later—set out on a large tablet since found in the remains of the city of Ashur, and was followed on the tablet by a further version, by no means in complete agreement with the standard version, and identified on the tablet as the Ashur version.

To these two versions of the short summary hemerology for the whole year, however, the tablet adds two sets of special very detailed instructions for the first eight days of the seventh month of the year, Tashritu; the first set (to which are prefixed short instructions for certain days of the first month, Nisanu) is described on the tablet as the Ashur version, while the second (a shorter set, differing extensively in detail from the Ashur version, and without prefixed instructions for Nisanu, but including, additionally, special instructions for the ninth day of Tashritu) is marked as the Akkad version.

Le beau cylindre gravé en hématite A 357, trouvé en 1936 pendant la seconde campagne de fouilles à Chagar Bazar (Haute-Syrie), a été publié par Sir Max Mallowan dans son rapport définitif paru dès 1937 dans Iraq 4, 97, 111 et 136 à 137, ainsi que dans un article préliminaire dans Illustrated London News (1937), 521.

Il ressort du rapport dans Iraq, dont on admirera la précision, et l'étendue des comparaisons stylistiques, que le cylindre de Chagar Bazar faisait partie des offrandes funéraires déposées dans un caveau voûté en briques crues, anciennement écroulé, situé sous le sol d'une habitation comprenant au moins quatre pièces, et dont les fondations remontent au XIX e s.av.n.è. (“Grave 153, room 42, level I, early intermediate, section, fig. 6, p. 122”). A la suite de reconstructions, réparations et transformations successives de la maison, le niveau des sols superposés et des pavages dans les courettes a été rehaussé de 3 mètres. L'occupation semble s'être poursuivie jusque vers la fin du XVIIIe s.av.n.è., et aucune trace d'incendie n'a été signalée. Sous le sol de la pièce 42 où fut mis au jour le caveau 153 ont été dégagées trois inhumations: les offrandes qui y furent déposées constituent le contexte archéologique du cylindre A 357. Il se compose de poteries, dont certaines peintes (types fig. 21 (6), 22 (14), 23 (7), 24 (1)), attribuées au “early intermediate level I”, autrement dit à l'Ugarit Moyen 2 de la stratigraphie de Ras Shamra; cf. Stratigraphie Comparée et Chronologie de l'Asie Occidentale, 91, 1900–1750 av.n.è.).