The Neo-Babylonian Sippar tablet edited below, previously published in photograph only, is a unique member of a group of first-millennium cuneiform astronomical texts commonly known as ziqpu-star texts. Like other members of this group, the tablet's reverse side provides a list of ziqpu-stars (stars which culminated near the centre of the sky when viewed from Assyria or Babylonia) and measures the intervals between these culminations. What is novel about our text is that it is written on a round tablet that preserves on its obverse the remains of circular diagram or planisphere of the ziqpu-stars in the sky. Below we present an edition of the list of ziqpu-stars on the reverse, followed by a study of the planisphere on the obverse and remarks on the place of the tablet in the corpus of cuneiform astronomical texts.

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.

The earliest agricultural settlements in the al-Ḥajar region of southeastern Arabia were large, well-planned centres with a sophisticated and varied architecture. Because of their close environmental relationship with the al-Ḥajar mountain range and in order to distinguish them from the late 3rd millennium buildings and tombs of the type initially discovered and excavated on the island of Umm an-Nar, I have named these first settlements the al-Ḥajar oasis towns. To date, al-Ḥajar oasis towns have been identified at the sites of al-Khashbah, Firq, Bisyā, al-Ghubra, ʿAmlā, Bāt, Hili and Bidya, but there is every reason to believe that they also existed at Ṭawī Sim and Maysar, and at locations in Wadi Jizzi, Wadi Tayin, Wadi ʿAndām and Wadi Ḥalfayn (Fig. 1).

Associated with the ruins of the al-Ḥajar oasis towns are extensive cemeteries of Beehive tombs. These well-built funerary structures, usually circular or oval in plan, have a single, paved, corbelled chamber, encompassed by one or two contiguous walls of carefully selected, skilfully laid, flattish limestones. Their beehive shape is formed by spanning the gap at the top of the corbelling with large, flat stones and piling more flat stones on top of these to form a domed superstructure (Fig. 2a–b). While generally similar in appearance as a class, the Beehive tombs may nevertheless vary in size, in the number of their walls, in the shape of the entrance (which may be triangular, wedge-shaped or rectangular) and in whether features such as external plinths or kerbstones are present. It remains to be determined whether these variations have any social, regional or chronological significance.

Only six brick inscriptions and six cylinder inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian king Nabopolassar are known. The cylinder inscriptions are listed below in the hypothetical chronological order suggested by P. R. Berger, Die neubabylonischen Königsinschriften (AOAT 4/1, Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1973), and lettered A to F for convenience. Berger's numbering is given and also that of S. Langdon, Die neubabylonischen Königsinschriften (VAB 4, Leipzig, 1912).

A. Rebuilding of E-PA-DÙN-ti-la, temple of Ninurta, Babylon (Berger, no. I, 2; Langdon, no. 4).

B. Repairs to Imgur-Enlil, Babylon (Berger, no. I, 1; not in Langdon).

C. Building of Nēmetti-Enlil, Babylon (Berger, no. II, 3; not in Langdon).

D. Building of E-edina, Sippar (Berger, no. II, 2; Langdon, no. 3).

E. Building on Euphrates at Sippar (Berger, no. II, 1; Langdon, no. 2).

F. Rebuilding of E-temen-an-ki, Babylon (Berger, no. III, 1; Langdon, no. 1).

Mention is made by Berger of four copies (Bab. 29363, 36495 and 41860 and BM 26263) of B, the cylinder inscription concerning Nabopolassar's repairs to Imgur-Enlil, the inner wall of Babylon. The only publication of any of these so far is a translation in Koldewey/Delitzsch, Das wiedererstehende Babylon, 4th edn. (1925), 132 (details in Berger, p. 135).

The small moulded terracotta plaques made in Mesopotamia in the first three or four centuries of the second millennium B.C. provide a unique, if often enigmatic, corpus of evidence for the popular iconography of the period. They embrace scenes of myth, ritual and daily life unmatched in glyptic save during the Akkadian period, and then only on artefacts which their quality suggests were common currency only among the upper classes. Three major studies have so far been devoted to these plaques, the most recent, that by Barrelet, still in progress. Single volumes have covered the terracottas of Nippur and Uruk, whilst those found in excavations at many other sites are scattered through the literature. Barrelet has provided an excellent, fully illustrated survey of the terracottas from de Genouillac's excavations at Kish in 1912 now in the Louvre (the majority of those which he preserved), but the extensive collection recorded by the Oxford—Field Museum (Chicago) Expedition (O.F.M.E.) of 1923–33 remains largely unpublished and is now divided between Baghdad, Chicago and Oxford. This paper seeks to publish as economically as possible the repertory of motifs found at Kish, paying particular attention to recorded findspots and the popularity of the motif elsewhere. This information seems particularly important in any attempt to unravel the social significance of these objects, to which no explicit documentary references are yet known. The links between the religious iconography of these plaques and Old Babylonian glyptic has long been apparent; but in addition to the stereotyped combinations of deities and their attributes, which are common to the two, the plaques offer a quite fresh range of scenes.

There appears to be a striking resemblance between the use of lapis lazuli in Iraq and that in Egypt during the Predynastic period and the early dynasties.

Lapis lazuli, among other exotic materials, is well-known during the Gerzean period in Egypt. There is hardly a cemetery of the period that has not produced lazuli beads, from Gerzeh itself, in the north, to Bahan, just south of the first cataract. It was, however, not in common use; at Naqada itself, where some 2000 graves make up the largest predynastic cemetery known, lapis lazuli was found in only II graves. Its first appearance dates from early in the Gerzean period, in Petrie's S.D. 40. Its associations during this period are interesting. Lapis lazuli beads were strung together with an imported Mesopotamian cylinder seal found in grave T29 at Naqada. Lazuli fly-amulets form another link with Iraq. Lazuli beads were found in grave 836 at Naqada (dating from the end of this period) with a copper dagger blade quite unlike the other predynastic specimens known; similar daggers dating from about this period have been found outside Egypt. Finally, it is often found in association with gold, but so far not with silver. The general impression is that lapis lazuli is found in richer graves, in association with other foreign elements.

The following is an account of a short investigation carried out under the auspices of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago at Al-‘Ubaid in January 1937.

Excavations on this site have previously been undertaken by other institutions; some explanation is therefore necessary of the origin and circumstances of our short campaign.

In the course of the Oriental Institute's exploration of the Dyala region, not only was the existence of early Sumerian civilization established at several sites in this comparatively northern part of Babylonia, but successive stages in its development were revealed and could be studied in detail. At Khafaje it was with this problem that we were mainly occupied for seven successive seasons.

The uniformity of the material culture as found at these sites and at others located in Sumer proper soon became apparent, and was confirmed by innumerable cases of obvious resemblance between individual discoveries. It, therefore, seemed not unreasonable to expect a similar uniformity to appear in contemporary architectural remains.

Tell Rifa‘at, in the ‘Azaz Casa, is situated in the midst of the village of the same name, thirty-five kilometres to the north of Aleppo in the Syrian Region of the United Arab Republic.

The modern village, with a population of 5–6,000, is the seat of a Mudir Nahir; it lies five kilometres east of the Aleppo-‘Azaz road, close to the Turkish border, and is on the railway line from Aleppo to Istanbul. Trial excavations were made on this site by the Czech philologist Hrozny in 1924, but after three months’ work he abandoned his investigations; no detailed report on this work has so far been published, and apart from a few fragments in the Aleppo Museum no material from the excavation appears to be extant.

My attention was drawn to Tell Rifa‘at in 1953 in the course of a survey of sites on either side of the Syro-Turkish frontier; but it was not until 1956 that under the auspices of the Institute of Archaeology, University of London and with the assistance of a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and from the Australian Institute of Archaeology, Melbourne, a preliminary investigation of the site was undertaken. A further season had been planned for 1957, but owing to the political situation it was not possible to resume work until the summer of 1960, when a two-month season was carried out with the support of funds from the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and the C. H. W. Johns Memorial Fund of Cambridge University, the Ashmolean Museum, the Australian Institute of Archaeology, Melbourne, the Russell Trust, and the City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham.

Professor M. E. L. Mallowan, in his account of The Excavations at Nimrud (Kalḫu), 1951 makes four references to glass (two on p. 15, one each on pp. 18 and 19), three of them concerning glass fragments and one to the use of glass as an overlay. Two groups of these fragments were sent by him to Mr. D. B. Harden at the Ashmolean Museum, and Mr. Harden in turn passed them on to me for examination. Subsequently Professor Mallowan handed to me several other fragments. For the purpose of this account the material has been classified in six groups and labelled as specimens A to F. Each specimen may consist of a single fragment or of two or more closely related. Their character, their location when found, and the approximate date when they were deposited are summarised in Table I from information supplied by Professor Mallowan.

No inference should be drawn that the glass objects found were themselves of the dates quoted. They may have been contemporary or older.

During the excavations in Nineveh carried out by R. Campbell Thompson on behalf of the British Museum in the years 1929 to 1932, many glazed Assyrian bricks were recovered and partly published in the excavation reports. Bricks were found in the years 1927–8 and 1929–30, respectively, when the Temple of Nabu and the so-called Palace of Assurnasirpal II were being excavated. Bricks were said to have come from the South-East area of the Temple of Nabu, where the excavators thought they had found the palace of King Assurnasirpal II. Actually, as recognised then by Thompson himself, the area between the temples of Nabu and Ishtar, where the palace of Assurnasirpal was thought to be, is characterised by later installations that reused Assyrian materials and structures (Fig. 1a–b). Confusion is due to the frequent presence of the word é.gal (“palace”) at the beginning of the inscription that was stamped onto the bricks. However, the word é.gal probably does not refer to a palace proper, but was used as a production mark: the brick was produced by and/or within the administrative structure (“palace”) of the Assyrian king, whose name usually follows the word é.gal (“palace” of + Assyrian king's name), independently from its final location or use either for a palace or a temple.

Thus, as reconstructed by Julian Reade, the Temple of Ishtar should be considered the likely source for the Assyrian materials found when excavating the South-East quadrant in the years 1927–8 and 1929–30, although the Temple of Nabu itself cannot a priori be totally excluded.

In 1946 Professor Helmuth Bossert, a distinguished scholar who had already made several remarkable contributions to Anatolian studies and had taken an outstanding part in the decipherment of the Hittite hieroglyphs, in collaboration with an able Turkish colleague, Dr. Bahadir Alkim, published the first account of their discovery of fragments of Old Semitic inscriptions at Karatepe (Aslantaş), in Cilicia. The site is marked by the remains of a small walled enclosure at the top of a hill in the most inaccessible recesses of the Upper Ceyhan River, on its West bank. Opposite Karatepe on the East bank of the river on a hill called Domuztepe, they found remains of a little township, evidently of the late Hittite period. But to return to Karatepe, about which the discoverers furnish further welcome information in their second report; it appears that inside the walled enclosure, there was a series of carved basalt slabs facing East, and forming either the façade of a small temple-palace such as was discovered at Tell Halaf or Sakca-gözü, or the decoration of a gateway, as at Zincirli or Carchemish. Near by, to the South, was a broken gateway-lion, inscribed.

Trade being the main theme of this Rencontre, I thought it of some interest to give some reflections on the theme from a general view-point, notably on the role of trade in connection with the diffusion of civilization and on trade as a factor in the economy of ancient Mesopotamia, in short trade as a cultural and an economic factor, and a possible connection between these two. Did trade play an important role in the diffusion of features of civilization in ancient Mesopotamia and surrounding countries? Can it be said that trade was an important element in the economy of that area?

The reflections are mainly based on my own observations and my own, I hope, logical reasoning, the theoretical literature being left out of consideration. I had not been able to gain access to the papers of the seminar held in Santa Fé in 1973, published under the title Ancient Civilization and Trade in 1975, before the Rencontre. Having taken cognizance of this book, it can be stated that the approach to the problems is different from that in this paper; the studies, analysing the trade itself, mainly in prehistoric and protohistoric times, have a clear theoretical character, whereas this paper only regards the two above-mentioned aspects in historical times, starting from some conspicuous facts and questions arising from them.

Exactly sixty years ago, the great cuneiformist Th. G. Pinches, whose immense services to Assyriology are not always fully realized, published in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology five fragments of tablets of an entirely new type: Sumerian and Akkadian texts written in the Greek alphabet. Commenting on some of these texts in the same issue of the Proceedings, A. H. Sayce added a sixth fragment. A further text, in two fragments, was published in 1928 by W. G. Schileico.

The corpus of these most interesting texts can now be doubled by eight new fragments from the British Museum collections published here. Credit for this substantial addition must, however, be given to Pinches, for it is among the unpublished British Museum texts which he copied in the late nineties that I had the good fortune to find either copies of, or references to, the new fragments.

In the following pages, I have attempted to give a catalogue of the extant texts arranged according to their subject-matter. They may be divided into two main groups—(A) Lexical, and (B) Literary texts, the word ‘literary’ being taken in its broadest sense. To these groups it has been thought preferable to add a third one, namely (C) Unclassified texts, rather than withhold those texts which I could not understand; it is thus hoped that other scholars might succeed where I have failed.

With increasing interest in the economic aspects of Mesopotamian history, precise determinations of the metrology in use at different times and places are becoming ever more urgent. Measures of capacity are particularly badly served, and the position for the Old Babylonian period is well described by M. Bottéro when he writes: “Quant à la métrologie absolue (ou plus exactement: ajustée à notre propre système métrique), aucune donnée ne nous permet jusqu'à ce jour de la connaître, et nous sommes contraints, si nous voulons en avoir une idée, de faire fond sur les calculs effectués autour des mesures proprement babyloniennes ou assyriennes, sans nous dissimuler que les mêmes mots pouvaient impliquer des valeurs différentes…” (ARMT VII, 347). The brief note which follows is therefore intended to convey the essential information about an Old Babylonian jar from Tell al Rimah with a note of its capacity inscribed on it. The accuracy of the determination leaves much to be desired, but in the absence of any more accurate data any such clues seem worth following up.

It has been noted with some regret, although with little surprise, that most of the tablets belonging to the Neo-Babylonian library discovered within the temple of Šamaš at Sippar duplicate texts already known to us. The medical tablet presented here, apart from being a welcome addition to the scarce number — compared to the Assyrian medical tablets — of medical texts from Babylonia, is therefore especially interesting as it contains an excerpt text for which no duplicate has been hitherto identified.

The tablet IM 132670 (Sippar 8/352, which measures 215 × 133 mm) contains four columns of text and is almost completely preserved; only the upper right and the lower left corner are broken and a crack and some rubbing impede the understanding of column iii. The text is a collection of thirty-eight prescriptions that treat diseases affecting the head, temples, ears, eyes, nose, teeth and lungs. Their arrangement follows the scheme known in Akkadian as ištu muḫḫi adi šēpē “from head to foot” (literally: “from the cranium to the feet”). All major text collections that treat parts of the body are thus arranged, like the therapeutic, diagnostic and physiognomic series and the lexical list Ugu-mu. Numerous prescriptions of the new text have parallels in other medical texts. In most cases these parallels encompass only one or two entries. In two Assyrian texts, however, several consecutive prescriptions are paralleled. The text AO 11447 parallels §§3–12 while in BAM 44 §§ 33–8 are noted. BAM 44 lists the prescriptions in the same order, only inserting two additional prescriptions at one point. AO 11447, on the contrary, not only adds several other prescriptions but lists them in a different order to the effect that the same prescriptions are used for different symptoms.

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

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

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

Les rapprochements entre le matériel ethnographique et celui découvert dans les fouilles archéologiques ont souvent aidé à identifier des techniques anciennes ou des objets dont le mode d'emploi s'était depuis longtemps perdu dans nos régions. Récemment, cette méthode comparative appliquée à l'étude du matériel céramique harappéen avait aussi permis de reconnaître, dans cette très vaste série d'ustensiles, ceux qui avaient pu être utilisés dans la chaîne de production de certains dérivés laitiers. Le travail ci-dessous forme en quelque sorte la suite de cette première étude, mais il repose cette fois principalement sur l'interprétation de scènes pastorales puisées dans l'iconographie mésopotamienne qui est l'une des principales sources documentaires sur la vie quotidienne ancienne de cette région.

Les ovins, on le sait, sont bien adaptés aux écosystèmes arides et forment la plus grande partie des troupeaux des régions de steppes et de savanes. Il n'en est évidemment pas de même dans les zones humides ou irrigables, le long des fleuves ou des marais, que ce soit en Mésopotamie ou dans les vallées de l'Indus, où le bétail est presque entièrement composé de bovins. Par conséquent, comme la gamme des sous-produits du lait de vache n'est pas tout à fait la même que celle du lait de brebis, l'économie des régions à bovins majoritaires diffère aussi sensiblement de celle des zones arides. Les différences sont surtout apparentes lorsqu'il s'agit de laitages conservables qui ont fait l'objet, non seulement d'un commerce régional, mais aussi parfois d'échanges avec des contrées éloignées moins favorisées par leur géographie.

In Iraq XV, Pt. 2 (1953), pp. 123–125, C. J. Gadd published the inscription of a barrel-cylinder which was found, broken in three pieces, during the excavations at Nimrud. This inscription is a foundation document composed by Marduk-apla-iddina II for a shrine which he consecrated to the god Ningiš-zi-da within the E-anna temple at Warka.

At the end of his article, C. J. Gadd sought to identify the temple mentioned in this inscription with one of the many known, but undefined, temples. At the time when this attempt was made, only the two temples proposed by Mr. Gadd were considered, but both of them cannot perfectly be brought into accord with the statement of the text. In the same year in which Mr. Gadd's article was published, a new temple was excavated in E-anna at Warka, and I have the impression that this is the temple to which the statement of the inscription may best be applied. In U.V.B. X (pp. 5 ff.) and U.V.B. XI (pp. 15 ff) it was pointed out that the extension of E-anna was far greater than we had hitherto supposed. In the eastern corner a very large court was added in which the Innin-temple of Karaindaš stood, and on the North-western side of the Zigurrat another court which—as we know from the results of excavations carried out during the last years—contained only large dwelling-houses. This new discovery of two very large courts belonging to the sanctuary entirely alters the situation. By means of the court extending to the north-west that part of the building of the enclosed court called by Jordan “Aussenzingel” (outer precinct) now becomes “Innenzingel“ (inner precinct) (Plate XXXV). The part in question is that group of rooms within the Zingel enclosure which includes the so-called north-western temple. The building, newly excavated, is situated in the court of Eanna farthest to the East (Qc-e XIV4-XV1).

This paper is concerned with a pointed iron helmet with decorative bronze inlay and a collection of iron fragments, also with bronze inlay, from similar or related helmets. All are now in the British Museum. The complete helmet, reconstructed from fragments (BM 22496), is clearly of Assyrian type, and the bronze inlay forms, amongst other motifs, a central design showing the king with crown-prince and attendant framed by a bud-and-garland border. This helmet was first published by Barnett in 1953, when it became possible through x-ray photography to discern some of the bronze inlaid decoration. Barnett identified the helmet as coming from Rassam's excavations at Nineveh, and as support for this suggestion cited a report to the Trustees of the British Museum by Samuel Birch referring to the arrival of a consignment of antiquities from Nineveh in July 1880 that included “an Assyrian bronze helmet”.

Almost certainly, however, Birch was referring to one of three bronze or bronze and iron “Spangenhelme” of Parthian or Sassanian date that are now in the British Museum (BM 22495, 22497–8). The two other examples were mentioned by Birch in his annual report for 1877 when he says that “two helmets from Kouyunjik” were mounted in that year. All three helmets are characterised by being made of metal plates fixed together with strips of bronze held in place by rivets. It is very unlikely, then, that the iron helmet with bronze inlay comes from Nineveh. It is much more probable that it, and the associated fragments, come from Nimrud, and they must be the fragments of Assyrian iron helmet with copper inlay registered under the numbers 48–11–4, 113–115 and described as coming from Layard's excavations in the North-West Palace at Nimrud. None of the fragments, nor indeed the complete helmet, now bears a registration number, but there seems little doubt about the identification.

The Mesopotamian evidence discussed in this article indicates 1356 for the accession of Ashur-uballiṭ I, who from the Amarnah correspondence is known to have been a contemporary of Akhenaten. Egyptologists believe that the lowest possible date for the death of Akhenaten is 1358. We are dealing here with a comparatively remote period, and a discrepancy of only 2 years may not seem very significant. But closer examination reveals that the discrepancy is considerably greater. Several years must be allowed for the overlap between the reigns of Akhenaten and Ashur-uballit; moreover, if the Menophres theory is accepted—that a Sothic cycle began in the first year of Seti I—the date 1358 for the death of Akhenaten does not allow for a sufficient interval between Akhenaten and Seti. The Mesa inscription proves that 59 years elapsed between the accession of Akhenaten and an unknown year in the reign of Horemhab. It has hitherto generally been assumed that the year in question was the last of Horemhab's long reign, but in the absence of any evidence to this effect such an assumption is absolutely inadmissible if we intend to abide by probabilities. Consequently, the discrepancy we are confronted with here must be increased by the number of years between this unknown regnal year of Horemhab and his death.