The economic relationship between Mesopotamia and the Gulf is a long one which spans millennia, rather than just a few centuries, and which took many forms. Indeed, it can be suggested that the changing nature of this relationship reflects the economic and social changes taking place in southern Iraq and of the related changes in Dilmun. There was an increasing demand by Mesopotamia for both raw materials and exotica from the sixth millennium, when we have the earliest evidence for a relationship, until the annexation of Dilmun by the Kassites in the mid-second millennium. This increasing demand seems to reflect the growing complexity in social organisation in the region. The emergence of an elite group within society in southern Sumer, first seen in the late Uruk phase, and then notably in the mid-third millennium when the group expanded, encouraged an increased demand for status goods and materials (Van De Mieroop 2002). Such goods are used initially to enhance the power and prestige of the group itself, both by display and by gift-giving, because gift-giving binds both men and gods, through offerings, ever more closely into the group. In Mesopotamia such exotic materials also played a role in the birth of what Baines and Yoffee have called “high culture” in these newly emergent complex societies. Baines and Yoffee define this high culture as “the production and consumption of aesthetic items under the control, and for the benefit of, the inner elite of a civilization” (Baines and Yoffee 1998: 235). High culture becomes a vital part of the identity of any civilization. Maintaining a supply of luxuries thus becomes a political necessity, rather than an indulgence, as it helps the essential identity of the group to survive.

The flints described here are of interest because they make up a complete late flint industry. They come from well-dated deposits in an area apparently without earlier or later occupation, and can thus be regarded as characteristic of the period. The industry is simple, with a very restricted tool range; there are abundant blades, denticulate sickle blades used in composite sickles of wood and bitumen, small numbers of micro-borers for perforating beads and occasional other tools.

The first section below deals with flints from stratified Early Dynastic III levels of the main mound excavated in 1975, 1976, 1977 and 1978, the second with flints of the same date found in 1976 in what is thought to be a flint knapper's working pit.

The flint used is a fairly fine-grained nodular flint, generally brownish-grey, with brown bands near the cortex. Many specimens have been burnt. Rare blades are made of a dark grey, rather opaque, obsidian. Both flint and obsidian must be imported, neither being obtainable locally. The flint is similar to that used at the same date at Kish, and both may be imported from the same source.

Sennacherib's representations of military events on the reliefs which decorate his residence in Nineveh offer some of the most remarkable images of camps. Their iconographic aspect deserves to be explored, especially considering their role in the visual narrative. Unfortunately, many drawings of lost slabs with representations of camps are totally isolated and unrelated to the narrative episodes; the reconstruction of their role in the dynamics of the story is possible only when a nearly complete cycle is preserved.

The spatial shape of Sennacherib's camps is exclusively an elliptical line which encloses a space in which there are various items. The items are arranged either together or as alternatives, and consist of representations of the king sitting on the throne, two priests celebrating a ritual (Collon 1999: 24–5), tents, accommodation for the soldiers and the people that followed the Assyrian army when on campaign (Postgate 2000: 89–93). Sennacherib's sculptors defined the Assyrian type of camp by a curved enclosing line, partially reproducing earlier visual modules. A broad band, which could be either a road or a wall, is found inside it. In addition, the band divides the military camp into an upper and a lower part, and the internal space is sometimes divided into rows which are superimposed and aligned. The rows serve to arrange the distribution inside the elliptical perimeter; similar way to the way slabs are subdivided into registers, the rows inside the camps contribute to organising and setting each item in a fixed and precise place. The structural skeleton, formed by the curving perimeter and internal division into two or more departments (registers) is the foundation of the shape of Assyrian military camps, a well-defined and unchanged icon, always clearly recognizable, especially in Sennacherib's sculptures.

The stamp seal under consideration comes from Professor M. E. L. Mallowan's excavations at Brak. It was found in the debris on the Agade floor of Court 3 in the Palace of Naram Sin, and dated to that King's time. The excavator has listed it with the important objects which deserve special attention.

This strange seal (Pl. XIII. 1) deserves indeed a study of its subject, its style and especially the idea underlying its composition. The scene depicted on the seal is not unusual as far as subject is concerned, quite singular, however, in its composition. Fortunately, the interpretation of this complicated composition is self-evident. Not only a single “phase in a cow's career” to quote Sir Arthur Evans, is recorded in this idyllic scene, but three of them, reflecting the cow's whole career. The three drawings of Fig. 1 are the result of dismembering the complicated picture into three distincdy different postures of the cow: (a) Grazing, with her head bent down; (b) giving birth to a calf; (c) suckling and licking her youngster. It is clear that not three animals are depicted, but only one single cow at three successive stages in time. This summary expression of a story which comprises a series of consecutive movements is indeed ingenious. It becomes a photographic story rather than a mere picture.

It will be recalled that, since 1960, four cuneiform tablets containing valuable information regarding ancient music theory have been brought to light. One could almost say that it has been uncanny how each text, as it was discovered or recognized, has elucidated the other. Before BM 65217 + 66616 is examined, it is in order to review these texts briefly.

Text 1. CBS 10996, NB, Nippur. The (incomplete) first column of this mathematical text (a list of coefficients) deals with the strings of musical instruments. The string names are given, together with pairs of numbers; these are equated with special Akkadian terms that refer to intervals on the musical scale. Fourteen separate and distinct intervals are now recognized on the basis of this text: seven “primary” intervals of fifths and fourths, and seven “secondary” intervals of thirds and sixths. This text (see Fig. 1 where the “primary” intervals are listed as 1–7, the “secondary” intervals as a–g) hinted at a heptatonic scale.

Text 2. U 3011 (UET 7, no. 126) = Nabnītu 32, NB, Ur. This lexical text is a musical treatise whose (incomplete) obverse (see Fig. 2) column i presents the Sumerian and Akkadian names of nine musical strings as well as several of the terms known from Text 1 to be intervals on a scale. This second text provided the key to the understanding of Text 1 because it explains that the nine strings were numbered as: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, fourth behind, third behind, second behind, behind, i.e. 123456789 = 123454321. For an OB (MB?) parallel to this text, identified by Prof. Aaron Shaffer in November of 1977 in the University Museum, Philadelphia, see Iraq 43 (1981), 79–83; and below, pp. 81–85.

This well-preserved cylinder, illustrated on Plate XIX, is reported to have been found by a ploughman about I mile west of the tall, not far from the east bank of the river Tigris and close to the modern village of Nimrud at a point where the ground bears traces of Assyrian debris. It is hoped later on that it may be possible to examine this ground in order to determine whether or no this inscription is likely to have originated there. The cylinder was brought by shaikh Abdullah Nejaifi to Miss B. Parker, the secretary-librarian of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, in the spring of 1951. Miss Parker made a preliminary study of the text, and prepared a transliteration and translation of it. During the course of the season, while Miss Parker was fully occupied as photographer and assistant epigraphist, I was asked to prepare a final version and copy (Plates XX-XXI) for publication.

Parmi les objets recueillis en 1976 sur le carrelage le plus récent de la pièce 13 de l'E.babbar de Larsa, on note une perle à quatre spirales en or (Pl. XIII, L. 76.5). Elle a été ramassée en un endroit où le carrelage avait été démonté: les carreaux de la pièce 13, comme ceux de la pièce 8, étaient en cours de pillage lorsqu'un incendie général mit fin à l'existence de cette partie du sanctuaire. A titre d'hypothèse, ce carrelage, malgré l'absence de briques estampées, est attribué à Adad-apla-iddina. Dans l'état actuel de nos connaissances sur cette partie de l'E.babbar, la perle ne peut être postérieure à la fin du XIe siècle av. J.G. Mais elle peut être beaucoup plus ancienne, sa petite taille lui permettant d'échapper aux regards, comme elle avait échappé à l'œil des ouvriers qui procédèrent, dans l'antiquité, au démontage du carrelage.

Cet objet attire à nouveau l'attention sur une série bien connue depuis les travaux de M. Mallowan, W. Culican et K. Maxwell-Hyslop. Ce type de bijou mérite, à cette occasion, un nouvel examen, d'autant que la centaine d'exemplaires connue à ce jour n'a jamais fait l'objet d'un catalogue. En raison de l'incertitude de la plupart des datations (et l'exemplaire de Larsa n'échappe pas à ce sort commun), il semble approprié de fonder la typologie de ces perles — dans la mesure de la précision des publications sur ce point — sur la technique de la fabrication, assez variée. Cette variété n'a rien pour surprendre, s'agissant d'un type de perle dont l'aire de répartition s'étend depuis le domaine égéen jusqu'à la vallée de l'Indus.

Dr Lee was known as a collector of cylinder seals only because six of them were published by Cullimore in 1843. Now twenty seals have been rediscovered in the Buckinghamshire County Museum in Aylesbury, and have been registered and recorded. Some of the preliminary drawings made for Cullimore's publication have also survived and have thrown light on the way the seals were recorded for publication in the early 1840s. Here a full catalogue and assessment of Lee's collection is presented, together with evidence for the way seals were recorded for Cullimore's catalogue.

Representations of foreigners in their strange attire have a long tradition in the Ancient Near East. While the Assyrian Empire was expanding during the early first millennium BC, the Assyrian kings ‒ with the help of skilled and even inspired craftsmen – attached a growing importance to the differentiation of their near neighbours and people further away. The palace reliefs of Assurnaṣirpal were of excellent craftsmanship, the garments, the hair-styles, the beards and the surrounding landscape were carefully rendered, quite often in every minute detail. Through these details the meaning of the ‘images’ became fully understandable to the well informed Assyrian viewer. Foreign people were not merely enemies, they were people in their own right.

Nippur was one of the most important cities in the Sumerian world. Here was situated the shrine of the Lord of the gods, Enlil; here the king's name was spoken by Enlil, lord of the earth, calling him into existence as king, at the great shrine é-kur, the mountain-house where the god abode amongst men, and where kings did him honour.

The site was in part excavated by an American expedition from 1889 to 1990, but much still remains to be done. The excavations yielded large quantities of tablets of which, there is reason to believe, not all have as yet been published. The first group, dating to the Third Dynasty of Ur, with which this study is concerned, were published in 1910 under the editorship of Professor Hilprecht, and consisted of 171 tablets and fragments, but not until last year did others of the Hilprecht Collection appear. A few have appeared elsewhere, so that, in all, about 400 tablets and fragments from Nippur are at present available for study. The collection now published for the first time at the end of this article adds thirty-seven more. These are considerably less than the number of tablets which have been published from other sites of the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, such as Drehern, Umma, and Telloh, but they are sufficient for a review of Nippur at this period, such as is attempted here.

Mesopotamian history tends to be phrased in terms of stages: Early Dynastic city-states replaced by imperial Akkad, bureaucratic Ur III replaced by the more individualistic Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian periods thanks to the influence of the Amorites, etc. Lost in this process is a sense of the longue durée of Mesopotamian civilization, the basic and largely unchanging aspects of its society, economy and politics. In this paper I will explore one of these transitions, that between Ur III and Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian times, by examining the nexus between the cuneiform and archaeological records.

My aim is to explore the circumstances that resulted in the unearthing of the textual record upon which our understanding of the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods is based. Where did these tablets come from and what were the circumstances that both led to their preservation and allowed them to be recovered so that we could read them? To answer these questions, it will be necessary to look at the interconnections between the survey data, excavated data and the written record.

The broad sweep of settlement and abandonment provided by the survey data collected and analysed by Adams and his students and colleagues (Adams 1965, 1972, 1981, Adams and Nissen 1972, Gibson 1972, Wright 1981) has a direct impact on our understanding of the archaeological contexts of the cuneiform texts. Sites are subject to forces of erosion so that periods of abandonment — even if temporary relative to Mesopotamia's four-thousand-year history — still selectively remove parts of the archaeological record. Since all texts derive from archaeological contexts they are by no means immune. Indeed unbaked clay tablets are some of the most fragile of the artifacts recovered from Mesopotamian sites, only surviving to the present when buried rapidly at the outset and remaining so until uncovered by the spade of the archaeologist or, more often unfortunately, the looter. Then there is also the issue of accessibility. In most instances both archaeologists and looters dig from the top of a site down, and generally not that far down. Thus most of our data, both archaeological and textual, derive from those levels closest to the exposed surfaces of archaeological sites.

The Sargonic victory stele from Telloh is one of the most celebrated works of art from third millennium Mesopotamia. Two fragments, one inscribed (AO 2679 = Pl. III) and one with relief (AO 2678 = Pl. II), have been known since 1893, and all who have examined them agree that the two fragments very probably belong to the same monument. Because of the incomplete inscription, the monument has generally been dated on art historical grounds to sometime between the reigns of Sargon and Naram-Sin. The purpose of this study is three-fold: to publish a newly identified fragment of this stele, to offer a new interpretation for the entire monument, and to propose a precise dating and historical context for it.

YBC 2409 is of white limestone, and was at least twice reused (in antiquity ?) as a door socket. As a result, the stone is heavily damaged. To judge from its accession number, the piece was acquired by Yale before 1915. Remains of three bands of inscription are found on one side. A glance at the photograph (Pl. IV) will show that this stone is strikingly similar in appearance to AO 2679. Samples of AO 2679 and YBC 2409 were analysed by Catherine Skinner, Yale University (see Appendix II).

The pair of amulets which form the subject of this brief contribution were bought in October 1933 by R. du Mesnil du Buisson from a local peasant while visiting the site of Arslan Tash, a town in northern Syria, some 160 km north-east of Aleppo, near the present-day border with Turkey. The site, which is the location of the ancient Assyrian colony Hadattu, had been excavated a few years earlier, and it is not impossible that the objects had in fact been stolen from the excavation. Both amulets are now preserved in the National Museum in Aleppo.

The purchase of the amulets was announced by du Mesnil in a meeting of the Société nationale des Antiquitaires de France in 1937 and this was soon followed by the editio princeps of the first amulet. His article, often justly praised as a remarkable achievement, is accompanied by a set of very reasonable photographs, but, owing to the rounded edges of the tablet and the use of light coming from one direction only, a number of signs cannot actually be seen on them. To supplement the photographs, the editor provided handcopies of the inscriptions; these naturally reflect his own readings of the often problematical text, rather than being an accurate facsimile of each individual sign. With few exceptions most of the subsequent students of the amulet have inevitably had to base themselves on du Mesnil's photographs, and this has not always led to readings better than his. It was not until 1970 that a new impulse was given to the study of the first amulet by the publication of an article by F. M. Cross and R. Saley. These authors were able to use two new sets of photographs (each using light coming from opposite directions) provided by the Museum in Aleppo, and presented several new readings based on these photographs. It is much to be regretted that of this double set of photographs only a single one was published in their article, so that most of their readings cannot be checked. This oversight is only partly compensated by the subsequent publication of a few more of Cross and Saley's photographs by W. Röllig. The next major step forward was a short but very informative article by A. Caquot, who was able to use a cast of the amulet in the possession of R. du Mesnil du Buisson which had been made at the time of its discovery. Caquot's new readings confirm most but not all of those proposed by Cross and Saley, and subsequent treatments of the text usually follow either or both of these authorities.

Qasr Serij lies near an old route running along the southern foot of the Jabal al-Qusayr between Mosul and Nisibis (cf. Wilkinson, 1990: 50–51, Route B; Wilkinson, 1993: 552). As the name suggests, the site comprises the partly standing remains of a church originally dedicated to St Sergius, a popular eastern saint (Fiey, 1961). It has been identified as the stone church said to have been founded between 559–75 by one Mar Ahudemmeh at a spot known as Ain Qenoye or Ain Qena (‘Spring of Reeds’) in the vicinity of Balad (Eski Mosul) (Fiey, 1958). Preliminary descriptions, accompanied by the first known photographs of the ruins, were made by Gerald Reitlinger (1938: 148–49) and Aurel Stein (finally published in 1985: i, 105–107, Pl. 31c) following their respective surveys of medieval and Roman sites in the Jazira during the wet spring of 1938 (see also Lloyd, 1938: 136, No. 15; Ibrahim, 1986: 74, Site 211). In his subsequent study of the still-unexcavated ruins, David Oates (1962; 1968: 106–17, Pl. XIII) drew architectural parallels with fifth century and later churches in North Syria. Recently, in a series of important articles on early church architecture, Okada (1990; 1991; 1992) has drawn attention to the contrast in plan and fittings of these basilica-type churches with Sasanian and Early Islamic churches in southern Mesopotamia, the Iraqi Western Desert and the Gulf.

Two large Akkadian rock crystal cylinder seals retain red and white decorations painted within their central perforations; one seal is striped while the other bears a chevron design. In the case of the striped seal, the walls of the perforation were longitudinally grooved, presumably to aid retention of the decoration. Hematite or red ochre was used as red pigment in both seals. It would have been possible to paint the red stripes/chevrons around the central perforations with a small brush operated from within a narrow tube. The perforations were subsequently over-painted with white pigment (probably calcined bone) providing a contrasting background. Lead liners were inserted into the perforations of both seals, apparently to protect the decorations.

The perforation of another rock crystal seal is longitudinally grooved and bears the corroded remains of a copper liner which may have also served a decorative purpose. Traces of red pigment and/or distinct longitudinal grooves were observed in three other seals and may be present in a further two seals. Thus, the perforations of at least six and possibly eight of the twelve Akkadian rock crystal cylinder seals in the British Museum's collections appear to have been decorated. These observations suggest that the practice of painting or decorating the perforations was more common than has previously been appreciated.

Four samples from Tell Brak were analysed for radiocarbon content at the British Museum Research Laboratory in 1987, with the results given below (Ambers et al., 1989). All results are quoted in the form recommended by Stuiver and Polach (1977) in uncalibrated years BP (before 1950) and corrected for measured δ13C variation. Calibrations are given based on 1σ error terms, following the curves of Pearson and Stuiver (1986) and Pearson et al. (1986), using Method A of revision 2.0 of the University of Washington Quaternary Laboratory Radiocarbon Calibration Program (Stuiver and Reimer 1986), and are quoted in the form recommended in Mook (1986); the end points of the calibrated date ranges have been rounded to the nearest five years.

Three of the samples (BM-2554, -2555, -2556), all of charcoal, were treated with dilute acid and alkali to remove contamination. A single grain sample from context CH 450 was separated into humic and humin fractions, which were measured independently. All samples were analysed by conventional liquid scintillation counting. Errors quoted are the counting error for the sample combined with an estimate of the errors contributed by the modern and background samples. This estimate includes both counting and non-counting errors, the latter being computed from differences in the overall count-rates observed among the individual backgrounds and moderns.

After the discovery of Royal Palace G at Ebla in 1974, several contributions, particularly by the writer and by P. Matthiae, addressed specific aspects of the artistic and architectural cultures of Early and Old Syrian Ebla. Many of these aspects revealed contacts and comparisons with Ur. It was not, however, possible to build up a coherent picture from these random and unrelated aspects. Such a picture may still elude us, but in the presence of a varied documentation relating to different periods, we think it is now opportune to review the evidence.

On the morning of April 27th last I was delighted and astonished to discover in the National Museum of Wales at Cardiff a tile inscribed in Neo-Punic letters. I published a summary account of the graffito in The Illustrated London News on August 12th, 1939. Here I should like to say a little more about the inscription, not so much to amplify the short account in The Illustrated London News as to leave a permanent record in an archaeological journal of a discovery which is unique in the annals of British archaeology.

Arabia has given Britain one inscription: as long ago as 1878, a fine Roman altar, inscribed in Latin and Palmyrene characters, was discovered in the Roman camp near South Shields, and is now to be seen in the Free Library at that place. But this is the first time that an inscription from the hand of a descendant of the old Phoenician branch of the Semitic race has been found in Britain (or rather, recognized as such, for the tile was found during the excavation of Holt in the years 1907–15).

Das erste als hochsumerischer Tempel erkannte Gebäude war der “Weiße Tempel” auf der Anuzikurrat in Uruk-Warka, der im Jahre 1930 freigelegt werden konnte. Er wurde damals etwa auf die Schicht Uruk VI datiert, spärer gelang es, mit einer in eindeutiger Lage gefundenen gemalten Djemdet Nasr Scherbe, das Alter des Tempels in die ausklingende Djemdet Nasr Zeit zu datieren. Die Tatsache, daß das Gebäude auf einer Zikurrat stand, gab die Gewißheit, daß es sich um einen Tempel handeln müsse. Gleichzeitig wurde mit dieser Anlage aber auch eine in Eanna 1929 freigelegte große Anlage aus Kalksteinblöcken als Tempelanlage gesichert. In der Folge wurden nun vor und nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg, vor allem in Eanna, eine ganze Anzahl weiterer Gebäudegrundrisse freigelegt, die alle miteinander verwandte Grundrißformen aufwiesen. Schon nach der Grabungskampagne 1933–34 hatte Ernst Heinrich versucht, die damals (die meisten nur sehr teilweise ausgegrabenen) verwandten Anlagen zusammenzustellen, er faßte sie unter dem Namen “der Langhoftempel in Uruk” zusammen. Später, noch bevor der Tempel C vollkommen freigelegt war, ist Heinrich von der Bezeichnung Langhoftempel zurückgetreten. Er nimmt nun an, daß alle Mittelräume überdeckt waren, der große T-förmige Teil des Tempels C, der sogenannte Rumpfbau war tatsächlich überdeckt (ich komme später darauf zurück). Bis auf den Weißen Tempel auf der Anuzikurrat gehörten alle Anlagen der Schicht Uruk IV an, auch der Kalksteintempel, der möglicherweise in Uruk V bereits entstanden war, in Uruk IVc und Uruk IVb aber weiter bestand. Im gleichen Aufsatz wird bereits darauf hingewiesen, daß der sogenannte Tempel B wahrscheinlich als Kultraum, nicht aber eigentlich als Tempel aufzufassen sei.

Almost all modern writers agree on the list of the stations on the caravan road linking Mosul to Nisibin, as it was known to the Arab geographers of the classical age (ninth–eleventh centuries) and their successors of the Middle Ages. Starting from Mosul it includes: Balad, Bâ’aynâtha, Barqa’îd, Adhrama, Tell Farrâsha and Nisibin.

The first station, Balad, does not raise any problem; its identification with Eski-Mosul fixes it firmly on the map, on the Tigris, at a distance of 40 kilometres to the north-west of Mosul (see Fig. 1).

After Balad, questions begin to arise, and it may not be impossible that some of the proposed localisations could be revised.

These localisations are well known:

For Bâ’aynâtha, de Goeje proposed Abû Wadjnah, in Iraq, near the ’Ain Zâlah airfield of the Mosul Petroleum Company, and Dussaud suggested Tell al ’Uwaynât, also in Iraq, to-day on the railway line Mosul-Syria.

Barqa’îd was pushed back by de Goeje and Von Oppenheim beyond the Syrian border, to Tell Rumailân (or Rumaileh) near Tell Hâdi, with, as a corollary, the localisation of its replacement, Bashazza, at Tshilagha, 25 kilometres to the West of Qubûr al bîdh, also in Syria.