I saw the great mound of Brak for the first time on a hot afternoon in November, 1934, when, together with my wife and Mr. Macartney, I was examining the ancient sites in the Khabur and Jaghjagha valleys of northern Syria. As we walked up the steep slopes of the tall we kicked aside countless fragments of potsherds and other ancient debris, and parched as we were it seemed tedious to speculate on what periods of history lay buried within. To us no less than to others bent on the same quest who had passed that way before, it was clear that here was a site of great historical importance. Layard, von Oppenheim, Dunand and Poidebard had in turn marked it down, but had been deflected by other objectives. Only Father Poidebard had stopped long enough to excavate a Roman camp on the plain near by, and after driving a trench into the upper slopes of the tall had satisfied himself that it had been an important Assyrian settlement. For my own part, I noted that this was a magnificent site which would be well worth digging, provided that sufficient funds were available for the purpose. But before attempting to come to grips with so formidable a mound it was obviously desirable to find out more about the general sequence of stratification elsewhere in the district. We therefore continued to look for a smaller site which would yield results more quickly, and after completing our survey in December, 1934, we decided to start on Chagar Bazar about 20 miles N.N.W. of Brak as the crow flies, where we dug for two successive seasons in the Spring of 1935 and 1936. The results obtained during these two campaigns I have already described in previous numbers of Iraq.

In 1932 the British School of Archaeology in Iraq made a grant of £600 towards an expedition to Arpachiyah, this being the first donation of the Gertrude Bell Memorial Fund to an archaeological expedition. The Trustees of the Percy Sladen Memorial (Linnean Society) also made a generous award of £400, and there were further munificent grants of £100 from Sir Charles Marston, £500 from an anonymous donor, and from many private subscribers. The Trustees of the British Museum undertook the scientific responsibility for the expedition.

In 2012, the Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey (EPAS) conducted its first season of fieldwork. The project's goal is the complete mapping of the archaeological landscape of Erbil, with an emphasis on the Neo-Assyrian and Hellenistic periods. It will test the hypothesis that the Neo-Assyrian landscape was closely planned. This first report emphasizes the project's field methodology, especially the use of a variety of satellite remote sensing imagery. Our preliminary results suggest that the plain was part of the urbanized world of Mesopotamia, with new cities of the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Sasanian era identified.

In discussions of the agricultural economies of ancient Mesopotamia, scholars commonly make a sharp distinction between intensive irrigation in the south and extensive rain-fed farming in the north (Weiss 1986; Bagg 2000: 283). In popular as well as academic publications Babylonia is strongly associated with canals, and when one thinks of large state-sponsored initiatives the massive integrated network of canals built by the Sasanian rulers of southern Mesopotamia (Adams 1978) normally springs to mind first. However, since the mid-nineteenth century archaeology and epigraphy have documented the great irrigation schemes of the Neo-Assyrian kings. The inscriptions of Sennacherib in particular refer proudly to his great network of canals, and often describe them in the context of luxurious gardens and parks. The inscriptions make mention of the waters' use for vegetable garden plots and, less frequently, for grain fields above and below Nineveh.

The long standing importance of lapis lazuli in Mesopotamia is shown by the early date of its original importation during the Late Ubaid period. This was probably the first moment that man had sufficient wealth and leisure to begin the quest for luxuries. Hitherto his trade had been confined to the import of essential materials, such as flint and obsidian for blades. But during Gawra XIII he initiated a wide-ranging luxury trade, and for the first time we find beads of turquoise, amethyst, agate, jadeite, beryl and lapis lazuli. Most of these stones occur on the Iranian plateau, but there are only rumours of a source of lapis lazuli in Iran, which cannot be substantiated. The most likely source for this early Gawran lapis is, in fact, the mines at Badakhshan, some fifteen hundred miles to the east, across desert and mountain; and one of the principal reasons for investigating lapis lazuli was the tradition that it originated only from the Badakhshan mines. Although this exclusive claim cannot be regarded as proven, Badakhshan remains the only probable source, and it follows that as early as c. 3500 B.C. trade was established between ancient Iraq and distant Afghanistan—convincing proof of the widespread scope of early trade and communications.

The two tablets published here for the first time, BM 45642 and BM 28825, are edited together for good reason, for the historical background of both texts is very probably the same episode in King Ashurbanipal's drive to acquire scribal learning. Where BM 28825 concerns the reception of the Assyrian king's demand for tablets among the citizens of Babylon, BM 45642 deals with the reaction of scholars of nearby Borsippa to a similar royal message. BM 45642 is the better preserved of the two tablets, and allows a fuller understanding of both texts' formal characteristics and of the contextual background. Consequently we present it first.

The text inscribed on BM 45642 (81-7-6, 35) is a letter, though not a typical one. It begins with an extremely deferential address to Ashurbanipal (11. 1–4). Following a series of standard royal epithets, the address pays homage to the Assyrian king as the divinely appointed suzerain of Assyria and Babylonia. It goes on to record Nabû's patronage of the king, and to acknowledge his skill in Nabû's special field of writing, an expertise already well known from Ashurbanipal's own inscriptions. These clauses are chosen with care, for the writer is evidently a scholar from Borsippa, Nabû's cult-centre. With them he invokes a certain feeling of mutual fellowship. The name of the sender is expected at the end of the address, but although the end of 1. 4 is broken there does not seem to be a name there, and we have restored instead nilt[apra umma] “we send word as follows”. In this the text departs from normal Neo-Babylonian usage, perhaps because it is not a regular letter but, as becomes clear, a formal and collective communication on behalf of all the scholars of Borsippa.

The 2003–2006 Suburban Survey at Tell Brak investigated the spatial dimensions of the city's urban origins and evolution via intensive systematic surface survey. This report places this research in the broader context of research on Near Eastern urban origins and development, describes the survey and remote sensing methods and summarises the results, which challenge several long-held models for the timing and geographical origins of urbanism in the Near East. Urbanism at Brak coalesced over the course of several centuries in the late fifth and early fourth millennia BC, when it evolved from a series of spatially discrete settlement zones into a 130-hectare city, without the benefit of irrigated agriculture. Other urban phases occurred in the late third millennium (70 hectare) and in the Late Bronze Age (45 hectare), all with different urban morphologies. Brak's final settlement occurred in the Abbasid period, when a 14-hectare town grew around the Castellum. In addition to the timing, growth and variability of urban form at the site, the Suburban Survey also documented well preserved off-site ancient landscapes of tracks, field systems and irrigation canals.

Sir Leonard Woolley's excavations at Ur, and his meticulous publication of the results, made available to Mesopotamian archaeologists a vast body of information on a great many topics, and the subsequent investigations which his work inspired have in no way detracted from its importance. He pointed the way to the solution of many major problems, the existence of which had not hitherto been realized; and in particular, his account of the prehistoric periods in Southern Mesopotamia may justly be said to have inaugurated a new field of research. The importance of his original contribution, both in material and in ideas, to the study of this vital phase in the development of Mesopotamian civilization cannot be overrated. The evidence of the Flood made a spectacular appeal to popular imagination, but his discovery in the same pit of an occupation level with al ‘Ubaid pottery marked a great advance in knowledge. It is, however, no criticism of Woolley to say that, like all pioneers, he raised more questions than he could solve; and the body of new information which has emerged from the recent excavations conducted by the Iraq Directorate-General of Antiquities at the nearby site of Eridu makes it appropriate and useful on this occasion to review the evidence as a whole and attempt to answer some of these outstanding questions. It is a tribute to Sir Leonard Woolley that the excellence of his publication makes such a reappraisal possible.

The 13th and 14th seasons in the current series of campaigns at Tell Brak took place from the middle of March to the end of May in 1992 and 1993 respectively. The work was sponsored and generously supported by the McDonald Institute of Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. Generous contributions were also received from the National Geographic Society, the British Academy and the British School of Archaeology in Iraq. We must once again express our gratitude to our sponsors and also to Dr Ali Abou Assaf, Director General of Antiquities and Museums, to Dr Adnan Bounni, Director of Excavations, and to their staff in Damascus, Aleppo, Deir ez Zor and Hasake for their constant and friendly support. Sayid Ibrahim Murad served us well as Representative of the Directorate General in both years.

The writers acted respectively as Director and architect and as Deputy Director with special responsibility for photography and for pottery and other small finds. In 1992 Dr Jesper Eidem and Dr John MacGinnis acted as epigraphists and also served as site supervisors; other site supervisors were Mr Geoffrey Emberling, Mr Nicholas Jackson, Mr Alan Lupton, Dr Roger Matthews, Miss Penelope Spikins and Professor T. Cuyler Young, Jr. In 1993 Roger Matthews and Alan Lupton were again with us, and we were also joined by Dr Augusta McMahon, Professor Dietrich Sürenhagen and Mr David Thomas. Dr Wendy Matthews took charge of micromorphological sampling and helped with the pottery in both seasons, as did Miss Helen McDonald, who has now completed five seasons as our efficient registrar and draughtsman. Our very capable and hard-working conservator in 1992 and 1993 was Miss Fiona Macalister. We were also pleased to welcome Dr. Charly French, who is in charge of the soil micromorphology and environmental programme, and who was able to visit us for the first week of the 1993 season. We are extremely grateful to them all.

The magnificent site-plans which we owe—with so much else—to Sir Leonard Woolley's brilliant and painstaking work at Ur show on the northern and western edges of the mound two harbours, opening out upon the white unknown outside the plan and thus tacitly posing the question of how much we can ever know about the great canal-system which once linked Ur and the other cities of Sumer in a net of intercommunication and—even more important—distributed to them the irrigation waters without which no city or other permanent human settlement could have existed.

The question is certainly legitimate, but not altogether an easy one; for it is well known that the major rivers of Iraq have substantially changed their courses since antiquity and also that in large sections of the country heavy deposits of new soil now securely hide all ancient river- and canal-beds deep under the present surface out of reach of investigation. Special methods must therefore be brought to bear if the ancient system is eventually to be reconstructed and we should like to call attention here to one such method, that of Ceramic Surface Survey, which has already been applied with good results and moderately extensively.

The mixed collection of ivory objets d'art called the Nimrud Ivories, for want of a better name, was part of the earliest fruit of those excavations which first set the Mesopotamian branch of archaeology on its course of brilliant achievement. Their ultimate publication by the British Museum is now projected. Towards this end the present essay is designed as a tentative study and provisional report.

The obscurity which has surrounded them has been due to the exceptional difficulties attending their sorting and repair, since, in fact, they consisted of an enormous and jumbled mass of calcined and brittle fragments. After many months' work the mass of several thousand fragments, many quite formless, has now been sorted out; about a thousand joins have been found, but the results turn out meagre and disappointing, although there is still much to be done. Hardly a single completed object results. But how comes it, after all, that there are so many pieces? The lapse of time has completely obscured their history. It seems to have passed unnoticed by all that much more was exhibited in the Museum than Layard was ever known to have found at Nimrud. It was noticed recently that the Nimrud Ivories are not a homogeneous collection in point of style, most being an uncertain element, but some being normal Assyrian work; we may now add further, not all were from the same building and not all are even from Nimrud. It is the case, as Goldsmith says, that there is something so attractive about riches that the greater heap collects from the smaller, and by this strange law of gravity several pieces from other sites have been attracted into the orbit of the greater mass from Nimrud. Lastly, not all those from Nimrud are from the same spot, but mainly are from two separate deposits. With those few pieces, however, not from Nimrud, or those which are simply of native Assyrian style, we shall not deal here except for occasional use as incidental evidence.

The Archaeological Expedition to the Ḫabur region of N. Syria, under the auspices of the British Museum and of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, undertook a second campaign in the spring of 1936.

The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge, again provided generous grants, and we are indebted to the authorities of all the institutions concerned for their continued help and encouragement. The civil and military authorities in Syria gave us a cordial welcome on our return, and Monsieur H. Seyrig, the Director of Antiquities for Syria, gave his friendly co-operation in granting us all possible facilities for the continuance of our work. General Jacquot, in Der-ez-Zor, took a friendly interest in our activities, and we are much indebted to the practical help and kindness shown by his officers in Ḥasaka and Kamichlie.

A small piedmont country with resources enough to maintain an active population, Susiana is surrounded by less favoured areas. Isolation is thus ensured, but communication remains possible with Iranian highlands and with Mesopotamian lowlands, with coastal plains and with North-Western foothills. Susa stands on a borderline, at a cross-road, influences streaming through, from, and to it: the story is one of fluctuating orientations, which we shall try to trace through correlations between the early local cultures and those of Mesopotamia.

The Roman occupation of Northern Iraq lasted less than a hundred and seventy years, from A.D. 197 to 364, and was little more than a turbulent episode in the long struggle between Rome on the west and Persia, under her successive Parthian and Sassanian rulers, on the east. The purely military character of this frontier extension is the first of the factors controlling the nature and distribution of its material remains; the second is the high degree of civilisation which the area had attained long before the Romans came, and was to maintain with little change long after their withdrawal. The process of Romanisation, if it was ever attempted, has left no mark. New towns would hardly have been built on sites already occupied by cities far older than Rome itself, and new roads were only constructed for particular military purposes which did not coincide with the requirements of commercial traffic and were not served by the existing highways. Few western imports have been found, and only five Latin inscriptions, three dedications by Roman soldiers and two milestones, have come to light in Iraq; it is significant that there is no known inscription of this period in Greek, the koinē of civilian life in the other provinces of the Roman East. Roman historians usually refer to Mesopotamia only as the scene of eastern campaigns of which they had, with the exception of Ammianus Marcellinus in the fourth century, no personal or detailed knowledge.

The pottery from Fort Shalmaneser is a homogeneous collection that spans the period from the fall of Nimrud and the sack of the fortress in 612 B.C. to the last squatter occupation of the ruined building, perhaps some fifty years later. The time interval cannot have been long, as there is absolutely no difference between the pottery that was in use at the time of the sack and that of the latest squatter settlement. This pottery is, of course, identical with that from the citadel which we have come to associate with the 612 B.C. destruction, and it is hoped to publish soon a second article giving additional late seventh century types not as yet recovered from Fort Shalmaneser and thus not included here. The present account is restricted to the latter site, both because it is intended to supplement the preceding report on the excavations and because the Fort Shalmaneser material is a large and representative collection of well-dated Assyrian pottery from a single building.

It will be clear from the excavation report that work at Fort Shalmaneser is far from complete and that many questions will remain unanswered until the resumption of digging brings us fresh evidence. In a few cases, for instance, where pottery has been found on or just above the Assyrian floor level, it is impossible on the basis of our present knowledge of the building to determine whether it should be assigned to the period immediately before or immediately after the sack. But as pottery from such levels is identical both with groups from deposits that can confidently be dated to the 612 destruction, and with other groups found at a higher level that can equally confidently be attributed to reoccupation by squatters, any further stratigraphical evidence we may uncover will in no way affect the general dating of the pottery presented here.

Members of the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq first visited Tell al-Hawa in January 1986 from the Saddam Dam. The site appears as a massive, solitary giant, dominating the landscape and dwarfing all other sites in the region (Plate Ia). From the summit, 30 m high, there is an impressive view over a vast plain covered with mounds in all directions. A walk over the main mound revealed a particularly wide range of pottery types representing most known periods. The size, scope and archaeological potential of Tell al-Hawa and the surrounding plain led us to decide on further investigation.

A first season of survey and excavations was conducted from October 1986 to April 1987 inclusive. The aim of the project was to carry out a single, integrated study of a major site in its context.

We would like to thank specially Dr Mu'ayyad Sa'id Damerji, the Director-General of Antiquities and Heritage, and Dr Abd as-Sittar Azzawi, then Director of the Antiquities Office in the North, without whose help the Hawa Project would not have been possible. For the duration of the 1987 season we were allowed use of Antiquities Office housing and working facilities in the citadel at Tel'afar, for which we are very grateful. Mr Salem Yunis, then Inspector at Tel'afar, was of considerable assistance to us at all times, as were our representatives in the field, Mr Mohammed Zaki Abdul Kerim and Mr Meti Barbar al-Tumm.

Recent palaeoenvironmental, historical, and archaeological investigations, primarily consisting of site reconnaissance, in the Shahrizor region within the province of Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan are bringing to light new information on the region's social and socio-ecological development. This paper summarises two seasons of work by researchers from German, British, Dutch, and Iraqi-Kurdish institutions working in the survey region. Palaeoenvironmental data have determined that during the Pleistocene many terraces developed which came to be occupied by a number of the larger tell sites in the Holocene. In the sedimentary record, climatic and anthropogenic patterns are noticeable, and alluviation has affected the recovery of archaeological remains through site burial in places. Historical data show the Shahrizor shifting between periods of independence, either occupied by one regional state or several smaller entities, and periods that saw the plain's incorporation within large empires, often in a border position. New archaeological investigations have provided insight into the importance of the region as a transit centre between Western Iran and northern and southern Mesopotamia, with clear material culture links recovered. Variations between periods' settlement patterns and occupations are also beginning to emerge.

The external manifestations of ancient trading networks have generally been of greater scholarly concern than the internal needs and systems of the societies which created and participated in them. Both aspects of commercial relations are, however, inextricably linked. Preliminary research supports the idea that much of the movement of luxury goods in Southwest Asia during the third millennium B.C. was generated in response to the specific and unique demands of Sumerian society, and that such commercial enterprises continued under the Akkadian rulers. This hypothesis can be used to explain the distribution of certain metals in the third millennium, notably tin and silver. The sources of the tin used in ancient Southwest Asia have, despite considerable research, remained a mystery for years (see most recently Muhly 1985).

Following is a speculative attempt, using archaeological and scientific evidence, to explain the reasons why tin bronze is of limited distribution in Southwest Asia and the eastern Mediterranean during the third millennium. Tin bronze occurs in third millennium contexts in Mesopotamia, the Troad, and central Anatolia, and rarely elsewhere until late in the millennium. Such a pattern of distribution might be explained by the presence of tin deposits in each of these areas, exploited to fill only local needs, but geological research has failed to detect tin ores in any of these places. Since some source of tin was clearly being exploited to supply these areas and because there seems to have been differential access to it, geological presence or absence of tin must not have been a determinative factor. An alternative explanation is here developed by examining the nature of the tin trade and of the entities involved in it.

The first season of excavations at Choga Mami began on December 2nd, 1967, and continued until February 26th, 1968. The work was sponsored by the British School of Archaeology and supported by generous grants from the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, and the American Philosophical Society. The staff consisted of Mr. David Oates (Field Director and architect), Miss Elizabeth Dowman (conservator and registrar), Miss Carolyn Prater (archaeologist), and Mr. and Mrs. Michael Jarman of the Early Agriculture Project, Cambridge University, in charge of faunal and floral material.1 During the first month we were assisted by Dr. and Mrs. Richard Ellis. We were also happy to welcome Dr. Nikolai Merbert and Dr. Nikolai Bader, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as our guests for a short stay. Sayyid Hazim Nejeifi and Sayyid Ghassan Azzawi gave invaluable help as Representatives of the Directorate-General of Antiquities. We must also thank government officials in Mandali for their courteous assistance and the Directorate-General in Baghdad, in particular the Director-General, Dr. Faisal al-Wailly, 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 John Rylands Library, Manchester (No. P 28, Box 22).

Dimensions: 5·5 × 6·4 × 2·3 cm.

Copy and photographs: Plates XIII, XIVa, b (the copy is traced off the photographs and corrected after collation).