The fourth season of excavations at Tell al Rimah, from March 3rd to June 3rd, 1967, was sponsored by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, assisted by contributions from the University Museum, Philadelphia, the Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, Brussels, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and the British Academy. The staff included Mr. J. E. Reade (Assistant Director), Miss Stephanie Page (epigraphist and registrar) Mr. Christopher Dalley (surveyor and photographer) and Mr. Jonathan Hodgkin (draughtsman). We were assisted for considerable periods by Mrs. Joan Oates, who undertook conservation and the recording of a large part of the pottery, Mr. Peter Dorrell, an expert photographer who took many of the photographs published here, and Mr. David Hawkins who gave very valuable help with the cleaning and study of the tablets and drew the seals and seal impressions. Mr. Reade was in charge of the excavations at Tell Taya, on which a separate report is published in this Journal. The Representative of the Directorate General of Antiquities was Sayyid Majid Abdullah, who was always ready to help with our problems. I must express my gratitude to all my colleagues, and our joint thanks to Dr. Faisal al Wailly, Director General of Antiquities, Professor Fuad Safar, Inspector General of Excavations, and their staff for their kindness and cooperation.

It has long been evident that by the late fourth millennium Brak was a large urban site, and that at this time its inhabitants were in close contact with southern Mesopotamia. Mallowan's excavation of the Eye Temple provides important evidence in this respect, although we now know that the Eye Temple itself could not have been Brak's major shrine (D. Oates, n.d.). Our own excavations have produced large quantities of Late Uruk pottery, in 1978 in a sounding at the southeast corner of CH and in 1981 in Area TW (Iraq 1982, 189–90, 195–96), but until this past season none of this material has been found in well-stratified contexts. The area of the 1978 sounding yielded no identifiable building remains, but the pottery seemed to comprise a consistent assemblage which, by comparison with that from the Late Uruk levelling fill in Area TW, we decided was likely to derive from a later, final Uruk (Jamdat Nasr) horizon (Iraq 1982, 191). Of particular interest was a hearth surrounded by relatively complete “casseroles” (Iraq 1982, 203). A numerical tablet was found in the level immediately beneath the hearth, still without any associated building remains.

During the 1984 season investigation of the adjacent area by J.-M. Meunier revealed that the ED III levels excavated over most of CH, and published in Iraq 1982, had actually been terraced into the side of a Late Uruk tell, the intervening strata having been largely destroyed in the course of extensive terracing and levelling operations (cf. p. 163, Fig. 3). Both the ED III buildings, and what is preserved of the earlier tell, slope sharply downhill to the north, resulting in a situation where some Late Uruk levels on the southern side of the CH excavations lie, in terms of absolute height, above those of ED III.

The complex of buildings described in this article lies on the east side of the citadel of Nimrud, close to the south-east corner. It is bounded on the east by the citadel wall, on the north by the street leading up from the gate of Shalmaneser III, and on the west by a second street dividing it from the Burnt Palace (Pl. I). A building on its southern side, in the angle of the fortifications, was investigated by Layard, who refers to it on his plan as “The Palace of the Grandson of Esarhaddon”; his excavations were hampered by the presence of a considerable post-Assyrian cemetery and he exposed only a small part of the uppermost of the sequence of buildings on this site. Our investigations have so far touched only the outer face of its north wall, which fronted on the south wing of the Nabu Temple, but this has sufficed to show that the site was continuously occupied throughout the life of the Nabu Temple, although the buildings upon it had no connection with the Temple area; hence it is of importance only as a limiting factor in the layout of the Temple itself. It is, however, clear that the south-east corner was always, with the exception of the Ziggurrat, the highest point in the citadel, and the considerable slope, represented by a drop of some five metres in ground level from the southern boundary of the site to the street of Shalmaneser III on the north, undoubtedly influenced successive architects in planning its development.

Six or seven years ago a tourist bought a small carved ‘Hittite stone’ in Izmir as an attractive souvenir. Returning to Washington she read that I had been on Hittite excavations and asked me to look at her curio. One maybe grateful for her layman's interest, for her piece, which turned out to be one half of an ancient trinket mould, sheds an interesting light on trade between Anatolia and Mesopotamia at the end of the Third Millennium B.C.

Tell Begum was previously explored by Iraqi archaeologists in the 1960s when excavations revealed a multi-period site. Among the key finds were Halaf period remains that are relatively rare in the region of the Shahrizor plain and included polychrome ceramics suggesting a local variation of the Halaf culture. Recent investigations and excavations in 2011 and 2013 revealed a 5 hectare site inhabited during the Halaf, Ubaid, Late Chalcolithic, and medieval periods. The Halaf site may have had an area of about 3 hectares, making it a relatively large settlement for that period, although its full extent is unclear. Offsite work revealed the area to have been well watered in the past, with likely neighbouring regions of woodland and abundant shrubs. The heavy sedimentation in the region has partially obscured archaeological remains, including possibly Tell Begum's lower mound. The site, nevertheless, shows continuity of settlement, indicating relative stability in settlement over long timespans.

The lump of blue glass found by H. R. Hall at Eridu in 1919 is well known to students of early glass. From the circumstances of the excavation Hall deduced that the piece was made at least as early as 2000 B.C. and this view is generally accepted.

The piece has been fully discussed, with other pieces of glass made before 1500 B.C., by H. C. Beck. He considers that the piece was a manufacturer's piece of material made very near to where it was found, and so is evidence of a glass factory in Mesopotamia much earlier than any previously known, the earliest factory in Egypt being about 1000 years later. The Eridu glass supports the view, held by some authorities, that glass making was introduced into Egypt from Mesopotamia.

The cause of the blue colour of early Egyptian glass was the subject of controversy for many years and it was not until a systematic series of tests were made by Farnsworth and Ritchie in 1937 that the question was finally cleared up. They examined 58 pieces of blue glass of the XVIII Dynasty and showed that the pieces of bluish green colour were invariably coloured by copper and those of a pure blue or violet blue were invariably coloured by cobalt. The amount of cobalt required to give a deep colour is very small, less than 0.2 per cent.

The third season of fieldwork at Sāmarrā’ took place between 27th February and 24th April 1989. The 1989 season at Sāmarrā’ had three broad aims:

(1) to initiate excavations at the Glassworks (ma‘mal al-zujāj) at Qādisiyya, the site of the small town of Qādisiyya of Sāmarrā’, which was occupied from the Sasanian to Middle Islamic periods (site N1). The surface features of this site were described in our previous report.

(2) to initiate a surface survey of the canal remains in the area of Sāmarrā’, including an assessment of the geomorphology of the region.

(3) to conduct a new photographic survey of Sāmarrā’.

The report on the canal remains and geomorphology is written by T. J. Wilkinson, and the description of the excavations at Qādisiyya is provided by Robin Falkner. In addition a note is appended on the historical evidence for the heads of the Nahrawān, and two monuments connected with them.

The following pages have been written in continuation (and necessarily, to some extent, in correction) of the former specimen publication in Iraq, IV. 178 ff. They comprise the whole of the written tablets and fragments found at the above places, in circumstances to be described by the excavator, Mr. Mallowan.

The date and character of the tablets from Chagar Bazar (i.e. nearly the whole of the material, for those found at Tall Brak are almost insignificant) are so homogeneous that it seemed a mere waste of labour and of space to print complete copies of them; the great bulk of the material belongs to the self-same year and consists very largely of mere lists of allowances and names. Indeed, it can hardly be said with truth that the information conveyed as a whole, despite many details of undoubted interest, is quite in proportion with the pains bestowed upon its extraction. It is hoped, therefore, that everything essential will be obtained by the method of a catalogue, supplemented by full lists of names, places, and words, an introduction summarizing the results, and specimen copies of twelve tablets representing the various kinds of document. Such is the scheme of these pages.

In 1978 a small archive of about twenty-five cuneiform tablets was discovered at the site of Tell Ali, which stands on the left bank of the Lower Zab more or less where travellers from Aššur to Nuzi and Arrapha would have crossed the river, some 42 km west of Kerkuk (Ismail 1982, 117). These tablets are now in the care of the Iraq Museum. We present here copies of almost all the texts by Dr Ismail, with her transliterations, alongside translations and commentary which are the joint work of the two authors.

Documentation of animal husbandry has been rather scarce among the Middle Assyrian archives hitherto recovered. A few texts have been published from Aššur (see Jacob 2003: KAJ 115; 225; 267; 97; WVDOG 94 73; VS 21 26), and some of the best evidence came from Tell Billa, ancient Šibaniba, north-east of Nineveh (Finkelstein 1953, especially Nos. 21 and 36). It is clear that the Durkatlimmu archives will soon provide much fresh evidence (see passages cited in Jakob 2003, 365 ff.). This small archive from Tell Ali is contemporary with the bulk of the Durkatlimmu texts, and resembles them in various respects. Small as it is, it conveys a clear picture of the Assyrian state's interest in animal husbandry as a source of meat for special occasions and of wool and goat-hair to meet the state's requirements for everyday textile production.

It has long been realized that much of the stonework recovered from sites in southern Mesopotamia must have been imported, either as finished artefacts or as raw lumps which were then fashioned locally. The rare outcrops of stone which occur in the alluvium, principally around Uruk and Ur, are restricted to limestone and its light-coloured derivatives (calcite, gypsum, etc.). These were exploited extensively for sculpture, vessels and other relatively small objects throughout the third millennium and beyond, forming the staple medium for the bulk of the Mesopotamian stoneworking industry. Along with these materials, however, a not insignificant proportion of the stonework found on early Babylonian sites consists of dark igneous and metamorphic stones, of which the nearest sources are the mountains and plateaux which border Mesopotamia to the north-west, north and east, extending across the Gulf into Oman. Notable categories which illustrate this phenomenon are the numerous vessels deposited in private graves of the Jemdet Nasr to Early Dynastic II periods, the elaborately decorated “steatite” vessels of the mid-third millennium, and the royal statuary of the Sargonids and their successors.

Among the small minority of literary texts from Ur written in Akkadian probably the most interesting are two presented here, which are of a specially vivid and humorous character. But while the first was meant very seriously, and becomes rather absurd only through the over-earnestness of the composer, the second appears to be ludicrous of set purpose, and as such would once have been thought surprising. But in recent years several glimpses have been caught of a thin vein of humour underlying the massive strata of Babylonian gravity. Without more introduction we proceed to

U.16900 F is a complete tablet, long and narrow (13 × 5 cms.), having the external peculiarity of a hole pierced from edge to edge. This has been carefully located, for if a rod is inserted and held horizontally the tablet rests with its obverse at a slope convenient for reading, but in order to read the reverse the tablet must be held; when released it goes back to its former position with obverse facing the reader. Anticipating the contents, we may suppose that it was set up on a support facing an image of the Moon-god, and was designed, with the usual importunity of Babylonian petitioners, to be there incessantly obtruded upon the divine attention until satisfaction was granted.

In 1991 the twelfth season of excavation of the Akkadian buildings at Tell Brak in Syria, under the direction of David and Joan Oates, yielded the skeletons of five domestic donkeys to add to the skeletons of a dog and a donkey that were retrieved in 1987 (Clutton-Brock 1989). The positions of the new skeletons are shown on the plan, p. 163, and their excavation is described by D. and J. Oates (1991). It appears from the finding, in 1992, of a small temple in the same area (FS), together with fragments of yet another donkey skeleton, that the deposition of the carcasses had a ritual significance. The temple was at first thought to be dedicated to the god Šakkan, whose name was read on bullae found in the courtyard, but this reading has since been disputed. However, the presence of the donkey skeletons and of a number of gazelle horns in the temple ante-cella suggests that the deity had some special connection with these animals, as we know that Šakkan did (p. 164). The donkeys were probably sacrificed at the same period as the donkey and dog excavated in 1987 and can be similarly dated to an historical date of c. 2200 BC.

As with the previous donkey skeleton the five new equids were identified as donkeys rather than horses, hemiones, or hybrids, on the enamel patterns of the cheek teeth and on the size and proportions of the limb bones; see Clutton-Brock (1986 and 1989) and Eisenmann (1986) for the anatomical and dental distinctions between the species of equids.

In a pair of recent articles Jocelyn Orchard has presented what is arguably the most radical interpretation of late fourth and third millennium BC cultural development in the Oman peninsula to appear since archaeological excavations began in this region during the 1950s. Her theses challenge many aspects of current thinking and as such deserve to be scrutinised by all scholars working in East and South Arabian archaeology. Moreover, given the fact that Orchard has reviewed the status of the Jamdat Nasr pottery found in the Hafit-type graves of Oman and the United Arab Emirates, it is important that Mesopotamian specialists examine what she has said about relations between Jamdat Nasr Mesopotamia and the Oman peninsula.

In an effort to extract the salient points from Orchard's 1994 and 1995 articles I shall both quote directly and paraphrase her theses in point form. In this way I believe it will be easier to see how her argument is constructed out of a series of interlocking propositions.

1. In 1994 Orchard coined the term “Al-Hajar oasis towns”, asserting that these differed from so-called “Umm an-Nar settlements”. The two settlement types, she maintained, had been conflated erroneously by scholars working in the area in part because of “the fact that on a number of sites Umm an-Nar tombs are found intermingled with al-Hajar buildings”. Orchard, however, argued that “these two types of third millennium settlement are very different in style” (Orchard 1994: 63). She characterised the Umm an-Nar buildings — in actual fact she only means tombs — as being “built wholly or in part of white limestone”, which differed from the “al-Hajar form of masonry-revetted platform construction”. “Indeed”, she wrote, speaking of the ceramic evidence for such a partitioning of third millennium culture in the Oman peninsula, “the general assumption that all third millennium wares found in the al-Hajar region represent a single culture is curious in view of the fact that three groups of wares can be distinguished, each of which is firmly associated with a different milieu (viz. Umm an-Nar tombs, settlements on Umm an-Nar and Ghanadha islands and al-Hajar settlements)” (Orchard 1994: 64).

Ever since the Rostovtzeff's famous book Palmyra is commonly called a “caravan city”. As a matter of fact, it is the only real caravan city among those considered as such by the great scholar. Both Gerasa and Dura-Europos were calm, provincial towns living off the countryside, and no signs of a commercial vocation are on record in either. Petra was above all a royal capital, and the importance of its trade, though likely there, remains entirely to be demonstrated. We might now add that Hatra, also a royal city and a major religious centre, owed its prosperity more to these characteristics than to far-flung commerce.

I shall leave aside the Jordanian cities, Petra and Gerasa, very different from each other and from the other three, including Palmyra, which have participated in a particular brand of civilisation, often and rather mistakingly called Parthian.

These urban societies shared a common language, Aramaean, and a body of customs—religious and social—resulting from a mixed heritage in which a substantial nomad Arab contribution predominated over more ancient traditions of Syria and Mesopotamia. While practically no trace of Iranian influence can be detected, there was certainly a more or less thin veneer of Hellenism, generally supposed to have spread within the limits of the Parthian empire. Actually, there is not much to show in this respect for the Iranian part of the realm, or for the capital Ctesiphon. What is known concerns mostly the Greek cities of Susa and Seleucia, and does not manifest any close relation to the conditions of the Aramaic speaking cities we know further west. Whether Palmyra was a “spiritual daughter” of Seleucia, to quote an influencial and imaginative formula of Henri Seyrig's, is a question still waiting, after sixty years, for a documented answer.

During his excavations “in the south-east corner of the mound” at Nimrud, ancient Kalhu, A. H. Layard discovered some fragments of painted bricks (1853b: 164–7; 1867: 52–7). These can be dated to Esarhaddon on the basis of both iconographic style and subject matter. Thanks to the name “Tell of Athur” reported in Layard's accounts, we can plausibly identify the location as the site of Fort Shalmaneser; unfortunately, Layard does not give a more precise location. Although we can assert that the fragments belong to Fort Shalmaneser at the time of its renovation by Esarhaddon in the seventh century BC, we are not able to define exactly the rooms or outer façade that these fragments originally decorated.

Some hypotheses have been suggested as to the original location of the glazed bricks, either in the south-east corner of the inner south-east courtyard (Oates 1959: 111, fn. 20; Nunn 1988: 183) or in Courtyard T (Postgate and Reade 1976–80: 317; Oates and Oates 2001: 183–4) (Fig. 1), where they seem to have adorned an outer façade, either the façade of Throne Room T1 or that of Courtyard T, where Shalmaneser's glazed-brick panel was found lying in front of the doorway of ante-chamber T3 (Reade 1963: 38–47; Dayton 1978: PL 24,1).

The life-size bronze head illustrated on Plates V–VII was found by Dr. R. Campbell Thompson and Mr. R. W. Hamilton at Quyunjiq in 1931 (during the excavations at Nineveh on behalf of the British Museum which were financed by Sir Charles Hyde, Bt.) and published in A.A.A., vol. XIX, pl. L. Since that time, however, the corroded surface of the metal has been cleaned, and the head appears once more in its pristine beauty.

The metal has not yet been analysed, but it would appear to be bronze, and the head to have been cast, certain details having doubtless been worked out with a chisel. On grounds of style the workmanship may be assigned to the Akkadian period, and may be dated approximately to the twenty-sixth century B.C.

In 1958 A. L. Oppenheim, in discussion with C. J. Gadd, whose assistant at the School of Oriental and African Studies I then was, kindly suggested that I should undertake a new edition of the historical texts of Sargon II; subsequently Professor Oppenheim sent me some notes (not copies) by Dr. Geers on Sargon texts. I undertook a considerable amount of work on this project, copying all unpublished fragments of relevant texts which I could discover in the British Museum, and re-copying some others where I felt able to improve substantially on the published version. Unfortunately, after this initial part of the work had been completed, other commitments mounted, severely limiting the time I could apply to my new edition. Thus my promised new edition, though in an advanced stage, had still not reached completion when I heard that a younger scholar was also applying himself to this project.

In these circumstances it seems that my most satisfactory course would be to leave the new edition to one who may have less commitments of other kinds, and to publish forthwith, as my own contribution, such copies and re-copies as would seem to assist in the elucidation of the history of the reign of Sargon II. The present article is an initial contribution in this direction.

During the 1987 season of excavations at Tell Brak under the direction of David and Joan Oates, the skeleton of a small equid was revealed on the floor of what was probably the courtyard of a large public building believed to date to the Akkadian period (locus FS 565). Poplar beams from an adjacent courtyard have provided radiocarbon dates of 3990 ± 50 and 3960 ± 50 BP (BM-2554 and -2556, see p. 213), 2580–2455 cal B.C.

Associated with the equid skeleton was a small number of bones of domestic pig, cattle, sheep/goat, and a Demoiselle crane (Anthropoides virgo; identified by G. Cowles, Bird Section, BM(NH)).

Excavation of the bones showed that not only was the skeleton exceptionally well preserved but that the soft parts of the body were moulded in the earth (Plates XXIX a-b). The lungs and stomach could be easily discerned and the coiled intestines were represented by strings of coprolites. The “soft parts” were covered with what appeared to be a surface film of orange-green material. Everything was lifted with as much care as possible by the excavation conservator, Mrs. Risë Taylor-Andreasen, using Paraloid B72 (methyl methacrylate/ethyl acrylate) and UHU (cellulose nitrate) as consolidants where essential.

At the beginning of the 1966 season of excavations at Tell al Rimah work was continued in Site A, Trench Ab of the Temple courtyard (Level Ib). It was from this same provenance that a number of tablets had been cleared at the end of the previous season, but of the forty tablets and fragments found only a few appear to relate to the Abu-ṭāb archive discovered in that year. Some tablets were sufficiently legible to be treated, read and copied immediately; others, despite laboratory treatment, are unlikely to yield much further information that can be given in the brief notes in the Register (Appendix D) or in the copies presented in Plates LVII-LXVI.

Date. Twenty-one of the texts are dated by eponyms which, compared with Middle Assyrian tablets previously known, indicate a period of at least twenty-five years predominantly to the end of the reign of Shalmaneser I (1274–1245 B.C.), with some to the early years of Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244–1208) i.e. c. 1260–1230 B.C. Limmu-officials otherwise unattested and now to be placed within this period are Ištu-dAuma (TR. 3001, 3002), Ṣiili-Adad (3007), Adad-šum-lišir (3016) and some broken names. The month names follow the accepted M. Assyrian practice as at Aššur and Bilia. Three texts are written in a skilled hand on a fine reddish clay, reminiscent of the Neo-Assyrian libraries and are to be dated somewhat later. These are a census of storerooms, stables and other large buildings round the temple controlled by individuals (3017); a list of tenants or owners of plots of land between 33–60 iku (3020); TR. 3024 lists names of persons.

Among the carved ivories found by Layard and Loftus at Nimrud in the nineteenth century a few bear alphabetic inscriptions or single letters which may be fitters' marks. Similar pieces have been found subsequently at other sites of the first millennium B.C. and it was to be expected, therefore, that further examples might be discovered in the large collections of ivories unearthed during the current series of excavations at Nimrud by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq. Several inscribed pieces were found during the 1961 season and they are published here together with those from earlier seasons.

Four alphabetic inscriptions on ivories are already known. The ivory strip from Arslan Tash is of particular value as it enables a date to be given to the bedstead of which it was a part and to associated ivories. On it is a dedication, in Aramaic, “to our lord Hazael.” Hazael, king of Damascus c. 843–796 B.C. is the only known historical figure to whom such reference might apply. If, then, it is correct to attribute this ivory to the late ninth century B.C., it may be that it formed an item of the tribute taken from Damascus by Adad-nirari. III c. 804 B.C. which included ivory furniture. There are two inscribed pieces from the Loftus collection of Nimrud ivories: a knob inscribed “property of Milki-ram” (l m l k r m) and a text too damaged to be deciphered. At Ur an ivory box-lid was found, beneath a pavement laid in the reign of Nebuchadrezzar II (605–561 B.C.) which carries a two line dedication in Phoenician: “This box Amat-Ba‘al, daughter of Pat-isi, slave-girl of [the master?] presents to Ashtart. For this may she bless me during the life of the master […..] son of Yasod.