When F. R. Kraus, at that time curator of the tablet collection in the Museum of the Near East in Istanbul, collated the date list of Šulgi Ni.394 (= BE 1/2 No. 125) of that museum, he found that the three last lines of the obverse give the text of one date formula, not of three, as had formerly been believed. In the meantime this date has turned up on a tablet excavated at Nippur during the season of 1955/56; its excavation number is 5N-T490. A copy of that tablet is given on Plate XVIII. Its interest rests mainly on the date formula which leads beyond what had been known from the date list.

The intention of this article is to continue the process of comparing modern archaeological data relating to Babylon and its buildings with the ancient written sources. Previous work has produced results for the topography of the city, particularly the location of the city's gates, quarters and temples, and has achieved some success with two individual structures, namely the temple of Marduk under the mound Amran ibn Ali, and the eastern city wall at its junction with the river defences to the south of the same mound. A newly published text adds considerably to the textual material avail able for study of the cult-centre of Marduk, so that it is useful once again to go back inside E-sagil (E-sangil).

Given the exalted position of Marduk's temple at Babylon as the supreme sanctuary of Babylonia in the first millennium, it is no surprise that there survives a relatively large number of documentary sources which shed light on this building, its ground-plan and its interior. These include building inscriptions, of course, but such texts are not informative about lay-out so much as the work undertaken. Rituals are also useful, in that they sometimes describe the progress of processions in temples, but the most rewarding texts for those who would wish to know more about the ground-plan of the temple, its architecture and cultic fixtures and fittings, are: a) metrological texts which give measurements of temples, and b) “topographical” and other texts which list the ceremonial names of shrines, gates, throne-daises and other cultic fixtures and fittings.

The Neo-Assyrian stone vase BM 93088 (82–5–22, 300a) was briefly described in E. A. W. Budge's Guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian Antiquities (3rd ed., 1922), p. 196 no. 220. That description misleadingly suggests that the vessel is made of na4na-aḫ-bu-[x]; in fact the term referred to the vase itself as the full text of the inscription (Fig. 1) shows:

a-na-kuI.dsin-PAP.MEŠ-SU šar4kurAŠ na4na-aḫ-bu-[ṣ]u an-ni-u a-naIaš-šur-DINGIR.MU-TI.LA.[B]I ˹DUMU˺-[ia]

at-ti-din man-nu šá TA pa-ni-šú TA DUMU.MEŠ-šú DUMU.ME DUMU.ME-šú i-na-áš-šú-u-nidŠÁR šar4 DINGIR.MEŠ

˹a-di˺ DUMU.MEŠ-šú TI.LA li-ki-mu-šú-nu a-du ma-li-ke-e-šú MU-šú-nu NUMUN-šú-nu ina KUR lu-ḫal-li-qu

“I, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, have presented this naḫbuṣu to my son Aššur-ila'a-muballissu. Whoever takes it away from him, from his children (or) his grandchildren, may Aššur, king of the gods, take the life of his children (and) make the name (and) seed of his counsellors disappear from the land.”

With the curse-formula compare D. D. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (OIP 2), 139, 68–72 and 147, 36–39 and 148, 27–29. The plural forms here are presumably the result of abbreviating a longer original. Note the use of the preposition adi/adu, “as for, concerning”, for which the current dictionaries give only Old Assyrian attestations.

Die altbabylonische Tafel U.7756, von Sidney Smith in Ur Excavations, Texts, I: Gadd and Legrain, Koyal Inscriptions (hier R.I.U. abgekürzt) als Nr. 275 auf Plate LVI in Autographie veröffentlicht und auf S. 74 ff. umschrieben, übersetzt und bearbeitet, enthält ausser der Kopie einer Inschrift des Königs Naräm-Sin von Akkad, I, 1–IV, 19, die einer zweiten Inschrift, IV, 20–VI, 21, welche der Herausgeber als Beschreibung der Befestigungsanlagen einer Stadt si-ku-ma (?)-l(n)um(KI) gedeutet und im einzelnen interpretiert hat.

Die gegenwärtigen Vorstellungen zur Chronologie der Ǧamdat Naṣr- und der beginnenden Frühdynastischen Zeit im südlichen Babylonien werden immer noch weitgehend von den Ausgrabungen im Diyālā-Gebiet bestimmt. Das liegt einerseits an dem Fehlen eines vergleichbaren Arbeitsprojektes in Babylonien, andererseits an der noch nicht erfolgten Auswertung vorhandener und publizierter Ausgrabungen in dieser Region.

Eine dieser lange Zeit brachgelegenen Auswertungsmöglichkeiten bietet der sog. Ǧamdat Naṣr-Friedhof in Ur. In den frühen dreißiger Jahren von Sir Leonard Woolley ausgegraben, stellen die Funde aus diesen Gräbern immer noch den einzigen größeren, zusammenhängenden Fundkomplex dieser Periode aus Süd-babylonien dar. Im folgenden sollen nun die Ergebnisse einer neuerlichen chronologischen Auswertung und die daraus resultierenden Vorstellungen zur sozialen Unterschieden in diesem frühen mesopotamischen Gräberfeld dargestellt werden.

Der schon in den dreißiger Jahren fertiggestellte endgültige Bericht über die Ausgrabungsergebnisse des sog. Ǧamdat Naṣr-Friedhofs wurde von L. Woolley im Rahmen des vierten Bandes der Ur-Publikationsreihe veröffentlicht. Der Autor legte dort das Material, nach einer frühen statistischen Methode in klassischer Dreiteilung geordnet, vor. Diese Methode stützte sich auf die Kombination der Gefäßbeigaben und die Stratigraphie der Gräber. Da der Hauptteil des Friedhofs in zwei getrennten Ausgrabungsschnitten, X und W, vorgefunden wurde; und diese, neben vielen Ähnlichkeiten auch Unterschiede eigentümlicher Art aufwiesen, hielt L. Woolley den größten Teil der Funde aus W für spärer, als die aus X. Nach dem Vorkommen dreifarbig-bemalter Ǧamdat Naṣr-Ware datierte er den gesamten Fundkomplex in eben diese Zeit.

The Babylonian poem šar gimir dadmē (perhaps best entitled in English “Išum and Erra”) has been available to scholars in its hitherto most complete form since 1969 in the admirable edition of L. Cagni. Now excavations conducted by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and Heritage at Me-Turnat (modern Tell Haddad) have produced a first-millennium tablet in Babylonian script from the Neo-Assyrian Period occupation of the site, giving the text of tablet II of the composition. Previously the second tablet could be reconstructed as three separate broken passages (totalling 112 lines) with two lacunae. The new tablet, IM 121299 (TH 319), restores the first lacuna (four lines in length), completes some broken lines and restores part of the second lacuna (at least 29 lines), establishing altogether about 45 new lines of the text, some admittedly only to a very fragmentary degree. The whole tablet must be at least 159 lines long. Unfortunately the Me-Turnat tablet is damaged, and is rather poorly written by an apprentice scribe who has made a number of evident mistakes and incorrectly formed signs. Nonetheless the text of the poem is substantially increased by it. For a photograph, see Plate XX.

In the Spring of 1978, the State Organization for Antiquities and Heritage excavated a small shrine, called by the excavators Shrine XII, for its layout and plan are similar to eleven shrines uncovered, at different times, at Hatra since 1951.

The shrine, situated to the south of the Great Temple, is oriented towards the east, like most of the temples and shrines at Hatra. It consisted (Fig. 1) of a broad sacred room flanked by votive rooms, and a cella. The layout of the shrine resembles that of Shrine VI and the second building phase of Shrine VIII. The main entrance is approached by six limestone steps, and a second entrance is through the southern room. This shrine is roofed by three parallel vaults and two arches supported by two pillar-like buttresses, on one side, and by the eastern wall of the broad room on the other.

The floors of the shrine are paved with greenish-coloured marble slabs, and there is a small round basin in the middle of the broad room. In front of the shrine is a spacious courtyard, from which the roof of the shrine is approached by a staircase which is built on the outside in the north-eastern corner.

This article examines UET 6/2, 414, the Old Babylonian dialogue between a fuller and a client, commonly referred to as “At the Cleaners”, from the point of view of ancient technology. Drawing upon a wide range of Talmudic and Classical sources mentioning laundry, and based on a careful philological reading of the Akkadian text, this study offers a new understanding of the different stages of washing and treatment of luxury garments in the Old Babylonian period. It is argued that the possible humorous aspect of the text is irrelevant to the fact that UET 6/2, 414 is a unique composition in antiquity, offering a long and accurate sequence of laundry instructions. Washing procedures and ways of treating luxury garments in Mesopotamia are outlined step by step; new Akkadian terms pertaining to garments and clothing are presented; wages of laundry workers in ancient Mesopotamia are briefly discussed. The study concludes with a new edition and translation of UET 6/2, 414.

The cylinder seals and some impressions from the excavations at Tell al Rimah were published in Iraq 37 (1965). There remained for publication the seal impressions on the business documents dating to the thirteenth century B.C., all of which appear to belong to one archive. They were published by H. W. F. Saggs, D. J. Wiseman and Nicholas Postgate in Iraq 30 (1968), 154 ff. During a month's visit to Baghdad in 1973 I photographed as many impressions as I could find and Carolyn Postgate drew them. After I left Baghdad, she completed the drawings, finding impressions of the same seal on other tablets, and I have not seen the tablets since. She has however collated her drawings in response to my queries and additional photographs have been taken by Peter Dorrell, Jonathan Tubb and Christopher Watkins, working in very difficult conditions; I am grateful for their help. The impressions are extremely difficult to photograph and even in many cases to see, the tablet being sealed before the text is written, while the clearest impressions on the edges give insufficient space for a complete impression. It is ironic that the Middle Assyrians whose intaglio craftsmen produced such superb works of art should have left the worst record because, unlike the Late Assyrians, they left no space on their documents for the seal impression. In these circumstances Carolyn Postgate's work has been arduous, and I am most grateful to her, for her labours have enabled this addition to the corpus of Middle Assyrian seal design to be published.

This article presents the preliminary results of the joint Kurdish-Italian Faida Archaeological Project (KIFAP) conducted by the Duhok Directorate of Antiquities and the University of Udine at the Assyrian Faida canal and rock art complex in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Investigation of this extraordinary and seriously endangered archaeological site was launched in 2019 and has led to the exploration of an 8.6 km-long irrigation canal cut into the limestone bedrock of the Chiya Daka hill range in the outskirts of the village of Faida, south of Duhok. Ten monumental sculpted rock panels carved along the canal's eastern bank were brought to light, representing an Assyrian ruler depicted at both ends of each panel, framing the cult statues of seven deities standing on pedestals shaped like striding animals. This article discusses the canal's role in the wider context of the Northern Assyrian Irrigation System and the function of the Assyrian hydraulic networks as economic infrastructures with transformative effects on the landscape and staple food production of the empire's core. The Faida bas-reliefs are examined from an archaeological and art historical perspective, and hypotheses are proposed about their religious and ideological meaning, as well as their dating and the identity of the king or kings who commissioned them.

In the main publication of excavations by the ‘Weld-Field Expedition to Mesopotamia’ at Tell Uhaimir little attention was paid to work in area ‘P’. In his account of the 1923–4 season's work Langdon published the headless statue found on the site and referred briefly to the ‘Old Sumerian Palace’ where it had been excavated. Later Mackay recorded that two buildings were examined in the area, one as large as palace ‘A’, but probably earlier. Much of the plan could be traced on the ground and the walls, of plano-convex brick, survived to about thirty centimetres above foundation levels. At the time the importance of this building in area ‘P’ was overshadowed by richer excavation in area ‘A’, where a directly comparable group of buildings was found with a greater variety of furnishings. The remains in ‘P’ were not so extensive, less well preserved and not so easily interpreted. Seen in perspective the site gains considerably in interest. Despite extensive excavations on Early Dynastic sites in South Mesopotamia only three structures have been found which might reasonably be described as palaces, though evidence for temple development in this period is now well illustrated by finds at a number of sites. Were it not for the necessarily restricted scope of excavations on the very large areas embraced by ancient Mesopotamian cities, this might be taken to suggest that still, even by the end of the Early Dynastic period, the city ruler's residence was an indistinguishable part of the temple complex, except in the most politically developed cities.

We may want to recognise an “Akkadian period” in archaeology for two reasons. A sequence of periods is used as a system of chronological reference, and the Akkadian period conventionally represents the time from 2334–2154 BC (Walker 1995, 234). Periods are also used to define fields of analysis in which studies of social structure or other synchronic investigations may be conducted. The Akkadian period is known as the “first empire” which saw major political and administrative innovations. In archaeology periods have to be defined from the changes in artefact types, so a concordance is needed between the historical and artefactual phases. During the last thirty years McG. Gibson has persistently addressed questions of chronology, and has made an especially important contribution to the chronology of the Akkadian period. A new article (Gibson and McMahon 1995) represents the present state of this issue, based on excavations in the Diyala and Hamrin regions, and in the vicinity of Nippur. Dr McMahon has subjected thousands of sherds from stratified occupation surfaces to statistical analysis, and publication of their distribution and comparanda is expected. The resulting pottery sequence, exhaustively constructed, and summarised in that article, will constitute the principal reference sequence for archaeological sites of this period in southern Iraq. In this article, while accepting the validity and importance of this achievement, I will examine how the Akkadian period should be defined and how pottery sequences should be calibrated with respect to historical periods. I will suggest that the Akkadian pottery should be calibrated by ultimate reference to the glyptic sequence, and that this results in a different dating for the strata in question.

Recent studies of cultural interaction in the Assyrian empire have focused on the process of assimilation and the production of alterity. In this article, I argue that Assyrian royal rhetoric goes beyond emphasizing simple difference, instead using depictions of cultural diversity to demonstrate the truly universal nature of the empire. I elucidate this rhetoric by comparison the world fairs of the 19th and early 20th-centuries. These fairs advanced European imperialism by allowing visitors to explore the vast extent of empire. I argue that the enumeration of exotic tribute in Assyrian texts and the iconographic depiction of foreigners on reliefs similarly served to concretize Assyrian power. Unlike modern European empires, however, Assyrians did not consider ethnicity to be constitutive of citizenship. Thus, while the Assyrian approach to diversity was certainly instrumentalizing, it was also inclusive of cultural difference. In this respect, the Assyrian understanding of human diversity shares much in common with the way the empire treated other types of difference, ranging from topographic variation to biodiversity. From the imperial vantage point, each of these elements had the potential to be tamed in a way that highlighted the control of the king over the four quarters of the world.

A 2016 study season and 2017 excavation season at the 95-hectare walled site of Kurd Qaburstan on the Erbil plain have generated a variety of new results. Geophysical survey on the lower town revealed details of the Middle Bronze occupation in the southeast part of the site, including the city wall, a large open area, streets, houses, and a monumental temple comparable to examples from Tell al Rimah, Aššur, and Larsa. Excavations confirmed the Middle Bronze date of the temple and explored further Middle Bronze contexts elsewhere on the lower town. On the High Mound North Slope, Middle Bronze occupation included a fortification wall and large-scale architecture inside it. On the High Mound East, Late Bronze architecture of apparent elite character was documented. Archaeobotanical analyses complementing the excavations reveal the existence of naan-style bread in both Middle and Late Bronze contexts. Given radiocarbon and ceramic results, the Middle Bronze occupation at Kurd Qaburstan is datable to c. 1800 B.C., while the Late Bronze phases on the High Mound East belong to an early LB horizon in the 16–15th centuries B.C., perhaps predating the imposition of Mittani political authority in the region.

The cuneiform Akkadian tablets published here belong to a private collector in England. They were bought from a dealer in 1981. Most of them are closely associated by prosopography, seal impressions and types of text with those excavated at Meskene, ancient Emar on the Euphrates, and published comprehensively by D. Arnaud, in: Recherches au Pays d'Aštata, Emar VI. 1–4 (Paris 1985–7), as well as a few now in private hands and published in various journals.

Owing to many problems in fixing the chronology of the Late Bronze Age, exact dates cannot yet be given to these texts, although useful synchronisms have emerged from published Emar material. No. 26 in the main corpus mentions the Kassite king Melisihu, dated c. 1186–1172 B.C. or 1181–1167 B.C. No. 201 in the main corpus mentions Ini-Tešup king of Carchemish son of Šahurunuwas and grandson of Šarri-kušuh (a.k.a. Piyassilis). The latter had been installed in Carchemish by his father Suppiluliumas I and confirmed by his brother the Hittite king Arnuwandas, prior to the time of Emar archives, when the Nuzi records may already have come to an end and Assyria under Assur-uballiṭ I (1365–1330) had begun to assert its power.

It is well-known that close contacts between Greece and the Near East were already being forged in the Geometric Period (c. 1100–750 BC) and this resulted in objects of Near Eastern origin being imported into Greece well before the mid-8th century, for example ivories and metal bowls. It is assumed these Oriental goods and influences were transmitted to Greece and the islands via the Phoenician ports on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and to a lesser extent overland through Anatolia. In the subsequent Archaic Period (c. 750–500 BC), particularly in the so-called Early Orientalizing Period, these contacts were intensified and the importation of Near Eastern luxury goods is attested by the presence of ivory plaques for furniture, bowls, cauldrons, weapons and jewellery. In this period, too, Oriental forms and motifs were copied or adapted to produce objects in a so-called Orientalizing style. The problem is therefore twofold. The first difficulty is to distinguish between objects imported from the Near East and those produced locally but deriving their inspiration from the Near East (Oriental versus Orientalizing). The second problem is to decide, if an object is Oriental, which part of the Near East it comes from. It is clear that many different cultures are represented: as well as Assyrian and Babylonian, there are also Phoenician, Syrian, Neo-Hittite, Urartian, Phrygian, Iranian, Caucasian and Egyptian. It is often difficult to distinguish between the products of these cultures, even when the material is found in the Near East where there was considerable interchange of goods particularly in the early 1st millennium BC, and it is even more difficult when it is found in Greece. Pierre Demargne took a particularly pessimistic view. He wrote:

The importance of control of the valleys of the Habur and Euphrates rivers to the Assyrians can hardly be over-estimated. The two river valleys are major routes from N. Syria and S.E. Turkey to southern Assyria and to Babylonia.

In the Neo-Assyrian period, control of the valley of the River Habur was won early, as the Assyrian armies marched westwards across N. Mesopotamia. Control of the Euphrates, between the confluence of the Habur and the Babylonian border, followed soon after.

We are particularly well-informed about the geography of the Habur and the Euphrates, below the confluence with the Habur, during the reigns of Adad-nerari II, Tukulti-Ninurta II and Aššurnaṣirpal II. Texts from the reigns of these three kings describe campaigns along the banks of these rivers and list each night's halting-place. These are usually described as “itineraries”. (Such texts are exceptionally rare from ancient Mesopotamia. Besides these three passages in the Assyrian annals, only two other lengthy, well-preserved itineraries in cuneiform have come down to us.) 2 Other, conventional passages from the Annals of Aššurnaṣirpal II are a valuable supplement to these texts.

This paper analyses the architecture of the large fortified building excavated at Tell Khaiber in southern Iraq, the first known example of monumental architecture from the Sealand Kingdom. It examines the development of this highly unusual building, analyses the spatial properties and apparent functions of the structure, reviews possible architectural parallels, and considers what the architecture might reveal about Tell Khaiber's role in the context of the Sealand state. The outer form and organisation of the building indicate a fortified structure with a high priority afforded to defence. The interior of the Tell Khaiber building is divided between a smaller, earlier structure, enclosing conventionally arranged architecture with apparently executive and administrative functions, and a larger extension, densely packed with accommodation for a large number of personnel. When considered alongside textual sources on the Sealand state, which provide evidence about the geo-political context in which the Tell Khaiber building was constructed, it is possible to suggest the role such a building may have had in the development of the Sealand Kingdom. The form of the Tell Khaiber building may also be important in understanding the nature of the contested border between the Sealand Kingdom and its Babylonian neighbours.

The British Museum possesses parts of a small bottle of clear glass with the figures of two dancing-girls, birds, pomegranate-trees, shrubs, and the fragment of an Arabic inscription painted on it in gold. Admittedly it is one of the finest pieces of Saracenic glass and—as far as that type goes—an early specimen. Its attribution to the Mamluk Sultan Isma'īl, first suggested by Migeon, has been rightly rejected both by Gaston Wiet and C. J. Lamm. The purpose of this note is to submit a new date for this object (Fig. 1) and some reasons in its support.

One of the most popular subjects in the figurative art of Arabic-speaking countries is the dancing-girl. One cannot help feeling that it was just the society which revelled in the drinking of wine, dancing, the use of musical instruments, and other pleasures either forbidden or considered improper by religious law that enabled the artist to get over the unfriendly attitude towards painting the living form, and made him prefer depicting these scenes rather than the more serious aspects of life.

The reports given below cover excavation work in Iraq from June 1973 to December 1974. The information on each site has been kindly provided by the director of the excavations, unless otherwise specified, and the final version checked by him wherever possible. The sites are arranged in alphabetical order, according to their best known name. For a variety of reasons the collection of reports is not quite complete on this occasion: recently renewed excavations at Warka and Larsa were too late to be included, and work by the Directorate General of Antiquities at Hatra, Samarra, and in one or two Parthian or Seleucid sites on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad could not be covered. Reports on the work at Hatra, where Building b in the north-west corner of the Temple Enclosure yielded very interesting results, and at Samarra where work began at Qubbat al-Suleibiyah near Qasr al-Ashiq and was continued on the Friday Mosque, will be found in the forthcoming issue of Sumer, and we hope to include reports on all these excavations in our next annual report.

The material for this report was assembled by Mr. J. N. Postgate, and the Editors are glad to acknowledge his efforts. They join with him in expressing their gratitude to all those colleagues who have so willingly contributed information on their work, and especially to Dr. Isa Salman, the Director General of Antiquities in Iraq, for his generous co-operation which alone has made the compilation possible.