The silver bowl which is illustrated in Plate I was acquired by the Ashmolean Museum in 1964. It was said to have been formerly in the possession of a dealer in Teheran, who bought it in Hamadan. The story is too stereotyped to have much archaeological significance. Nevertheless it may be true; for there is nothing surprising, as we shall see, in a vessel of this form and character being found in the ancient capital of the Medes.

The bowl was described as “Achaemenian”; and so, at first sight, it might seem to be. But closer inspection reveals some particulars of form and decoration which are not quite characteristic of attested Achaemenian works, but suggest a different history. Since no real reliance can be placed on the only statements of provenance which we have, it is from form and decoration alone that the origins of the bowl may be inferred.

The bowl is somewhat abruptly articulated into a shallow container, almost flat below, and a broad flaring rim which springs from a sharply incurved shoulder (Fig. I, a). Of the total depth of about 34 mm. the container accounts for a little more than half, with a capacity of about seven fluid ounces, or one third of a pint. The bowl was thus designed to hold about as much liquid as could easily be drained at a draught. A residue would always have been trapped by the shoulder.

It is appropriate to dedicate this article to Sidney Smith, on the occasion of his seventy-seventh birthday, for like many scholars primarily concerned with the ancient history and archaeology of Western Asia, his interests were frequently drawn to the distant field of South Arabia where so much enigmatic material reminiscent of the northern, urban monuments of Syria, Mesopotamia and Babylonia has been found.

The boldly carved, large alabaster head here illustrated on Plates XXIV–XXV is as good a specimen of its kind as I have ever seen, and can be confidently authenticated, not only because of its assured style and antique condition, but also on account of the circumstances of discovery.

This head, which is at present privately owned, was found by a young officer, in 1962, when his regiment was stationed in Aden. On a long distance patrol he visited the ancient city of Timna‘ which he noted as situated on the Yemen-Aden Protectorate border, about two days drive by armoured car, west of ‘Ataq. He described the site as ‘ now reduced by nature to cover a square mile of rubble, often covered with high sand-dunes. There is no water now and only a few Beduin live there’. He also observed that this appeared to be the site of an ancient capital city, that broken pillars and other architectural remains were lying around and that walls and gates could still be traced.

The text published as no. 394 (plates CCLXXVIII f.) in U.E.T. VI, (Second Part) is written, as there described, on a complete tablet measuring 14 × 7 cms. This tablet was found during the excavations at Ur, but in circumstances unknown, for it bears no excavation-number nor mark of any kind, and in fact can be identified henceforth (until it receives a museum-number) only by the number it bears in the aforesaid publication. This is the first obscurity of a text which abounds otherwise in that disconcerting quality.

A far more serious defect is the condition of its surface. Upon the ‘body’ of the tablet a thin overlay of finer clay seems to have been spread, and the inscription made upon this, no doubt with the view of obtaining greater clearness. The result has been unfortunate—over irregular spaces the overlay has become detached, carrying away the signs with it. Occasionally it is possible to trace a faint impression on the ‘body’ clay below, where a mark of the stilus has penetrated the overlay, but much has disappeared completely, and much of what remains is very indistinct. It has been peculiarly difficult to reproduce this text; the copy published is the last of several attempts, and is itself, no doubt, capable of improvement through younger and better eyes. A necessity experienced throughout was to adhere as faithfully as possible to what the tablet seems really to carry, i.e. in detachment, where necessary, from many partial duplicate readings which ‘ought’ to exist, and which there is a constant temptation to ‘find’ in the sadly defective lines of no. 394. For the collation of several signs in the K. tablets published in R. Campbell Thompson, The Epic of Gilgamish, plates 27–29 I am much beholden to Dr. E. Sollberger.

It is now over thirty years since the Oxford (Weld)—Field Museum Expedition to Mesopotamia closed its excavations, after ten seasons' work (1923–33), at Tells Ingharra and 'Uhaimir: the site of ancient Kish. Throughout these excavations Professor S. Langdon acted as director of the expedition, rarely appearing in the field, but maintaining a constant interest in the progress of excavation and publishing all epigraphic material and a number of interim reports on the archaeological results. From 1923–6 E. Mackay was director in the field, from 1926–33 L. Ch. Watelin. Mackay's transfer to India and subsequent preoccupation with work there, Watelin's premature death, in January 1934, and Langdon's primary concern with epigraphy have meant that the archaeological discoveries of this expedition were very unevenly published. This is particularly true of the work on Tell Ingharra, the primary area of excavation, where a very important archaeological sequence was revealed between 1925 and 1932. Watelin's reports on this work were published in Excavations at Kish III, 1930; the temple, and Excavations at Kish, IV, 1934: the ‘Z’ area and the ‘Y’ soundings. As he made clear, even these reports were only intended as an interim record of work still proceeding.

In a recent issue of this journal Prof. Mallowan reviewed the historical evidence for the flood described in the biblical story of Noah. In the table that he prepared three floods are noted at Kish. Two of them occurred in c. 2900 B.C. and rely for their identification on evidence of water-deposited material in the streets and damage to mud-brick walls: the third, the latest and most violent, dated to c. 2600 B.C. was again identified by evidence from the streets and deposited an average of 40 cm. of water-borne material—that is about sixteen inches. The same table read in conjunction with the text (p. 80), indicated for Shurrupak (Fara) a deposit of clay and sand of about 60 cm. thickness over an “ordinary patch of charcoal and ashes” above the Jamdat Nasr level and below the Early Dynastic: it is dated to c. 2850 B.C. AS these levels are dated c. 3000 B.C. and c. 2850 respectively, I suppose that the flood deposit could have occurred at any intervening date, but that specific evidence suggests 2850 B.C.

For Ur the table records flood deposits from 3·72 to 0·72 metres thick in c. 3500 B.C. at the end of the ‘Ubaid period (the text records greater depths) and deposits of unknown depth dated to c. 2700 B.C.

The second season of excavations at Tell al Rimah, from March 1st to May 15th, 1965, was again sponsored jointly by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq and the University Museum, Philadelphia. The British School was assisted by contributions from the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, Brussels. The staff consisted of Mrs. T. H. Carter (Assistant Director), representing the University Museum; Mr. Aubrey Trik (architect) and Mrs. Helen Trik (draughtsman) of the University Museum; Mr. Nicholas Kindersley (photographer and surveyor), Miss Elizabeth Dowman (registrar), Messrs. Julian Reade, Geoffrey Turner, John Bellingham, Andrew Tait (archaeologists), of the British School. The epigraphist was Dr. H. W. F. Saggs of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. We were fortunate to have the assistance for shorter periods of Mr. David Crownover and Miss Siiri Woodward from the University Museum, Miss Dominique Collon and Mr. David French. Sayyid Ghanim Wahida was the representative of the Directorate-General of Antiquities and co-operated energetically in the work of the expedition. I must once again acknowledge my debt to all my colleagues, to government officials in Mosul and Tell Afar for their courteous assistance on many occasions, and to Dr. Faisal al Wailly (Director-General of Antiquities) and Professor Fuad Safar (Inspector-General of Excavations) for the close and friendly co-operation which they and their staff invariably extend to us.

The purpose of this article is to make available to specialists and others interested the resources of Birmingham in the matter of ancient Near Eastern Seals. As would be expected, the lion's share comes from the City Museum, and I am indebted to Nicholas Thomas, Keeper of the Department of Archaeology, for permission to study and publish this material. His assistant, John Ruffle, has helped me by gathering the material together and in every other way. Miss Tess Martin, also of the City Museum, has kindly made impressions of all the seals published here.

Of the 56 seals in the City Museum, 42, numbered 541’65–582’65, were received quite recently as a bequest from Air Commodore E. St. Clair Harnett. He served as an officer in the Royal Air Force in Iraq shortly after the First World War, and assisted the late Miss Gertrude Bell in her founding of the Baghdad Museum. He is mentioned in her letters as “Squadron Leader Harnett”, and it is appropriate that his collection should be published in Iraq, the Gertrude Bell Memorial. A notebook accompanying the seals records that they were collected in Baghdad between 1922 and 1927. Only in one case, now numbered 566’65, does it record the source of a seal, as Kish. Of the other 14 seals (all received from other donors), five, 552’62–556’62, were given by Woolley, and need not have come from Ur, since they are not included in the official publications.

Die in Königsinschriften, Gebeten und einigen babylonischen Epen oft genannten Igigu-Götter stehen in jüngeren Texten gewöhnlich neben den Anunnaku-Göttern. Da in manchen von diesen den Anunnaku als Göttern der Unterwelt bzw. der Erde die Igigu als Götter des Himmels gegenübergestellt werden, hat man früher gemeint, man habe in der babylonischen Götterwelt seit jeher die beiden Gruppen der Igigu droben und der Anunnaku drunten unterschieden. Demgegenüber habe ich in einem 1962 in Leiden gehaltenen Vortrag, der in Compte Rendu de l'Onzième Rencontre Assyriologique internationale (Leiden 1964), S.102–111, veröffentlicht wurde, versucht aufzuzeigen, dass die mit beiden Bezeichnungen verbundenen Vorstellungen nicht immer die gleichen waren. Die Sumerer kannten nur die Anunna-Götter; die Belege für a-nun-na in der sumerischen Literatur hat seither A. Falkenstein in Studies in Honor of Benno Landsberger (A.S., 16 (Chicago), 1965, S. 127–140), erstmalig in sehr grosser Zahl gesammelt und geordnet. Das mit Igigu gleichgesetzte sumerische nun-gal-e-ne “grosse Fürsten” taucht, wie ich gezeigt habe, erst etwa gleichzeitig mit dem akkadischen Begriff in der Ḫammurabi-Zeit oder wenig früher auf und dürfte ein künstliches Übersetzungswort sein. Während ich mich bemüht habe, zwischen den Igigu und den Anunnaku in akkadischen Texten zu differenzieren, vertrat kürzlich B. Kienast in seinem Beitrag zur eben genannten Landsberger-Festschrift (S.141–158) “ Igigū und Anunnakkū nach den akkadischen Quellen” die Ansicht, dass beide Ausdrücke in den meisten Texten synonym seien (vgl. besonders § 45ff. seines Aufsatzes). Nur für die älteste Zeit (s. § 45) rechnet auch Kienast mit der Möglichkeit, dass der Begriff Igigu in einer anderen. Gottesvorstellung wurzeln könne als a-nun-na, weil die Götter der Akkader einen stärker kosmischen Charakter gehabt hätten als die der Sumerer, für die vor allem chthonische Vorstellungen bestimmend gewesen seien. Da ich mich Kienasts Auffassung in wesentlichen Punkten nicht anschliessen kann und einige wichtige neue Zeugnisse bekannt geworden sind, möchte ich hier kurz auf die Göttergruppenfrage zurückkommen, mich dabei aber im ganzen auf das altbabylonische Material beschränken.

The recent discoveries at the site of Tell es-Sawwan, south of Samarra, have completely revolutionized our ideas concerning early village communities in Mesopotamia. Earlier excavations at sites like Jarmo, Matarrah, and Hassuna had in no way led us to expect the elaborate and extraordinary ground stone industry or the early mud-brick architecture that was to emerge from this site. Moreover, the evidence for cereal cultivation reveals an agricultural situation hitherto unsuspected in the Tigris valley. Three seasons of excavations have been carried out at Tell es-Sawwan by the Iraqi Directorate-General of Antiquities, and the preliminary report of the first season by Dr. Faisal El-Wailly and Mr. Behnam Abu Al-Soof has now appeared in Sumer. The writer wishes to express her gratitude both to Dr. El-Wailly and Mr. Abu Al-Soof for their very generous permission to publish here the baked clay figurines from the first two seasons.

At the foot of, and roughly south-south-east of, the ziggurrat at Nimrud stood the temple of Ninurta, on the floor of room 1 of which, excavated by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq in 1956, were found “a number of fragments, some of them inscribed, of a burnt white limestone statue of Shalmaneser III, in the round.” These fragments, now in the Iraq Museum, were numbered as a group by the excavator ND 5571, and by the Iraq Museum IM 60497. They comprised the right elbow and a small part of adjacent body behind and below (IM 60497A), two subsequently joined inscribed fragments (IM 60497B), a fragment of clasped hands (IM 60497C), and some other fragments including one bearing traces of seven lines of inscription so very slight as to be, for the present writer, beyond consecutive comprehension.

The right elbow of the statue of Shalmaneser III “found in fragments by a ploughman in fields in the outer town near the foot of the south-east corner of the akropolis” is missing; but not only is the thickness (13 cm.) of the forearm at the lower end of the elbow-fragment IM 60497A considerably too small to fit the upper end of the right forearm of the statue found by the ploughman, but it also extends too far above the elbow (that is, it extends upwards beyond the point above the elbow down to which the statue's upper arm is preserved) to allow any possibility of regarding it as having belonged to the ploughman's statue.

In 1932 Sidney Smith published an article on ‘An Egyptian in Babylonia’ indicating a link between Egypt and Dēr where a brick inscription and drawing of the Amarna period was discovered. This interest in the relation between Egypt and her neighbours has long characterized his writings so that it would seem appropriate to publish here some fragmentary texts which offer evidence of Egyptian presence in Babylonia in the Neo-Babylonian period.

The Assyrian royal annals and administrative texts show that Egyptian prisoners were taken to Nineveh and Calah following the campaigns of Sargon II, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal in Palestine and the Delta. However, when compared with the Neo-Assyrian evidence, scant though it is, even less is known of Egypt's contacts with Babylonia in the second half of the first millennium B.C. The Babylonian Chronicle gives some notice of the military encounter between the two powers in the Middle Euphrates area, culminating in the heavy defeat of the Egyptian army by Nebuchadrezzar II at Carchemish in the late spring of 605 B.C, the survivors being picked up in the Hamath plain. The same source tells how the Egyptians had recovered sufficiently to inflict a damaging reverse on the Babylonians when they tried to invade four years later. It is not yet clear when, and how far, the Babylonians were able to revenge this defeat.

Moortgat here gives an account of the fourth campaign at Tell Chuēra, an important site situated on the frontier of North Central Syria, between the Ḫabur and the Balikh, about equidistant from Ras el ‘Ain and Tell Abiadh, in steppe country studded with ancient settlements. The work was conducted under the auspices of the Max-Freiherr-von-Oppenheim Institute and the Deutsches Forschungsgemeinschaft, and is a pendant to the campaign instituted at Tell Halaf on the Upper Ḫabur by Oppenheim in 1911–1912. The results obtained at Chuēra also have a significant relation to the discoveries made by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, in 1934–1938, at Chazar Bazar, Brak and elsewhere in the eastern Habur-Jaghjagha District, and are therefore peculiarly appropriate to discussion in this Journal which published accounts of these excavations about thirty years ago. Thus investigations spread over a period of more than 50 years are gradually placing this part of Northern Syria in a perspective which has become more clearly intelligible through the foreground of Babylonia.

The main mound of Chuēra is of large dimensions and spans a distance of over 1,000 metres from north to south. Winter rains are apt to be heavy, and water is available from a wadi of the same name. Buildings have appeared in several sectors of the mound, both of undressed stone, Steinbau I & III, and of mud-brick.

The district known as Hawrayn-Shaykhān is situated about 40 miles north-east of Khānaqīn in the narrow strip of territory between the Sirwān (Diyālá) river and the hog's back of Bamō, which here marks the Iraqi-Persian boundary. Shaykhān proper comprises only the villages of Shāwāzī, Bākh-Hanārān, Bēlūla, Qulingachīn and Darband, the last two within one of the great ravines that scar Bamō on its western side.

It was my good fortune to make my first visit in the middle of March (1926), a lovely time of year, when the streams were full and the whole country was carpeted with the tender green of lush grass and the brilliant colours of ranunculus, anemones, and countless other wild flowers.

The rock carving (Plate XLV a) is up in the face of the cliff, here called Kuwālē, on the southern side of the Shaykhān ravine and overlooking the village of Darband. Without much difficulty we reached a point from which we could see quite clearly the small, beardless, principal personage looking towards the mouth of the gorge, dressed apparently in only a rolled cap, a necklace with a circular plaque falling over the chest, and a knee-length loin cloth, and holding a spindle-shaped object, presumably a dagger, in the right hand and a bow in the left. Immediately behind him, below the dagger hand, there is an upright cylindrical object, no doubt the quiver. He appears to be taking a step forward onto a supine enemy and towards another on bended knee in a posture of supplication. A cuneiform inscription occupies the space behind the suppliant. All the figures seem wooden and lifeless, with the legs and feet of the principal personage in particular badly out of proportion, all in striking contrast to the tremendous vitality of the Naram-Sin carving of Darband-i Gawr (Plate XLVb) about 30 miles away to the north-west.

None of the three swords to be discussed has a precise provenance. The first sword is the property of R. T. Clough Esq., and was kindly lent to us for examination; the second was bought through dealers and is now the property of the Institute of Archaeology, University of London; the third was kindly given to the Institute of Archaeology by G. Nazar Esq., to whom we would like here to record our sincere thanks.

Our purpose will be to discuss the techniques by which these swords were made; to consider their relationships with one another, and to suggest a chronological framework which can be used for dating similar Iranian iron weapons.

Although heavily corroded this sword is essentially complete insofar as the metallic part is concerned, measuring 52·5 cms. from pommel to point. The blade can best be described as having the outline of a willow-leaf, with its maximum width, 3 cms., rather more than a third of its length from the hilt. Down the centre of the blade on both faces is a wide flattened mid-rib, tapering at the point.

It is appropriate that the eleven letters here published, mostly concerned with imperial and military administration in the Assyrian Empire, should be dedicated to my teacher Professor Sidney Smith on the occasion of his seventy-seventh birthday, since to him I owe both the origin of my interest in this subject, and also invaluable assistance in my initial steps towards the interpretation of letters of this collection.

This publication, like that of previous sections of my ‘Nimrud Letters, 1952’, is to be taken as provisional only, since there still remain to be edited and published almost another hundred letters or fragments of letters, the contents of which may throw further light upon letters already published or necessitate some modifications of conclusions previously drawn from them. I am planning to publish all the Nimrud Letters in book form, with full grammatical and historical discussions, and to assist towards this project I have already collated all those Nimrud Letters previously published which are now in the Baghdad Museum; since these letters have been cleaned since I originally copied them, collation has in a number of instances produced improved readings.