The purpose of this paper is to present several pieces of evidence concerning Samarians, Urartians and Nubians, most of them in the royal army of Sargon II, following the fall of Samaria in 722 B.C. and its submission to Assyria. The main evidence is new, and comes from a small group of administrative cuneiform tablets, conveniently labelled Horse Lists, which have been published as Nos. 99-118 in volume III in the series Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud (CTN III) edited by Stephanie Dalley and J. N. Postgate. The new evidence has drawn attention to certain passages in the royal inscriptions of Sargon, for which a few new readings, interpretations and deductions are here offered that throw some light on the treatment of Samaria and its people by Sargon. The new evidence can also be used to highlight two groups of men whose equestrian talents were imported and put to good use at the heart of the Assyrian royal army.

The material that has been assembled comes chiefly from the reign of Sargon II, but has a wider timespan than a single reign, for in many respects Sargon (721–705) can be shown to have followed the example of his illustrious predecessor Tiglath-Pileser III (744–727) ; and the evidence from texts continues down into the reign of Ashurbanipal. One aim of the study has been to break through the stereotyped phrases of Assyrian royal records, to show that in fact the Assyrians did not rule through tribute, booty and forcible deportation alone; they imported horses from Egypt by trade, and they employed foreign advisers and expert officers in their army. Another aim is to show in one respect how the royal inscriptions can be complemented with various legal and administrative records, and to demonstrate the value that each kind of source has for the other; published tablets from Nineveh, Nimrud and Tell Halaf have contributed supporting evidence to the better known, formal accounts of campaigns.

The publication of BM 131124—a fragment of a stele from Sheikh Hammad on the Khabur—and a fresh treatment of another neglected fragment published by V. Scheil in 1917, identified and re-edited by A. R. Millard (above, p. 57 ff.) has increased considerably the small corpus of Adad-nirari's historical inscriptions. Each of the extant texts is a commemorative inscription, usually brief and self-contained, incised on a stele or a stone slab. Another feature which they all share is that they are mainly concerned with Adad-nirari's expeditions to the west, though the precise regnal year of these is not indicated there. This present inquiry will be concerned with the specific character of the best preserved inscriptions and their value as historical documents.

None of the extant historical records of Adad-nirari III published so far can be classified as annals. They all belong to a category which we would like to designate as “summary inscriptions”. A distinctive feature of this type—called Prunkinschriften by Schrader and “Display Inscriptions” by Olmstead—is the condensation of early with later events into one geographically but not chronologically coherent narrative. Usually an inscription of this category is much shorter than any edition of the royal annals, especially as it was inscribed upon a surface with limited space, such as a commemorative stele or a slab. It normally contains the following elements: (a) a prologue, consisting of invocation to the gods and the king's titulature; (b) a geographically arranged summary of events; (c) the main section explaining the circumstances leading to the composition of the inscription, introduced by the formula ina ûmēšūma = “at that time”; (d) an epilogue with maledictions.

Most of the inscriptions relating the events of the reign of Tiglath-pileser III, king of Assyria 745–727 B.C., have been found in the ruins of Nimrud (Kalḫu). The latest of these finds are two fragments, which have been subsequently joined to form the lower left part, or about a fifth, of one large baked clay tablet (see Pl. XXIII). The first of these fragments (ND 4301) was found during the 1955 excavation of the Nabu Temple. It lay in the rubbish 80 cm. above the centre of the stone floor of the Tašmetum cella, not far from the cylinder seal ND. 4179 which was in the S.W. corner (Sq. C4. NTV). The other fragment, ND. 4305, was found in surface soil cleared from the west end of a trench (E-W at H.6). Even when joined these fragments do not afford a single complete line and the broken nature of all fifty-eight lines precludes the full understanding of the text and prevents more than a tentative treatment especially in the translation and comment.

In the remarkable expansion of archaeometallurgical studies in the last fifteen or twenty years Mesopotamia, where much pioneer work was done fifty years ago, has steadily slipped from view. This is in marked contrast to the time when Woolley's discoveries in the “Royal Cemetery” at Ur gave the Sumerians an assured place in general studies of early metallurgy. As research priorities in archaeometallurgy in the Near East moved to the investigation of the primary processes of metal exploitation and the development of support technologies, the source zones of Anatolia, of the Negev and Sinai, and of Iran inevitably eclipsed a region which had always been an importer of metals, to a greater or lesser degree already processed. This excluded Mesopotamia from a role as innovator in the basic techniques of metal recovery, and also probably in pioneering the skills of smelting and of alloying copper. Nor, for the same reasons, has Mesopotamia been drawn into the lively debate about the relative significance of external forces and internal transformation mechanisms in the development of metallurgy in prehistoric Europe, for which the primary eastern point of reference was Anatolia. But the certain fact that Mesopotamia had to import all her metal has kept metallurgy among the factors considered in current debates over explanatory models for the emergence of a complex society there in the later fourth and earlier third millennium B.C., some-times giving rise to conclusions hard to reconcile with the sparse archaeological record.

K 6177 + 8869 is a copy in Neo-Babylonian script, now in the British Museum's Kuyunjik collection, of probably no more than two short inscriptions. Only its bottom half is extant, and so the first inscription is lost to us all but its last few fragmentary lines, which conclude a prayer (Text A). After a ruling a second, much better preserved text is given, and it is this, an inscription of Sennacherib in high literary style, which is of interest here (Text B). Text B describes the Tablet of Destinies (ṭuppi šīmāti), with the figure of Aššur apparently depicted on it, presumably by means of a seal impression. The text continues with a description of a representation of the king standing in homage before Aššur, which, if the text has any unity of construction, would also suggest a seal impression. The text is concluded with a routine royal prayer.

The tablet—or rather half of it, the fragment K 6177—was known to pioneers in Sennacherib studies, having appeared accredited to that king in Bezold's Catalogue (II, p. 768), but it was deemed of too little significance to warrant more than passing reference by Meissner and Rost (Senn., p. 119). The join to K 8869, which provides Text B with its conclusion, was made by W. G. Lambert, who kindly brought the piece to my attention.

The prehistoric site of Ras al ‘Amiya is situated about five miles north of Kish, at a point midway between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates (Fig. 1). The whole settlement lies under the present surface of the alluvium and it only came to light some four years ago when a series of canals were cut through the area in connection with the Greater Musseyib Drainage Project.

Attention was first drawn to the site when it was discovered that sherds of the richly painted Hajji Muhammad variety, such as those shown in Plates XLIV, 5, XLVII, 10, XLVIII, 2, XLIX, 7 and LVI, 1–5, were associated with others of a more standard ‘Ubaid type (Plates XLIV, 2 and 7–9, XLV, 1, 2 and 9 and XLVI, 2, 5 and 6). The association of the two wares at once suggested that the settlement might have an important bearing on certain problems connected with the evolution of ‘Ubaid pottery and that excavations might produce useful results. At the same time the impending use of the canals in the area seemed to call for an early start to any such field work. With these considerations in view the British School of Archaeology in Iraq decided to support a small sounding at the site in the early summer of last year.

Nineveh, like modern Mosul of which it is now a suburb, lay at the heart of a prosperous agricultural region with many interregional connections, and the temple of Ishtar of Nineveh dominated the vast mound of Kuyunjik (Fig. 1). Trenches dug on behalf of the British Museum, mainly by Christian Rassam in 1851–2, Hormuzd Rassam in 1852–4 and 1878–80, George Smith in 1873–4, and Leonard King and Reginald Campbell Thompson in 1903–5, impinged on the site. The main temple was almost completely cleared, together with an area to the north-west, by Thompson and colleagues in four seasons between 1927 and 1932 (Figs. 2–3). Many original King and Thompson records are kept in the Department of the Ancient Near East at the British Museum; some photographic negatives are at the Royal Asiatic Society in London. The numerous objects from Thompson's excavations are now divided between the Iraq Museum, the British Museum (where they are registered in the 1929-10-12, 1930-5-8, 1932-12-10 and 1932-12-12 collections, mostly corresponding to the four successive seasons), the Birmingham City Museum, the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge; some were given to other institutions, and to individuals who had contributed to the excavation costs.

“Evil Hittites without respect for the command of the gods, whisperers of treachery”—these and similar reproaches were hurled by Sargon II's scribes against the peoples of Syria and Palestine who would not submit to the Assyrian yoke, or who having submitted sought relief in rebellion. Sargon's anger marked a crisis in the long but intermittent Assyrian relationship with the Anatolian peoples of North Syria and the Taurus, loosely termed “Hittites”. The purpose of this article is to review the sources for this relationship from the fall of the Hittite Empire, c. 1200 B.C. until the final extinction of the Syrian successor states by the Assyrians under Sargon. In it I shall concentrate on the less well-known evidence of the hieroglyphic inscriptions and refer to the comparatively better-known Assyrian cuneiform documentation only in so far as it illuminates these. It is a study which I hope may be appropriately dedicated to Sir Max Mallowan, whose archaeological work has provided so much material of the latter type, and whose interests amply attested by his publications have always centred on the tracing of links between various cultures, not the least between Assyria and the West.

In Iraq, Vol. XVI, Pt. I, pp. 98–107, Professor Mallowan described the unique discovery of Assyrian writing-boards made of ivory and wood at Nimrud in 1953. They had been preserved in silt below water-level in a well in Room A B of the “North-West” Palace of Aššur-naṣir-pal. It is claimed that these boards, which originally formed a polyptych, are the earliest form of ancient book and as such warrant a more detailed study. In the article which follows, on pages 14 ff., Miss Howard describes the ivory boards and discusses the technique employed in their manufacture. It therefore remains to add such further evidence for the use of writing-boards in the Neo-Assyrian period as is available from contemporary literature. Scholars have long suspected that the Assyrians must have used wax-covered boards as a writing-material, but no example had hitherto been found.

A Stela of Adad-nirari III was found during the eventful season of Spring 1967 at Tell al Rimah. It stood in position inside the cella of a Late Assyrian shrine, set beside the podium, a placing that is unparalleled among the find spots of other royal stelae. It was inscribed on the face with twenty-one lines, of which nine had been deliberately erased in antiquity; the writing ran across the skirt of the king, who was sculptured upon it slightly less than life-size, but not over the frame or sides of the stone (see Plate XXXVIII). The stela is 1·30 m. high and measures 0·69 m. in width at the base; it is parabolic in shape. It is made from a single slab of hard grey, crystalline “Mosul marble”, in an excellent state of preservation. No traces of paint were visible on the surface as it was unearthed.

The mound of Yanik Tepe is situated about twenty miles south-west of Tabriz, in north-west Iran, in the central district of the administrative province of east Azerbaijan (see Fig. 1). It stands three miles west of the small town of Khosrowshah, close to the railway from Teheran. This mound is one of at least fifty round the shores of Lake Urmia (now Lake Rezaieh) which were found during a survey of sites carried out by the writer in 1958–9. Most of these sites are round Rezaieh, on the west side of the lake, but there is a number of mounds at intervals along the east side and two or three on the north. The Solduz plain, just south of the lake, where Hasanlu is situated, has been thoroughly surveyed by the American expedition. Yanik Tepe itself is quite a large mound, covering an area of about twenty acres, and with a maximum height of 16.50 metres. It has gently sloping sides, is virtually without vegetation and—a great practical advantage to the archaeologist—is entirely uncultivated, since only irrigated land in this district will grow crops. Presumably, however, there were springs or streams in the vicinity during the Bronze Age. The present village of Tazekand, close to Yanik Tepe, depends for its livelihood principally on fruit-growing rather than cereals.

It is now just on forty years since Professor Garstang made his first excavations in the mounds of Sakce Gözü (then known as Sak je Geuzi) accompanied by Mr. (now Canon) Phythian Adams and Mr. Hamilton Beattie. The first indication of the site had been the discovery of sculptured Hittite blocks on the surface in 1907. The excavations were conducted in the autumn of 1908 and 1911, and the weather was hot and sultry. To avoid malaria, the excavators had to pitch their tents high on the slopes of the Kurt Daǧ, and ride several miles each day to the scene of the work. The site, however, amply repaid excavation, for in two seasons a periphery wall was discovered enclosing to the north-east the portico of a palace ornamented with a fine series of late Hittite sculptures. As well, several trenches were excavated outside the wall. These revealed a series of painted pottery levels, and at bed-rock a black incised and burnished ware. The importance of this discovery and the early period represented, were at once recognised by Professor Garstang, although at this point no comparable matetiaJ was available. For although Tall Halaf had been discovered by Baron von Oppenheim in 1899, he was not able to excavate there until 1911, and the prehistoric kilns of Carchemish were not discovered by Woolley until two years later, in 1913. Years afterwards in 1936 when much work had been done on the prehistoric cultures of the Near East, Professor Garstang decided to republish the early wares from this site, making use of the comparative material then available. He was not, however, satisfied that all that could be known about Sakce Gözü had been discovered, and had long planned a furthet season in the field.

One of the intriguing aspects of studies on the Babylonian ‘prophecy’ texts has been the theory that, even though couched in familiar omen terminology and ostensibly predicting the future, the prophecies are post eventum and in fact reflect a specific historical period and real historical events.

It should be stressed that these ‘prophecy’ texts are in no way related to Old Testament prophecy and that they cannot be considered the collected utterances of a seer. Neither have they any relationship to the practices attested in Mari, which are probably of Western origin and not from Mesopotamia proper. The ‘prophecies’ must, I believe, be considered simply a peculiar part of the vast Mesopotamian omen tradition, from which the ‘prophecies’ appeared to differ only because they lacked protases (i.e. a clause ‘if such-and-such occurs’). The new material to be published here, however, shows that there are protases, at least in some cases. Of particular interest is the fact that some of the ‘prophecies’ can now be shown to be connected specifically with astrology.

The six letters here edited, four of them substantially complete, are amongst the hitherto unpublished tablets found at Nimrud in 1952. The legibility of these letters, first copied by me in Baghdad in 1954, has been much improved by the skilled treatment they have received at the hands of Mr. C. A. Bateman of the British Museum; in one case the extensive improvement in legibility rendered it advisable to make a completely new copy, and on other tablets obscure passages have become (at least physically) clear. I wish to express my thanks to my friend and colleague Professor D. J. Wiseman, Joint-Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, for arranging for these and other letters of the collection to be put at my disposal for further study.

LXV is written from Babylon by an official, probably the governor of Arrapha, on behalf of himself and the Turtan at the moment that the gates of Babylon had been forced at the final crushing of the Ukin-zer rebellion in 730 B.C. Possibly connected with the aftermath of the rebellion is LXVI, which is taken to be a reply to a royal enquiry informing the king that no Babylonian “fifth column” had appeared during the Assyrian action against the southern capital.

A Fortunate and rare discovery has given us a new and complete inscribed stela of the well-known Assyrian king Aššur-naṣir-pal II (Pls. II-VI). This monument was found in its original position within a few feet of the excavations of his palace made by Layard and Rassam. The sandstone block had been erected near the doorway (Fig. 1) leading to the throne-room, and was inscribed with details of the ceremonies and festivities celebrating the formal opening of the palace in the year 879 B.C. The discovery itself occurred in April, 1951, during last season's work at Nimrud; as a result we are now able to write additional details into the history of the ancient Assyrian military capital. The new text is of especial interest because it also gives us for the first time a complete list of trees planted in the royal orchards set out near the city, and what may well prove to be the oldest extant Assyrian menu. A detailed account is given of the food prepared for the entertainment of 69,574 persons during the ten days' festivities. This information, together with many other particulars not hitherto available from the records of this reign, gives this text an unusual significance. Our interest in the Assyrian monarchy is heightened by the insight now given into the peaceful and far-sighted activities of this ruler whose reign is known mostly, but unfortunately, from its display of military might and “frightfulness.”

This report really covers the work of two seasons, because that planned for autumn 1980 had to be deferred until March 1981, and this was followed in the autumn of the same year by a rather curtailed spell at the site in October and November. A special vote of thanks is due this year to the State Organization for Antiquities and Heritage under its President, Dr. Muayad Sa'id Damerji, for enabling us to carry on our work despite difficult circumstances. We received the readiest co-operation from the Director-General for the Southern Region, Dr. Abd-as-Sittar al-Azzawi, and we shall remember with gratitude the very real help and friendliness afforded us by Sd. Abd-as-Salam Sim'an and Sd. Abd-ar-Rahman Muhammad Ali as Representatives of the Organization, and by Sd. Muhammad Yahya and his staff at the Diwaniyah Inspectorate. As in former years we are indebted to four institutions for their generous support with funds: The British Academy, The British Museum, The National Geographic Society, Washington D.C., and the Royal Ontario Museum. We thank them again for both the visible financial backing and the moral encouragement implicit therein. For their warm hospitality on several occasions we are also most grateful to the French and British engineers of Dragage (at Shomeli) and GKN (at Diwaniyah), who also gave us material assistance of crucial importance by allowing us to draw fresh water for the camp.

This is the second catalogue of seals and seal impressions found during the excavations of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq at Nimrud. The first instalment was published in Iraq XVII, Pt. 2, pp. 1955.

In the last catalogue some seals were dated according to certain preliminary archaeological conclusions, which have since required modification. It is now clear that the destruction level in the North West Palace, the Town Wall Houses, Ezida, and the Burnt Palace was that of the final destruction of 614–612 B.C. (Mallowan, Iraq XIX, Pt. 1 p. 20 and XVIII, Pt. 1, p. 17). Fort Shalmaneser has provided evidence of two destructions within a year or so of each other (Iraq XXIII, Pt. 1, p. 9 ff.). Thus the context of ND. 2151 (Iraq XVII, Pt. 1, p. 100) and ND. 807 (op. cit., p. 111) is not the reign of Sargon, but that of Sin-šar-iškun; however that may be, the objects themselves may be much older than the destruction level in which they were found. It is clear that seals were preserved a long time. The seal of the god Aššur on the Esarhaddon Vassal Treaties (Wiseman, Iraq XX, Pt. 1, pp. 17 ff.) dates to the Old Assyrian period, a thousand years earlier.

Work at Tell Taya began on March 16th, 1967, and ended at the beginning of June. The excavations, on behalf of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, were concurrent with those directed by Mr. David Oates at Tell al Rimah a few miles away, and the staff, house, and facilities were shared as convenient. Most members of the joint expedition helped at both sites, but I am especially indebted to Mr. Christopher J. Dalley, whose aid with the surveying, photography, and site-supervision was invaluable, and to Mr. Jonathan Hodgkin, who drew much of the pottery; Mr. David Hawkins took charge of one area of the excavations, as well as collaborating with Miss Stephanie Page in the registration of objects. The Directorate-General of Antiquities was represented by Sd. Majid Abdullah who, with other officials of the Iraq government in Tell 'Afar and Baghdad, gave us vital and unfailing assistance. The labour-force consisted of Arab and Turkoman workmen, with Muhammad Khalaf Musla as foreman. The excavations were financed by a generous anonymous donation to the British School for third-millennium research, and I am happy to acknowledge that my own work on this period has been made possible by a grant from the Gerald Averay Wainwright Fund of Oxford University.

The start of the fourth and final season at Umm Dabaghiyah was seriously delayed by yet another variation in the Iraq weather pattern. In this case torrential and long-lasting late spring rains not only caused wide-spread flooding throughout the country, but also brought down the bridges across Wadi Tharthar, a phenomenon that meant we could not reach the site, or even Hatra, until both rains and floods subsided and a temporary sandbag bridge had been erected. Two attempts were made to reach the site during late March and early April; both were abortive. During the second attempt preparations for making a temporary bridge were in hand, so over a month late ours were the first vehicles across the new bridge. Once the camp was established the weather relented and we were able to work almost without interruption. The delay did mean that we had to work in ever-increasing heat. Let it suffice to say that the June shade temperatures, taken under a tent flap as no shade is available at the site, kept steadily in the upper 40°s C with a maximum of 49°C (c. 126°F). It may be worth recording while memory is fresh that during this hot period the flies, of which we had over-many, simply lay still on the tent floors apparently incapable of flying.