To offer Richard Barnett remarks about Assyrian reliefs is a matter of self-indulgence. I wanted to have the reaction of this scholar most likely to be interested in my ideas about the meaning of the two principal scenes of the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III (858–24 B.C.); the role of the ziggurat in Assyria, on which I will touch only slightly; and a fragment from the reliefs of Sennacherib (704–681 B.C.). I have had to appeal for his aid for the classification of the latter since he is preparing the publication of the collected reliefs from the palace of Sennacherib with the help of Erica Bleibtreu.

Each of the two scenes at the top of Shalmaneser's obelisk, Plate I, a—b, shows a foreign prince kneeling before the Assyrian king with hands and beard touching the ground in the posture of the greatest humility. The lower scene is often reproduced alone because the foreign ruler is Jehu of Israel, whose biblical association is of interest to the general public. The similarity of the two scenes, is unique and invites a search into its meaning. Fortunately, the identity of both foreign rulers is indicated in the inscription above the scenes.

La Bactriane ne fut longtemps connue que comme un territoire limité an nord par l'Oxus, que les Perses avaient tiré de la préhistoire en l'annexant à leur empire, et dont les antécédents échappaient presque totalement. Or en 1966, les autorités afghanes récupérèrent pour le Musée de Kabul un “trésor” de vases d'or et d'argent qui aurait été trouvé fortuitement par des paysans. Il présentait l'intérêt de révéler des contacts inattendus avec la Mésopotamie du IIIe millénaire. Il aurait été trouvé au nord de Kabul, à l'est de la rivière Qunduz-ab, près de la ville de Baghlan. Curieusement, deux noms différents furent attribués au lieu de leur découverte: soit Khosh Tapa, soit Fullol, au point que l'on peut se demander s'il ne s'agirait pas de deux sites différents. Et comme les fouilles effectuées immédiatement ne donnèrent absolument rien, pas même des tessons, la question peut se poser de savoir si les paysans n'auraient pas délibérément trompé les enquêteurs sur l'origine réelle du trésor. En effet, quelques années plus tard, d'autres vases précieux apparaissaient, mais comme cela est bien plus normal, mêlés au matériel très varié mis au jour pas les clandestins, et cette fois dans une région bien déterminée: dans les nécropoles voisines et contemporaines des grandes installations explorées par les archéologues soviétiques dans la plaine de Balkh, en Bactriane occidentale. Les plus importantes de ces installations sont celles du site n° 3 de l'oasis de Dashly-tépé, datées initialement du milieu du IIe millénaire, mais qui pourraient avoir été fondées déjà dans la seconde moitié du IIIie.

The two authors of this brief note together made a tour of Hittite monuments in Turkey in the summer of 1978. RLA arrived in İzmir from abroad a few days earlier than HGG, who was detained in İstanbul by other obligations. While waiting for him, RLA revisited the Karabel and Mt. Sipylus and thus was the first of us to notice the inscription. Since it had not been mentioned in recent years and neither of us had seen it on previous visits to the site we believed that this was a discovery. In fact it is a rediscovery, as we learned from David Hawkins, who reminded us (in correspondence) of the fact that it is included in L. Messerschmidt, CIH 1–2 (MVAG 5, 1900, 4–5 ) as Pl. XXXVIII no. 3. Messerschmidt's source was an article by Eduard Gollob published in 1882.

About three metres to the right of the recess containing the well-known seated goddess, a smaller, partly worked niche contains a large boss (Pl. IXa, arrow). Although the boss has suffered a major fracture, which perhaps led to its abandonment for relief sculpture, it has a plain surface on the side toward the goddess (Pl. IXb). The hieroglyphs are inscribed here, approximately on a level with the torso of the goddess (Pl. Xa, b, Fig. 1). The inscription is arranged in two columns; the right column, with four signs, measures 65 cm., the left one consists of three (or four? see below) signs.

Our knowledge of Urartian jewellery in precious stones and metals has remained obscure in spite of references in Assyrian texts and examples portrayed in Urartian descriptive art. This can be attributed to two causes: (a) The jewellery from illicit excavations has not reached the museums; (b) Urartian tombs and cemeteries have not as yet been subjected to sufficiently methodical systems of research. In addition, jewellery of unknown provenance which has been bought by museums has not been published. However, that brought to light at the three Urartian centres of Karmir-Blur, Altıntepe, and Patnos/Deǧirmentepe has to some degree increased our knowledge of Urartian personal ornamentation.

Jewellery

The jewellery from Altıntepe is made of gold, silver and precious stones:

1. Gold and silver buttons (Pl. XIa–c):

In the second room of the third tomb, and outside the coffin of the man, were found eight gold and six silver buttons. Thirty-two gold buttons, sewn onto the dress of the woman, were found in her sarcophagus. Thirty-eight of the large buttons are 1·75 cm. in diameter and 0·6 cm. in height. All are circular, with convex surfaces decorated at the centre with a six-petalled rosette encircled by six circles in repoussé and six granular triangles. The rosettes and circles are bordered by granules and a gold wire set between two rows of granules encircles the central design around the rim.

Ce verset du Psaume 150 s'applique bien à Richard D. Barnett, car durant sa féconde direction du Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities, il a fait restaurer, entre autres objets des tombes royales d'Ur, la harpe de Pu-abi et la lyre en argent. Ces réflexions sur les harpes et les lyres mésopotamiennes m'ont donc été suggérées par son article paru en 1969 dans Iraq XXXI: “New Facts about Musical Instruments from Ur” (pp. 96–103).

Il faut bien souligner que sans les instruments des tombes d'Ur, “royalement” exhumés par Sir Leonard Woolley, notre matériel de base serait uniquement iconographique, ce qui n'est certes pas négligeable; mais les représentations d'instruments sur les reliefs et les cylindres-sceaux ne nous renseignent pas comme les objets eux-mêmes; par contre elles permettent de préciser la position du musicien par rapport à l'instrument – debout ou assise –, suivant la taille de la lyre et de la harpe. Les femmes dominent dans les tombes d'Ur: les quatre lyres du “Puits de la mort” étaient jouées par quatre femmes au moment de l'holocauste.

When I was still a student, Dr. Barnett gave me the part-time job of sorting the cylinder seal collection in the Western Asiatic Department of the British Museum, of which he was then Keeper. Now, some twenty years later, the catalogue of Akkadian to Ur III seals, which this led to, has just appeared, and this article is based on two “firsts” (as S. N. Kramer would put it) to which my attention was drawn while I was studying the seals. I have found seals a fascinating and continuous source of inspiration and information and the fact that I am still writing about them after twenty years is a measure of the debt I owe Dr. Barnett.

Hunting: Cylinder seal BM 105159 (Pl. XVII(a)), is cut with a presentation scene: a deity leads a worshipper before a seated god. Behind the worshipper is a figure (Pl. XVll(b)), who wears a skirt, raises his left arm and holds, in his right hand, what I thought was a footed cup in which was a stirring rod or spoon. However, when I took this, and other seals, to the British Museum (Natural History) for identification of the animals, it was pointed out to me, by Mr. Colton, that the “cup” might be a falcon sitting on a falconer's wrist.

An enquiry which seemed simple enough at the outset, has developed alarmingly in the course of investigation and now covers a wide field which can only be briefly indicated in this note. It concerns seven ornaments in all, two of which have long been in the possession of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden; the other five were excavated by Sir Flinders Petrie and his staff for the British School of Egyptian Archaeology at Tell el-Ajjul, south of Gaza, between 1930–52, and are now dispersed in various museums (see Fig. 1 and Plates XXI–XXII).

From the time of discovery onwards, the bird represented on the Ajjul ornaments was described as a falcon, and there seemed no reason to question it. But many years later, Miss Sylvia Benton suggested to me – on seeing the Ajjul gold ornaments – that the craftsman intended to represent a wryneck jynx torquilla. It is only recently that I have had the opportunity to explore the possibility further. This paper is the result of that enquiry. Furthermore, I would like to suggest that the bird portrayed on Tutankhamen's earrings is the same bird as on the examples found at Tell el-Ajjul, whatever that may prove to be. The authors of the catalogues accompanying the exhibition of these treasures on view in Paris (1967) and in London (1972) did not commit themselves as to the identity of the bird.

The identification of Old Persian yakā- with Dalbergia sissoo Roxburgh was suggested by Ilya Gershevitch in a memorable article in 1957 after extensive investigations in the Bashākard mountains of northern Iranian Makran (east of L. 58, c. 100 miles north-east of Jask). The sissoo has been defined as a “large deciduous tree, bark grey, heartwood brown with darker veins, leaflets 3–5, broadly elliptical or ovate”, and K. A. Chowdhury has studied its distribution in northern India, starting from the Indus, spreading east to Assam, sticking to the sub-Himalayan tracts and usually going up to 1,000 m. above sea level. It also extends far into the plains along river banks. In Baluchistan it grows in the Suleiman range between the Indus and the Zhob rivers, having been noted as early as 1890 by J. H. Lace in his study of the vegetation of Baluchistan in the Wam Tangi forest situated in the limestone ranges in the Hurnai district, where it reached a height of 35 feet. Its distribution within Pakistan includes the districts of Dera Ghazi Khan, Dera Ismail Khan, Bannu, Hazara, and it can be seen in Peshawar growing on the University campus and in front of Dean's Hotel (Pl. XXIIIa). A specimen from Nepal was given to Sir Max Mallowan in 1973 and is illustrated here (Fig. 1).

1. The tablet published here for the first time belongs to the Musée d'art et d'histoire of Geneva. In 1960, as my employment at that museum was drawing to a close, I copied the tablet for publication but circumstances beyond my control (to borrow that well-worn but convenient cliché) delayed its publication long enough to enable me to offer it here as a modest tribute to my old friend and former colleague, “R.D.B.”, an archaeologist who has always appreciated the services epigraphy could render to archaeology.

2. The text (copy on p. 74 below) reads in transliteration and translation:

(1) 3 ma-na na4 za-gìn

(2) mu urudualam lug[al]

a-ab-ba sig-ga a-a[b] -

ba igi-nim-da gú-[ ḡar-šè]

(3) mu sukal-mah-šè

(4) ki lú-diḡir-[ra]

du[b](!)-[sar-ta]

(5) a-a-ḡu10[šabra]

(6) šu-ba-an-[ti]

(7) iti á-ki-[ti]

(8) mu dšu- d E[N.Z]U

[1]ugal

A rather choice cuneiform fragment from the British Museum forms the subject of the present note, viz. BM 47749 = 81-11-3, 454, here copied as Fig. 1. The composition may be conveniently classed in the “historical-literary” genre, or more specifically, in the “historical epic” genre, although at present no more than one-quarter of the original tablet is available. It is with much pleasure that I dedicate this study to the distinguished sometime Keeper of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities who is the recipient of this celebratory volume, and who for so many years had the resources of the British Museum tablet collections under his care.

The small group of historical epics discussed by A. K. Grayson includes three Late Babylonian copies of texts from Babylon describing events under second millennium kings, two of which are concerned with Kassite kings; a Kurigalzu (probably Kurigalzu II), and Adad-šuma-uṣur. The present Late Babylonian text, BM 47749, is likewise concerned with one of the kings named Kurigalzu, but differs from the published manuscripts in having one, rather than two, columns per side.

It is with great pleasure that I dedicate this short piece to Dr. Barnett. It was his original article, entitled “Monkey Business”, that led to this attempt to find out a little more about monkeys in ancient Mesopotamia.

In the collection of terracottas from Ur now in the British Museum there appear three types of moulded relief plaque depicting a man with monkeys. As far as I am aware, except for one plaque without a provenance, all the known examples come from Ur.

All the plaques clearly show a man with either one or two monkeys.

Type 1 (Pl. XXIVa) shows a bearded man facing right. He wears a close-fitting cap with a wide band and a wraparound skirt down to the calf, with a fringed side edge and a belt. He is bare-chested. In his left hand he holds a lead which is attached to the neckrings of two monkeys, one on his shoulder, the other seated in front of him playing a flute. In his bent right hand the man holds a folded-over object, perhaps another musical instrument (?clappers), possibly to be played by the second monkey which sits on the man's shoulder clutching his cap with its head snuggling down on the head of the man. Both monkeys are long-tailed.

There are three examples of this type of plaque in the museum, one almost complete and two fragmentary.

Throughout his long and distinguished career Dr. R. D. Barnett has been greatly interested in metalwork of the 1st millennium B.C. and has made many important contributions to this subject. Naturally these have tended to concentrate on the collections with which he has been for so long associated, those of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum. They range from his studies of the Toprak Kale material to a recent article on the Nimrud bowls, and even include some thoughts on the bronze coffins which are the subject of this article (Barnett 1956, pp. 114–16). If the conclusions reached here are slightly different from his own, I hope he will forgive my temerity and accept this offering in the spirit in which it is intended, one of respect, affection, and also gratitude, for his learning and enthusiasm have ever been an inspiration to younger colleagues such as myself.

The coffins under discussion here are square at one end and rounded at the other, and have high straight sides. They are made from two sheets of bronze hammered into shape and joined together in the middle of the long sides. The joins are concealed by vertical strips of bronze applied inside and out and held in position by rivets.

The so-called Tawagalawas Letter – the longest and most controversial document in the Ahhiyawa dossier – opens with the well-known incident in which (as hitherto understood) Tawagalawas sends a message to the Hittite king demanding recognition as a vassal and requesting the dispatch of the tuhkanti- to conduct him into the royal presence. The king dispatches the TARTĒNU, one of his sons, but Tawagalawas refuses to go with him and demands immediate recognition on the spot. The demand is refused and the king protests to the king of Ahhiyawa in this letter about the insult inflicted on his representative.

Dr. Itamar Singer has shown, in an article later in this volume, that the applicant for vassaldom was most probably not Tawagalawas at all but Piyamaradus, whose activities are the subject of the rest of the document. The present article however is concerned rather with the rank of the envoy sent by the Hittite king.

Die einstmals kreisrunde, flache Bronzescheibe, angeblich aus Ostanatolien, die hier vorgestellt wird (Pl. XXX–XXXI), befand sich 1981 für kurze Zeit im Labor der Prähistorischen Staatssammlung, München. Die Form des Bleches, die bisher bekannten Beschlagblechen nicht genau entspricht, die historische Darstellung auf dem umlaufenden Fries und das Mittelemblem verdienen eine genauere Behandlung.

Die Scheibe: Die durchschnittlich auf eine Dicke von ungefähr 1/2 mm. ausgehämmerte Bronzescheibe wird durch 4 konzentrische getriebene Wülste in einen mittleren Kreis, drei Zonen und einen Rand aufgeteilt (Fig. 1, Pl. XXXa). Im Übrigen ist sie ganz flach, und das dürfte auch ihrem antiken Zustand entsprechen: sie muß allerdings einmal brutal quer gefaltet gewesen sein, wovon eine Reihe von Rissen und Knicken herrühren, die von links unten nach rechts oben verlaufen (Pl. XXXa); an den Enden dieser Faltung ist auch der Rand am weitesten ausgerissen. Die nachträgliche Begradigung dieser Partie ist wohl modern. Links oben und rechts unten jedoch ist der offenbar ursprünglache flache Zustand bewahrt.

The Sumerian deluge myth is inscribed on a six-colume Nippur tablet in the University Museum, of which only the lower third is preserved. It was first published by Arno Poebel in 1914, in PBS V no. 1, and was edited by him with exemplary detail, care, and circumspection in the same year in PBS IV pp. 9–70. In 1950, I published a new translation of the text in ANET pp. 42–4 – except for a few modifications, it was based entirely on Poebel's edition. In more recent years, two scholars have made serious attempts to retranslate and reinterpret the text. In 1969, Miguel Civil published a new transliteration and translation of the myth in Lambert and Millard's atrahasis pp. 138–45 (philological notes ibid. pp. 167–74). In 1981, Thorkild Jacobsen published a new transliteration, translation and interpretation of the composition which he entitled “The Eridu Genesis”, in JBL 100/4 pp. 513–29. Both Civil and Jacobsen have made a number of significant and useful lexicographical, grammatical and interpretative suggestions. But neither of them have resolved the baffling difficulties and obscurities that abound in the text, and much of its contents still remains puzzling and enigmatic, especially the first part of the myth relating the events leading up to the divine decision to destroy mankind by sending a devastating flood on the land.

The Tell Fekherye inscriptions contained more than one surprise for both the Assyriologist and the Aramaist. In this article we will deal with Aramaic qlqlt' which was previously known from texts in various Aramaic dialects from the first millennium C.E. and also with tubkinnu its equivalent in the Akkadian text. Richard Barnett, to whom this article is dedicated, has opened one of the great treasure troves to the scholarly world – the Western Asiatic collections of the British Museum. We take this occasion to also comment on treasure trove in the ancient world.

The word qlqlt' occurs in the Tell Fekherye inscription in 1. 22 of the Aramaic text: wmn qlqlt' llqṭw 'nšwh š‘rn klw “may his people scavenge barley to eat from the rubbish dump(s)”. The noun qlqlt' in this form occurs in various Targumic texts. Thus in 1 Sam 2:8 (= Ps 113:7) mē'ašpōt yārīm 'ebyōn “He lifts up the needy from the refuse heap” is translated miqqilqilātā/mĕrīm/yerīm hĕšīkā. The ša‘ar ha-ḥarsīt of Jer. 19:2 is translated tĕra‘ qilqiltā “dung gate” and the enigmatic śēfātayim of Ps 68:14 was interpreted as a plural of 'ašpā “dung heap, refuse dump” and translated qilqilātā. The same translation was offered for 'ašpātōt of Lam 4:5.

Writing in Carchemish, Vol. III (1952), Richard Barnett brought the evidence of the two Hieroglyphic Luwian stelae found at Tell Ahmar (the Assyrian Til-Barsip) to bear on the Karkamiš chronology. At that date, immediately after the discovery of KARATEPE, the value of a number of Hieroglyphic signs was still not established, which hampered the readings of some of the rulers' names. Also the actual dynastic information provided by the two mutilated stelae lay still largely out of reach. It is nevertheless remarkable that the progress in interpretation of these and related monuments over the last thirty years has tended to confirm the datings originally proposed by Barnett. Thus it is with great pleasure that I offer to Richard Barnett in this volume a new piece of information which elucidates some points on the TELL AHMAR stelae and permits an interesting new interpretation.

Tribute must be paid to Richard Barnett for his contributions, inter alia, to the interpretation of many of the scenes on the Assyrian sculptures. His studies have drawn attention to the detailed information which may be drawn from this important source. In many conversations with me as a colleague in the British Museum he showed particular interest in the Assyrian landscape and representation of nature. Thus he identified the Assyrian garden in the reliefs of Ashurbanipal's N. Palace at Nineveh (Plate XXXIIIa). In this the garden is drawn as planned around a hill, or high feature, on top of which is a garden house. Watering was by aqueduct and channels arranged so that in the downhill flow no material part was inaccessible to irrigation. Trees which provided some shade, also served as supports for vines planted between them. In the Assyrian tradition temples also had similar gardens associated with them.