In the issue of this journal for Autumn, 1956, I published under the title ‘Two medical texts from Nimrud’ a fragment from the Nābû temple library which had been excavated the previous year. The piece is numbered ND. 4358, and in the issue referred to it was described as follows: ‘This text is a catalogue, perhaps sufficiently important to be called the “Nimrud Catalogue”, of a series “sa-gig”. The series in question we have not yet learnt to call by this name, but it is otherwise well known as enūma ana bīt mar marṣi āšīpu illaku.’ As to its physical description, it was stated that the fragment was ‘the lower half of a single-column tablet, obverse and reverse thus providing a continuous text which must represent about half the original.’

It is the purpose of the present communication to announce that the missing portion of the tablet has been identified.

The new piece is ND. 4366. It came to my notice through a copy made by D. J. Wiseman at Baghdad towards the end of 1959, and I am grateful for Wiseman's generous consent that I should edit the text in this publication. The text was collated by me in the course of a personal visit to Baghdad in the Spring of 1961, and I was then able to confirm my suspicion that it in fact physically joined ND. 4358. There is some loss of material at the join and down the left edge, and the quality of the surface rapidly deteriorates as the end of the reverse is reached, but every line of the tablet is now represented in some part at least. The copy will be included in Wiseman's forthcoming volume of texts from the Nābû temple library, and thus in the present edition the text is conveyed in transliteration only.

Auch wenn sich dieser Beitrag zu Ehren Sir Leonard Woolleys nicht L. unmittelbar auf Ergebnisse bezieht, die wir seinen Ausgrabungen in Ur verdanken, so hätten vielleicht diese wenigen Zeilen doch auch sein Interesse gefunden, gelten sie doch einer sumerischen Dichtung, die uns in etwa die grosse Herrscherpersönlichkeit Šulgis, des zweiten Königs der III. Dynastie von Ur, näherzurücken geeignet ist.

Each season of excavations at Tell al-Hiba confirms Jacobsen's proposed identification first made in 1953 that Tell al-Hiba rather than Telloh, as formerly believed, is the site of ancient Lagash.

During the first two seasons of the excavations in 1968–69 and in 1970–71, no less than fourteen foundation stones identifying the temple oval in which they were found as the Ibgal of Inann a were unearthed. Nine of the stones were accompanied by inscribed copper foundation figurines,figurines which represented Šulutula, the personal deity of Enannatum I, the builder of at least Level I of the Ibgal. As Hansen has indicated, however, in a wadi a mile to the north of the Ibgal fragmentary cones stating that Enannatu m was the builder of the Ibgal have been recovered. In addition it may be well to say that no such cones have been found within the extensive area of the Ibgal which has been excavated. Why this is the case is not yet known. The foundation stones and the companion figurines found in situ are, however, solid evidence that the physical location of one of the temples mentioned in the texts as being located in Lagash has been ascertained.

During October and November 1977 a third season of work at Abu Salabikh was undertaken by the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq. On this occasion we remained at the site for less than two months, partly because we had planned to do less excavation so as to concentrate on the study of materials from the previous seasons, and partly to enable the expedition to move up to the area of the Hamrin dam, where we had a pressing invitation from the State Antiquities Organization to join in rescue excavations. Despite the short season at Abu Salabikh we were able to achieve most of our objectives, and in fact it proved necessary to undertake some minor rescue excavations of our own because of urgent irrigation drainage works close to the site. This year we were happy to welcome once more Sd. Abdul-Mejid Muhammad with Sd. Muhammad Yahya as our representatives, and are as ever grateful to them for their unfailing kindness and ready assistance. Our thanks go also to Dr. Muayad Sa‘id, Director General of Antiquities and all of the Organization's officials who helped to smooth our paths. In particular, though, we must pay tribute to the late Prof. Fuad Safar: as Director of Excavations he took the most active interest in our work, and he was especially enthusiastic about the new light it might throw on the Early Dynastic I period. So often in the past it has been his penetrating comments that led us to new approaches and objectives, and we all feel that archaeological research in Iraq can never be the same again without him.

Between 1927 and 1930 a joint expedition by the University of Oxford and the Field Museum of Chicago to the site of Kish opened a series of soundings (ZY, Y, YW and YWN) on the mound of Tell Ingharra in order to investigate the earliest periods of the settlement. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the YWN sounding utilizing previously unpublished documentation and excavated objects, and offers a new interpretation of the evidence. In addition, a new radiocarbon date assigns the latest phase from the sounding to the ED IIIb to Akkadian transition and it can be compared usefully with existing dates from several central and north Mesopotamian sites.

The bronzes illustrated on Plates XXXVII, XXXVIII, 1, 2, and XXXIX, 4 are all unstratified and the provenance of only one of the daggers is known. This is illustrated on Plate XXXVII, 1 and comes from a site above Lahijan in the Elburz mountains east of Resht. It was presented to the Institute of Archaeology by Mrs. Iris Ainley. The dagger is 35 cms. long and the lunate pommel measures 5·9 cms. in width. Plate XXXVIII, 4 is in the United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington (No. 422.991), and is published here by courtesy of the Associate Curator, Mr. G. W. Van Beek. It measures 38·4 cms. in length and the pommel is 4·1 cms. in width. Both the daggers (Plates XXXVII, 1 and XXXVIII, 4) show the distinctive features which relate them to daggers from the region of the Talish, where tombs excavated in both the Russian and Persian areas by De Morgan in 1890 and 1901 have yielded many comparable examples. Plate XXXVIII, 4 can be compared to my type 43 (Iraq VIII, 1946, Pt. 1, Pl. V, 43). This type cannot be included among the common types of Talish bronze dagger, but a dagger from Hiveri, published by De Morgan, has a solid hilt with three circular ribs and the type example from Veri, with one rib round the solid hilt are both comparable. A dagger from Luristan with hilt similar to the Veri example is also published by Godard, and again the skeuomorphic moulding representing the thong which bound hilt and blade together on earlier blades is visible. But, as Schaeffer has pointed out, the cemetery at Veri must have lasted for a considerable period. Most of the tombs can be assigned to his “Talish récent II” c. 1450–1350 B.C. (dated by analogy with comparable material in tombs at Hassan Zamini and Agha Evlar which contained seals of Kirkuk style) but there is an earlier group contemporary with Khodja Daoud Köpru (Talish récent I c. 1550–1450 B.C.) in which the swords are all narrow rapiers with tangs.

Scholars had once assumed that all of the relief programmes in Sennacherib's “Palace Without Rival” at Nineveh depicted events solely from his first three military campaigns. In 1994, however, E. Frahm successfully reconstructed a heavily damaged epigraph from the throne room specifically identifying the city of Ukku as the topic of the relief programme on Slabs 1–4 of this room's western wall. We know from Sennacherib's annals that Ukku was a target of the king's fifth campaign, aimed at enemies to the north of the Assyrian heartland in the Zagros mountain range. I have therefore re-examined the palace reliefs in order to identify other fifth-campaign programmes that have previously been overlooked. In this article, I argue that Rooms XXXVIII and XLVIII, in addition to the images on the western wall of the throne room, contain representations of Sennacherib's fifth campaign. With this identification substantiated, I then explore the typological aspects of these fifth-campaign programmes to classify their visual features.

Many of the scenes on cylinders are evidently renderings of myths, but great uncertainty prevails as to their interpretation. This is partly due to the incompleteness of our knowledge of the contemporary literature and partly to our inability to grasp the allusions which must have been clear to the clients of the seal-cutters. Apart, however, from these inevitable handicaps, attempts at interpretation have suffered from a singular lack of method. For if it is true that our only hope of utilizing the information of the seals lies in a comparison of their scenes with the texts, it should be equally obvious that a haphazard interpretation of isolated scenes remains necessarily guess-work. If, for instance, a vanquished god is called ‘Kingu’ or a two-faced figure ‘Marduk’, such identifications do not carry conviction as long as we do not know precisely in which scenes these figures appear, which versions of each scene are extant, and what bearing the variants of any one scene have upon its interpretation. But, as is so often the case, the archaeological material has been denied the methodical treatment given, as a matter of course, to every text.

The following texts come from the Sippar Collections of the British Museum and offer substantial new data on numerous aspects of the administration of the Ebabbara, particularly as regards crown relations and privatised functions. Among the more important points are:

(a) Text No. 1, a fragmentary text dealing with the gardeners of Šamaš, mentions a royal official (rēš šarri) in charge of the gardeners and a letter (šipirtu) from Nabonidus in Tema, the first evidence for that king exercising direct control over the Ebabbara from his Arabian capital.

(b) We also have definite indication that certain official positions connected with the collection of dues payable to the temple could be hired out. Specifically this involves the collection of tithes (No. 8) and the office of gugallu (No. 7). The occurrence of the ša muhhi ešrê and gugallu in letter orders had already prompted speculation that these two duties were rented out in the same manner as the rab sūti and this is now shown to be the case. Other examples of privatised functions are a contract to supply baked bricks to the temple (No. 6) and an undertaking by a širku (temple slave) to supply some of the material requirements of the offerings (No. 2).

(c) Hints of temple affairs outside the Sippar region are given by the appearance of the šangû and the rab ummāni in Opis (No. 4). The text concerns sheep, though whether they were there for pasture, sale or provisioning temple personnel is not clear. The sheep coming from Rusapu were part of a cycle in which temple flocks might be pastured far away with animals rotated as required (Nos. 11, 12). Sheep belonging to the temple are also found on the road in No. 10.

It is the purpose of this article to gather from a variety of places and publications the examples (known to me) of a particular form of game-board which was in use, at widely different periods, over a very large area of the ancient East, and to point out one historical fact which seems to have a clear connexion with it.

The game in question is that which has been called, for want of any other name, the Game of Fifty-eight Holes. In all cases but one the only requisites of the game which have survived are the boards upon which it was played, and these show in general a striking resemblance, not only in the arrangement of the holes, but in the shape of the whole object, which is roughly rectangular, but has one of the short sides straight while all of the other sides are curved, the long ones concave, the remaining short one convex. Despite individual variations this general form is common to all but a very few of the examples; it has been aptly compared with an axe-blade. As to the holes, there is always a line of these following the edges of the board and two straight lines down the middle. Occasionally the middle displays some pictorial device, a palm-tree, or a pair of eyes, so contrived that it marks out the end (?), or winning-point, of the game; but this feature is rare. The holes are arranged in groups so that, in all but one particular area, four ordinary holes occur between special holes which are always distinguished either by a mark, an inlay, or the end of certain lines connecting them with other holes of the same kind. In the middle of the curved short side is always a central hole of the special kind, generally marked in the same way as the others, but occasionally made larger, or even signalized by a sign of its own. In the particular area referred to, which is on the middle lines towards the straight end of the board, there is always a pair of groups of three special holes with only one ordinary hole dividing them.

The original meaning and the changes in the content of the term Amurru in the course of the second millennium B.C. have been one of the most intensively discussed and debated subjects of Near Eastern history. The name appears from the late third millennium on, both in phonetic spelling and in the logographic writing MAR.TU. It is now generally agreed that in the early part of the second millennium the term refers loosely to the Syrian regions situated west of Mesopotamia proper and to the inhabitants of these regions. The more difficult questions under debate are concerned with the original meaning of Amurru, whether ethnic or geographical, and with the exact nature and origin of its equation with MAR.TU. These important questions however are of little concern for the issue discussed in this paper.

The broad sense of Amurru as indicated above, often used in opposition to Akkad, is gradually restricted to a more limited region of central and southern Syria. A Mari text has the “Land of Amurru” in a sequence after the lands of Yamhad and Qatna, whereas another text mentions “the messengers of four kings of Amurru” alongside the messengers of Hazor. Texts from Alalakh VII and IV mention individuals from the “Land of MAR.TU”, without however any clues to its whereabouts.

During his second expedition to Assyria, October 1849 to April 1851, Layard excavated extensively at both Nimrud and Nineveh, as in his first campaign of November 1845 to June 1847, but now principally in Sennacherib's palace on Kuyunjik. The two London institutions, the British Museum and the British Library, house a rich corpus of primary material, in the form of drawings, sketches, plans, notebooks, diaries and journals, letters and other manuscript documents, which not only add much information and detail to our knowledge of Layard's achievements, as published in his second book, Nineveh and Babylon (1853), but also give a vivid and colourful picture and almost day-by-day account of his excavations. These sources are here described and discussed, and in a subsequent article will be used to trace the course of Layard's second campaign at Sennacherib's palace on Kuyunjik.

Since this article deals for the most part with the primary sources and only secondarily with Layard's published account, Nineveh and Babylon, the rooms and courtyards of Sennacherib's palace are here referred to as Chamber A, etc., as found in these sources and also in Nineveh and its Remains (1849). It was only in Nineveh and Babylon that Layard changed to the system of designating rooms by Roman numerals (Fig. 1). Concordances for converting the chamber or room letters to numbers and vice versa will be found on p. 213.

The publication in 1955 of the fourth volume of Sir Leonard Woolley's Ur Excavations series set a coping-stone upon the remarkable edifice of recorded research which he and his collaborators in the “Combined Expedition” have achieved. This volume deals finally with the pre-Third Dynasty discoveries, other than those connected with the Royal Cemetery. But, having in the sequence of publications given precedence to Volume V (The Ziggurat and its Surroundings), its appearance has been long delayed, and, as explained in a foreword, it has now proved necessary to publish the original text as prepared for printing in 1935, almost without reference to the bearing which subsequent work in the same field has had upon its contents. Clearly its usefulness will be greatly enhanced if this omission can gradually be repaired; and though an attempt can hardly be made to do so with a standard of thoroughness comparable to that of the original work, the following notes are intended as a small contribution. They concern the discoveries connected with the Al ‘Ubaid period at Ur and the light thrown upon them by subsequent finds, particularly at the sites of Tell ‘Uqair and Tell Abu Shahrein (Eridu).

This paper is concerned with a distinctive type of axe-head, examples of which have been found at Chagar Bazar and Nimrud (Pl. VII and Figs. 1–2). Both have four horizontal ribs encircling the socket and a rectangular-shaped projection at the base of the blade. The Chagar Bazar specimen comes from a level I grave, to which Sir Max Mallowan assigned outside limits of c. 1750–1600 B.C. He concluded, however, that the axe-head was unlikely to be much later than 1700 B.C. (Mallowan 1947, Pls. XLI: 1, LV: 15, pp. 187–8, 218). The same date was assumed for the Nimrud axe, which, although not from the same mould as suggested by Sir Max, is certainly very similar and is probably a product of the same workshop. Indeed, they are so close there can be very little difference in date between them. Subsequent writers on axe-heads have generally followed Sir Max's dating (Maxwell-Hyslop 1949, 107; Deshayes 1960, I, 188; Erkanal 1977, 16). Sir Max found confirmation for the early date of these axes in “an almost identical axe” found in level Ib at Kültepe (Mallowan 1956, 20–21; 1966, I, 346–7, n. 36), and thus belonging to the first half of the eighteenth century B.C. The Kültepe axe (Fig. 3:1; Özgüç, T. 1955, 69–70, Figs. 40a, 42) does in fact belong to a small group of Anatolian axe-heads that have been conveniently collected together by Erkanal (1977, Pl. 5, nos. 57, 59–61).

This article re-examines the cuneiform evidence for the upper end of the Old Babylonian metrological systems for capacity and area. We demonstrate that the reading 1(šar2) gal šu nu-tag “one large šar2 that the hand cannot touch” is not supported by that evidence, and show instead that the phrase's final sign is not tag but gi4 “return” or “repeat”. We then consider several likely interpretations of this reading, arguing that the size of the largest units in both systems is probably sixty times smaller than previously assumed, but nevertheless more than adequate for practical needs. Editions of two important metrological cuneiform texts are appended.

The following text, in form a Sumerian incantation, is written upon a tablet (11 by 7 cm., lower left corner broken off and some surface damage) excavated at Ur by Sir Leonard Woolley in the season 1926–1927, and given the excavation-number U.7734. It was found with several other tablets belonging to the same period in a burnt level over the upper (2nd period) floor of rooms 5–6 in the private house called “No. 7 Quiet Street.”

Its contents are a prayer recited, no doubt by attendant priests and followers, on one occasion or more when Rim-Sin, king of Larsa, 1822–1763 B.C., made a state entry into the “great exalted gate” of Ur. This was the building found by the excavator in the third season of his work, which was either identical with or incorporated d u b - l á - m a ḫ, the seat of justice and, presumably, of court-records, a function which accords with the usual oriental practice of sitting at judgement in the city-gate. This grand entrance led, in fact, to the whole of the “temenos” or sacred area as it existed in the Larsa period, and whether or not this included the king's own residence it certainly included also the main sanctuary itself É - k i š -Nu-g á l (line 15), where dwelt the divine couple Nanna and Ningal, waiting to receive (11 f., 44 f.) and to send out (15) messages carried by servant-deities.

This text, on a small white limestone tablet found at the Nergal Gate of Nineveh in 1992–3, concerns work on the Akītu (New Year's) house. There is a longer text of Sennacherib that concerns the building of an Akītu house outside the walls of Aššur. Most of the preserved obverse of the text published here has the titles and epithets of the king (obv. 1–13). Then the text begins to narrate work on the Akītu house just before it breaks off (obv. 14–15).

The preserved portion of the reverse seems to refer to the Nergal Gate (rev. 2′) and then describes in general terms the annual celebrations in the Akītu house. The text concludes with a date (690 BC).

The “Lion-demon” (Akk. ugallu, “Big Weather-beast”) is a human-bodied creature with a lion's head, donkey's ears and human feet or, more usually, the talons of a bird (Plate XIa). With variations on this form beginning in the Akkadian period, the figure is known from Old Babylonian down through Kassite, Late Assyrian, Late Babylonian and into Achaemenid times. Since the completion of a corpus of material depicting the figure in the art of Mesopotamia and the Near East (Green 1986), I have obtained photographs of two seals dating from the virtual chronological limits of the type's depiction in Mesopotamia, one Old Babylonian, the other Late Babylonian. A fuller supplement to the work, with additional and formerly restricted material, will appear eventually, but in the meantime, as these two particular seals were included in this catalogue, as nos. 41 and 144, but with somewhat incorrect descriptions (pp. 181, 229) based upon the line-drawings of their earlier publication (reproduced ibid., Pls. 8 and 38), it seems desirable, in the interests of an early corrective, to present here these photographs (Plate XIb and c) and some brief comments, as promised in the postscript to the catalogue-article (p. 254). I have to thank Dr. J. P. A. van der Vin of the Royal Coin Cabinet, The Hague, for the photographs and for permission to publish them, and, in the year of her eightieth birthday, I offer this short piece especially to Lady Mallowan, whose interests in Mesopotamian magic and iconography are well known.

La fouille de Tell Haddad, locus II, pièce 30, a livré plusieurs fragments sumériens de Gilgameš. H 154 (Mt1) et H 157 (Mt2) donnent la fin de l'oeuvre que nous appellerons Gilgameš, Enkidu et les Enfers (GEE), mais dans une version qui présente une certaine originalité par rapport à celles que nous connaissions jusqu'à aujourd'hui.

On savait qu'il existait des versions divergentes. Les textes d'Ur le montraient déjà clairement, et A. Shaffer avait tenu compte de l'incompatibilité des sources en éditant à part U 16878 (= UET 6/1, 58). Les textes d'Ur aussi bien que ceux de Meturan posent le problème de la conclusion de l'oeuvre; ce problème mérite une étude que nous essayons d'ébaucher ici, avant de donner l'édition des textes.

A recent article in this journal shows a most welcome interest in Berossus, who has suffered a most undeserved neglect, especially in the English language, over the last century. Further, the writer of this article has for the first time tackled the problem of Pseudo-Berossus which Felix Jacoby posed in his text in FGrH by assigning certain fragments to “(Pseudo-)Berossos”. Jacoby's death before the commentary on this section was written has deprived us of knowledge of the grounds for this editorial procedure. The matters involved are highly important for the history of Babylonian ideas and the recent treatment of the problem merits critical scrutiny.

The agreed facts are that Berossus wrote his Babyloniaca in three books, and that genuine excerpts are quoted in Josephus and Eusebius, though these may not be the ipsissima verba of the author, having perhaps been taken from some sort of digest made by Alexander Polyhistor. The original work seems to have had a remarkably limited circulation in antiquity. These excerpts deal with mythology, legend and history relevant to the Old Testament. Of course Berossus may have written other works which are not quoted by Josephus and Eusebius because they lacked any Biblical interest. Some Greek and Latin authors, especially Vitruvius, Seneca, Pliny the Elder and Censorinus, cite Berossus on astrological matters, and it is these which Jacoby assigned to “(Pseudo-)Berossos”. Drews is entirely correct when he refuses to reject Josephus’ testimonium about Berossus’ reputation for astronomy, and since Berossus had no knowledge of the best contemporary Babylonian mathematical astronomy, as Neugebauer has remarked, the older traditional astronomy cum astrology must be meant. So far so good. No doubt Berossus did write on this subject, either in his Babyloniaca or elsewhere. But some statements in the Latin writers are so erroneous as to raise serious doubts whether they had themselves read Berossus.