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.

In this article are published the cuneiform texts found at Abu Salabikh during the excavations of 1975 by the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq. Although few in number, they are interesting both for their content and for their archaeological contexts. A few scattered tablets came from a variety of provenances : from a pit from the surface in Area A (IAS 516), from near the surface in a room of the eastern houses of Area E (IAS 517), and from the fill of graves dug into the Southern Unit during its occupation (IAS 518 from Grave 48 in the courtyard; IAS 521 from Grave 2 and IAS 519 and 520 from Grave 27, both in Room 39). None of these tablets is quite satisfactorily stratified, since IAS 517 was very close to the surface, and all the graves in question had suffered later disturbance, so that we cannot say with confidence whether the tablets came from the original fill of the grave shafts, or from robber holes. However, this lack is offset a little by the better provenance of the remainder of the tablets, now to be discussed.

Legal documents relating to marriage have always attracted the attention of Assyriologists, and rightly so, since they throw light on the social as well as the legal customs of their time. Although the laws and contracts between them have permitted some detailed studies of marriage customs in Babylonia, the evidence for Assyria is much scarcer, and in his edition of Neo-Assyrian legal documents A. Ungnad was able to transliterate no more than four “marriage texts”, three of which belong to a single archive and are extremely similar in content. However, the excavations at Nimrud have made substantial additions to our documentation, and the time seems ripe to summarize what evidence is now available, and to present some which is new. The subject of marriage in any society is a complex one, and it is hardly necessary for me to point out that no attempt has been made to pursue the legal or anthropological implications of these texts. In the first place, the writer is not qualified to do this in either field, and secondly, it seems very doubtful, given the variety displayed by the texts in question, whether we yet have a body of evidence sufficient to warrant a more penetrating study. Nevertheless, it is clearly desirable that what evidence we do have should be readily accessible, even to the non-cuneiformist, and we hope that this medley will serve a purpose.

In 1849 Sir Henry Layard's excavations among the ruins of Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh (the South-West Palace) produced a considerable collection of clay sealings, specimens of which were duly published in A second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh. In his description of this find, Layard discussed a ‘royal seal’, a circular stamp showing the king killing a lion, and mentioned that, on the impressions, the device ‘is frequently encircled by a short inscription, which has not yet been deciphered, or by a simple guilloche border.’ Until now these impressions, preserved in the collections of the British Museum, do not seem to have been illustrated, although Professor Sachs was able to list forty uninscribed examples of bullae and sealings bearing the same motif, fourteen of them showing the guilloche border, in his paper entitled ‘The Late Assyrian Royal Seal Type’.

In all thirteen pieces of clay bearing impressions of inscribed ‘royal’ seals have been located so far in the Museum's collections, including additions made to Layard's original group (Collection no. 51, 9–2) from the excavations of Rassam, Smith, and Budge. They are here presented by courtesy of the Trustees.

Between 745 and 700 BC the Assyrian empire established itself in much of the Levant, becoming a Mediterranean as well as a Mesopotamian power. People from former Syro-Hittite states and the coasts of Phoenicia and Palestine were dispersed across the empire, bringing their own social conventions, cultures and expertise in fields ranging from cookery and metallurgy to music and architecture. Many Assyrian kings in previous centuries had demonstrated their respect for these high cultures of the West; Herzfeld (1930: 186–93) was one of the earlier scholars to consider the extent of their indebtedness. Now kings who had visited the West and who had seen how people lived there, built western features into new palaces at Nimrud, Khorsabad and Nineveh.

A clear allusion to this process resides in use of the phrase “like a Hittite palace”, literally tamšil ekal mat Hatti, “a replica of a palace of the land of Hatti”, i.e. the kind of palace or palatial structure familiar in the Syro-Hittite, Luwian and Levantine territories which eighth-century Assyrians still called after the Hittites. Tiglath-pileser III, Sargon and Sennacherib all recorded the construction of buildings like this, to which the term bit hilani (with minor variants) was also applied; Esarhaddon recorded building in both Hittite and Assyrian styles, and Ashurbanipal too built a bit hilani. The clearest relevant archaeological evidence consists of some remains on the western side of the main royal palace of Sargon at Khorsabad. P.-É. Botta, the first excavator of these remains, assigned them the name of Monument isolé, Monument X or Temple (henceforward simply Monument X).

The Anabasis of the Greek historian Xenophon describes the march of a mercenary army in 401–400 b.c. from the Aegean coast down the Euphrates to Babylonia, and back up the Tigris to the Black Sea and the Aegean. This paper presents the evidence for the army's route through Babylonia and Assyria, and attempts to resolve the main uncertainties.1

Several Assyrian cities contained free-standing obelisks or other monuments of stone with registers of carved decoration. This article presents fragments of such monuments now in the British Museum Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities, with references to others known to me.

Layard (1849: II, 53, 58) records that, during his brief soundings at Assur in 1847, one of his workmen “also picked up, amongst the rubbish, … several bits of black stone with small figures in relief, which appeared to have belonged to an obelisk, like that dug up at Nimroud”, and that his trenches, somewhere on the mound, produced “bits of basalt, with small figures in relief”. The British Museum has the following two fragments, from this period of Layard's work in Assyria, which are indeed entered in the original acquisitions register of the then Department of Antiquities as coming from Kalah Shergat, i.e. from Assur.

The Akkadian Period has not received the archaeological attention it deserves, despite its great historical and artistic importance. Excavated remains from the period have been more extensively reported from Syria, at such sites as Tell Brak, than from the core area of southern Iraq. The artifactual assemblage is still ill-defined, in part due to delays in the final publication of crucial excavations, including our own work at Umm al-Hafriyat and Tepe al-Atiqeh. A full assessment of the Akkadian Period also has been hindered to a significant degree, however, by errors in the dating of strata and artifacts at the key sites of Tell Asmar and Khafajah in the Diyala (see Gibson 1982), which have resulted, at these and other sites, in the disguising of early Akkadian material under the terms Protoimperial and Early Dynastic IIIB.

The excavators of the critical sequence of the Northern Palace at Tell Asmar originally assumed that the main level of the palace was pre-Akkadian because of its plano-convex bricks (Frankfort 1933: pp. 34 ff.); but subsequently they assigned this level, correctly, to the Akkadian Period (Frankfort 1934: pp. 29–39). Seton Lloyd, in his manuscript for the final monograph, maintained an Akkadian dating for the main level of the building but was persuaded to allow the date to be changed to Protoimperial for the publication (Delougaz, Hill, and Lloyd 1967: pp. 181–196). Lloyd has continued to discuss the main level of the Northern Palace as an Akkadian Period building in his own books (e.g. Lloyd 1978: p. 141). Having read the Lloyd manuscript and having witnessed the process of editorial change from the vantage point of an editorial assistant, M. Gibson was aware as early as 1963 that there were some difficulties in the interpretation of the Diyala stratigraphy, especially in the zone of transition from Early Dynastic to Akkadian.

Evidence for the Mesopotamian diet comes from several sources. Palaeobotanical and zoological remains found on excavated sites tell of the existence of edible plants and animals in the area; scenes on cylinder seals, plaques and reliefs show people eating and cooking; and the cuneiform texts give details of crops grown, animals kept and food issued to the gods, to the king and his household and to ordinary people. Unfortunately this evidence is not evenly spread for every period or every town. Texts giving information about food are abundant at Lagaš during the reigns of Lugalanda and Urukagina in the Early Dynastic III period, at Ur in the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods, at Mari during the reign of Zimri-Lim in the early second millennium and at Nuzi and Nippur during the mid-second millennium (e.g. Deimel 1931, Pinches 1908, Birot 1960 and 1964, Bottéro 1957, Lacheman 1950, Clay 1906). But there are many gaps and there are few, if any, ration lists during the Neo-Assyrian period. The identification of many terms is uncertain and disputed. This difficulty in interpretation does not only apply to texts. To take another example, the scenes on cylinder seals are small and often stylized. They may have ritual rather than practical significance and of course they may be inaccurate, showing what the craftsman believed happened and not what actually did. However, there was no great division between town and country and one job and another so that a seal-cutter living say in Tell Harmal would be familiar with the activities of a farmer, or a brewer or a baker.

Traditional views on the development of rotary motion were outlined by Childe (1954). He envisaged a progressive development of a concept that had originated in prehistoric times. Thus, perforated artefacts composed of shell and soft stone from Upper Palaeolithic levels yielded the earliest evidence for hand-held drills (Semenov 1964: 74–8). At least seven thousand years later, during the second half of the fourth millennium, potters in several parts of the Near East, including southern Mesopotamia, made first use of rotary motion (Rice 1987: 12, 132–5). Pictographic signs inscribed on Mesopotamian tablets suggest that the first use of wheeled vehicles was also made at about this time (Piggott 1983: 38) and, for the past twenty five years, it has been thought that the introduction of the lapidary engraving wheel coincided approximately with these two other innovations (for example, see Nissen 1977: 16; Gwinnett and Gorelick 1979: 25–7; Collon 1986: 13–14). However, our recent observations on engraved cylinder seals suggest that the date of the first use of the lapidary wheel should be revised.

The fine intaglios of stone cylinder seals preserve detailed evidence for the lapidary technology of Mesopotamia and the surrounding areas of the Near East. A comparative study by the authors of the engraved features on these seals (Sax and Meeks 1995, see also 1994) and those produced experimentally (Sax et al. 1998) has shown that it is possible to identify the methods used to engrave the seals. The various techniques, tools and abrasive materials can usually be recognized from the characteristic morphology or “tool-marks” of engraved features.

Under the auspices of the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq a first season of renewed excavations at Jemdet Nasr took place from 19th October to 31st December 1988. In the first place we record our gratitude to the people and institutions who enabled the excavations to take place. To Dr. Mu'ayyad Said Damerji, Director-General of the Department of Antiquities and Heritage, and the staff of the External Relations section, go our sincere thanks for their cooperation throughout the excavations. The assistance of Dr. Behija Khalil Ismail, Director of the Iraq Museum, is also gratefully acknowledged. The personal thanks of all the team go to our representative, Sd. Borhan Shakir Sulayman, whose much-appreciated assistance in all aspects of the work contributed in no small measure to the achievements of the season. For encouragement and assistance at various stages of the project gratitude is due to Dr. J. A. Black, Dr. P. R. S. Moorey, Prof. D. and Dr. J. Oates and Mr. J. N. Postgate. Financial assistance was received from the British Academy and the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, for which the writer is sincerely grateful.

Apart from the writer, as Director, the team consisted of: R. K. Englund (epigraphist), W. Matthews (micromorphologist), M. A. Woodburn (photographer), H. D. Baker, A. Lupton and M. Sarley (archaeologists). Their enthusiasm and diligence at the initiation of a new research project in Iraq made the season extremely pleasurable and rewarding. Among the many visits to the excavations we may mention those of Dr. Walid al-Jadir of the University of Baghdad, and Mr. P. Elborn and colleagues from the British Council, Baghdad.

Among texts dating from the reign of the Assyrian king Sennacherib (705–681 BC) are descriptions of a courtyard built on the king's behalf for the temple of Assur in the city of Assur. The texts note the names and orientations of the courtyard's gates, and mention the mythical figures that were included in its decoration. In this paper I will argue that an overall theme governed the choice of names and influenced the selection of mythical figures. The theme, as we shall see, was chosen to provide the temple's god, enthroned in his chamber, with a cosmic setting proper to his dignity as chief Assyrian divinity, and to refer in particular to Assur's leadership in the assembly of the gods in springtime.

The 2001 excavations in Area H on Hamoukar's lower town produced a wealth of information on a residential neighbourhood of a late third-millennium BC city. The excavations were intended to address several issues, including chronology, urban form and the final abandonment of the site. Toward these ends, a broad exposure of over 400 m2 was opened, revealing a prosperous neighbourhood that had been sacked and abruptly abandoned. This report addresses two aspects, its architecture and ceramic assemblage, in detail. The architecture demonstrates broadly shared principles in spatial patterning and planning, as well as similarities in construction, with variations connected to socioeconomic status. The ceramics represent a snapshot of the assemblage of the late or post-Akkadian period, including many whole or reconstructable forms. Contrary to the expectations of abrupt climatic change models, Hamoukar remained settled and urbanised after the proposed 2200 BC Akkadian collapse, and its abandonment was the result of a sudden and violent military event.

Nous ne nous éloignons pas de Nimrud en consacrant ces lignes à l'heureux successeur de Layard qui y passa tant d'années pleines de succès.

Mon sujet est modeste. Son but est de proposer une identification du personnage que représente un bas-relief de Teglath-phalasar, découvert par Layard dans le “Palais du Sud-Ouest”, et conservé au Musée Britannique. La scène représente deux guerriers assyriens qui poursuivent un cavalier ennemi. Deux lances s'enfoncent dans la croupe de son cheval qui se cabre, tandis que l'homme, serré de près, lève le bras en signe de reddition. C'est la nationalité de celui-ci qui nous intéresse. (planche III)

J'ai le regret de ne pas pouvoir suivre l'avis de mon savant confrère et ami R. D. Barnett, qui est le dernier à avoir publié ce monument. Il pensait pouvoir reconnaître dans le casque du cavalier aux abois celui d'un Urartéen, non sans faire suivre cette identification qu'il propose, par un point d'interrogation. Mais le casque urartéen est différent: il ne couvre pas la tête largement, ses bords s'arrêtant à la hauteur des oreilles; la crête en est courte, large et épaisse.

The excavations at Umm Dabaghiyah yielded a considerable amount of animal remains. From the rich sample 6,580 specimens could be identified, all from well-dated archaeological contexts.

The species found in the site and their frequencies are shown in Table 1. As Table 1 shows, the fauna of Umm Dabaghiyah has the following main characteristics:

(1) The fauna is not very rich in species; besides the five domestic species it contains only ten wild ones. Even if we add the wild bird species to them, the number of wild species will increase only to twelve.

(2) Although all five neolithic domestic species occur in the sample, animal-keeping itself is of insignificantly small importance compared with hunting; the domestic animals represent only 9·77–13·23% of the whole sample in the different levels. (In fact the domestic ratio is probably a little lower because in all probability also bones of wild sheep and goats occur in the caprovine sample). The overwhelming majority of the domestic sample belongs to the caprovines; the other species are far behind them with alternating frequencies. The domestic animals show well-marked anatomical differences from their wild forms. Local domestication seems to have existed only in the case of cattle.

The fifteen letters here published, unlike the two previous selections, do not form a coherent group, although in a few cases two or three letters can be considered together on the basis of the occurrence in each of the same proper name or technical term. Their principal common feature is that, even though at least two concern affairs in Babylonia, none of them can usefully be treated in relationship to any of the main geographical areas—Babylonia, Syria and the districts on the northern and eastern frontiers—to which a large part of the collection relates.

The present writer has once again the privilege of thanking his teacher, Professor Emeritus Sidney Smith, for assistance and advice in his initial attempts at editing these letters, and Professor C. J. Gadd for examining, and making some valuable suggestions upon, the more difficult of the letters, particularly XXV, XXVII, XXXI and XXXII.

The seal impression Aleppo Museum 6763 was discovered by Sir Max Mallowan and published by him in Iraq IX (1947), pl. XXIV: 1. It is unclear how much contact Mallowan's epigraphist, Gadd, actually had with the material (Finkel 1985, 201), but in any case the inscriptions on the seal impressions were not then read. The Mallowan glyptic from Brak in Aleppo was missing for many years (Finkel 1985, 199 n.2), but has recently been rediscovered by Hamido Hammade, Curator of Syrian Antiquities. We publish the impression here in advance of the full catalogue of the Brak glyptic which is now in preparation because of the importance of the inscription.

The impression was made onto a flat strip of unbaked clay with a smooth unmarked back which is broken at both ends. It seems most likely to me that this type of sealing—which is not uncommon—was made simply to see what the design looked like. It is not impossible that the impression (or indeed the seal itself) was brought to Brak from elsewhere for some purpose such as to authenticate other sealings or to identify a person, but the seal could also have belonged at Brak. This uncertainty means that the inscription cannot furnish proof of the ancient name of Tell Brak.

Although our perception of what happened in Mesopotamian prehistory is very incomplete, our knowledge has been extended considerably by recent excavations and archaeological studies. Much of this research has been more or less specifically devoted to various aspects of the early development of villages and village economy. From this one fact seems to emerge: in the Hassuna Period at least two clearly different cultural traditions can be distinguished. In northern Iraq villages with houses built in the tauf technique were dominant. They had an economy based on herding, hunting and dry-farming, and a specific series of painted, incised and plain types of pottery. By the middle of the 6th. millennium B.C. a different cultural tradition can be recognized in central Iraq. Its main characteristics are that the economy seems to be based primarily on experimental irrigation agriculture, and that the villages consist of houses built of mud-brick, some of them large and complex with buttressed walls. A distinctive type of painted pottery, the Samarran, is prevalent in villages of this tradition, for example Tell es-Sawwan, Choga Mami and Baghouz.

Samarran pottery has now been found at a great number of Mesopotamian sites. But in spite of this, little is still known of the origin and of the temporal and spatial development of the Samarran culture and its characteristic ceramics in central and southern Iraq.

Mademoiselle J. M. Munn-Rankin, dans une étude fondamentale, a récemment démonté et expliqué les rouages de la vie diplomatique au début du IIème millénaire av.J.C., d'après les archives de Mari. Elle a fort justement rappelé que ces divers mécanismes: traités, mariages entre les Cours, arbitrages, échanges de lettres et de présents, missions, etc. remontent beaucoup plus haut, mais, surtout, qu'étendus à l'Ouest par la fraternité des dynasties amorrhéennes, ils se développérent grandement au cours des siècles ultérieurs, notamment aux XIVème et XIIIème où les témoignages à ce sujet se multiplient.