The Iraq Government excavations at ‘Aqar Qūf (Dûr-Kurigalzu) resulted in the recovery of over one hundred inscribed clay tablets of the Kassite (Middle Babylonian) period, which are now in the Iraq Museum. Through the generosity of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq and the courtesy of the Direct or-General of Antiquities I was able to study the whole of this material in Baghdad during the early months of 1948. Fifteen of these interesting texts are published in the present article, and it is hoped to publish the remainder in subsequent numbers of this journal. I wish here to express my gratitude to the Director-General for permission to publish the texts in Iraq, and to the Curator of the Iraq Museum and his staff for theit unfailing helpfulness throughout.

In association with the investigation of Albenda (preceding paper) fragments from four polychrome glazed terracotta wall plaques (knob plates) were submitted for technical examination. All are believed to date to the ninth century B.C. and represent three sites: Nimrud (WA 131663), Ba'shiqa (Tell Billah) (WAN 2037, N2038) and Arban (WA91689). Technical information on the glazed ceramics of the Neo-Assyrian period is limited. In addition to providing basic information on the ceramic technology of the plaques, the purpose of the present study was to determine if stylistic differences noted between the ceramics from the three sites were in any way reflected in their technologies.

The plaques were examined using a binocular microscope, and small (millimetre-sized) samples of glaze with associated body were removed from the edges of the fragments. These samples were mounted in epoxy resin, ground flat, polished with diamond paste and the resulting cross sections examined in the scanning electron microscope (SEM). Elemental compositions were determined by energy dispersive x-ray analysis (EDXA) in the SEM.

Amongst the letters of the archive discovered at Nimrud in 1952 are a number referring to events on the northern and north-eastern frontiers of Assyria, principally during the reign of Sargon. Ten of these letters are here published: a few others exist which, though having references to the same area, are in too damaged a condition to be placed in a reasonably assured historico-geographical setting, and these it is proposed to incorporate in subsequent groups.

Lack of archaeological and comparative ethnographic data has limited our ability to interpret textual information that refers to ancient Mesopotamian irrigation works. This paper presents ethnographic data from modern Iraq regarding the construction, use and maintenance of a traditional irrigation system. Because traditional construction methods make use of organic materials similar to those available in the past, the data presented in this paper are considered to provide a set of analogies that can assist the interpretation of textual evidence and hence lead to a better understanding of irrigation practices in ancient Mesopotamia.

A second full season of archaeological investigations was undertaken at the Uruk Mound, Abu Salabikh in the spring of 1990. The aims of this season's work were to begin to explore in some detail variations in production, exchange, and consumption of subsistence and craft goods within the Uruk community. Both the aims and the strategies employed were outgrowths of our previous work at the site which had sought a broad understanding of the kinds of activities in which the community as a whole was engaged (Pollock 1987, 1990a, 1990b).

The purpose of this report is to present briefly the results of the 1990 season as they appear to us shortly after leaving the field. More in-depth analysis and interpretation will be offered in subsequent publications.

As before, our field strategies included a mix of techniques. Surface mapping and surface scraping were utilized to provide extensive coverage of the site and a broad view of community layout and distributions of activities. In contrast, excavation offers more limited exposures but also far more precise and detailed information on contexts.

The twelve letters here published have been selected on a geographical basis, the common feature being that they all appear to be concerned with the regions west of Assyria. The evidence is against all the letters of this group relating to the events of the same campaign, or even of the same reign, although it is possible to show correlations between certain letters of the group.

To only two letters can a precise date be certainly assigned. For some others, internal evidence supplies good ground for a closely approximate dating, whilst for the remainder direct internal evidence as to the date appears to be lacking, and an approximate dating can only be assigned after consideration of the evidence concerning the Nimrud Letters as a whole. This evidence, insofar as it has yet been studied, is that nothing has appeared which necessitates postulating a date after the reign of Sargon, whereas about twenty letters have already been noted containing allusions on the basis of which they can be placed either in the latter part of the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III or in the first half of the reign of Sargon. There is thus a prima facie case for dating the collection as a whole between about 740 and a few years before 705 B.C., the precise terminus being probably the year in which Sargon transferred his capital from Calah to Dur-šarrukin.

It is clear from the royal correspondence of the Assyrian empire and from the annals of Assyrian kings that the construction of forts was an integral part of the permanent establishment of Assyrian sovereignty in newly conquered regions. Forts served as garrison outposts in formerly hostile areas and were therefore the first footholds of Assyrian expansion into recently annexed territories. They were military centres, from which campaigns and intelligence operations were conducted into and beyond the frontier, administrative centres where the daily affairs of the surrounding areas were directed and monitored, and communications hubs through which news and information were channelled. In addition to these roles, forts or garrison centres also served as conduits through which the Assyrian ideology of imperialism could be diffused into the periphery of the empire and the process of the acculturation of the “foreign” inhabitants of peripheral zones could be conducted.

Liverani has suggested that Assyrian military expansion was not a process of conquering contiguous areas, in which a clear line could be drawn between regions under Assyrian control and those that were not. Instead, the process of Assyrian imperialism was one in which “islands” of Assyrian occupation were planted in peripheral zones soon after military incursions. In regions of Assyrian expansion, “the empire was not a spread of land but a network of communications” between Assyrian strongholds. The spaces between the “islands” of this “network empire” were slowly filled in through successive military incursion. Following these conquests new forts or garrison towns were constructed at critical junctures, to protect and fortify the networks connecting the existing Assyrian strongholds, and foreign populations were forcibly settled in the surrounding countryside. Peripheral regions were not, therefore, brought under the Assyrian yoke solely through swift military action but by the gradual growth and spread of “islands” of occupation into new regions. These “islands” must have initially consisted of forts or fortified settlements such as those referred to in the royal correspondence as birtu or HAL.ṢU meaning “fort”. This system of planting Assyrian garrisons in newly conquered regions is perhaps best exemplified in Nimrud Letter 48, in which the author speaks of “establishing the foundations (of a fort)” at several junctures in his campaign in the Iranian Zagros. As the system of Assyrian strongholds became more contiguous across the landscape, the area came more firmly into the grip of the imperial administration and the stage was set for expansion further into the periphery or into regions between these pockets of Assyrian control.

Work during these two seasons included the clearance of another hectare of the surface of the mounds; the completion of the excavation of a large ED III house on the east side of the Main Mound, with several intramural burials; and the initial investigation of another large ED house to the west of Area E and of a potter's work area at the northern end of the Main Mound. Various smaller soundings through the city wall and elsewhere complete the picture, and the line of the city wall round the Main Mound is now clear. The separate but contemporary South Mound was also sampled for the first time. Detailed quantitative analysis of occupation layers was continued in conjunction with Mrs. W. Matthews' micromorphological research. For the results of Mr. Wilkinson's survey and soils work round the site see above, pp. 751–831, and Plate XIVa, b.

It is evident from Assyrian records, reliefs and present features in the landscape that Neo-Assyrian kings devoted considerable effort toward the construction of canals to irrigate the environs of their capital cities. The water delivered by these installations would have changed the appearance of the Assyrian countryside by facilitating the growing of luxuriant gardens which not only provided Assyrians with exotic fruits and pleasant living conditions but also demonstrated their king's mastery of nature. One example of this activity is the Negūb Tunnel.

The author visited Negūb in September 1977 to undertake a survey of the tunnel and its immediate area. He is most grateful to the Director of Antiquities of Iraq for permission to complete the fieldwork and for the facilities that were made available. Manhal Jabur the Director of the Nineveh Expedition and Inspector for Mosul Antiquities is to be especially thanked as is Salim Younis who represented the State Organization for Antiquities and Heritage and who bore the discomforts of the work. The visit was made possible by a grant from the British School of Archaeology in Iraq which is gratefully acknowledged as is the assistance of Professor Oates and of Nicholas Postgate, then Director of the British Archaeological Expedition in Iraq. The invaluable help of Ismael Hussain Hijara during the fieldwork was also appreciated.

The problems involved in any attempt to elucidate the earliest history of the domesticated horse in the Near East are notorious; an enormous literature already bears witness as much to the popularity as to the complexity of the subject. After over a century's research and argument there is still no certainty, nor even a general agreement, about where and when the animal first appeared in the area, who brought it and what it was first used for. The three main categories of evidence—osteological, philological and pictorial—are of uneven significance. Thorough scientific examination of osteological evidence is fundamental in any attempt to establish indisputably the presence of the domesticated horse at any specific time on any particular site. This was clearly demonstrated by the re-examination of the equid bones from Anau, Sialk II and Shah Tepe II/III in Iran which showed them to those of asses or half-asses not horses as had previously been supposed. Although a certain amount is now known about the onager (a half-ass) from the ninth millennium onwards in Syria and Iraq through osteological evidence, horse bones have yet to be identified in a Near Eastern archaeological context before the later third millennium B.C. Despite uncertainties of translation in the earliest texts from Iraq philological evidence is of the greatest importance and has been the most fruitful source of fresh historical information in recent years. Pictorial evidence is severely compromised by the difficulty of distinguishing with confidence between various types of ass and the horse when portrayed by ancient artists, often working on a very small scale. This has inevitably led to widely ranging discussions of equids of uncertain identity.

The following study is a continuation of my earlier essay on swords and daggers (Iraq, VIII, 1946) and was undertaken with the help of a research grant from the Central Research Fund of London University. This has enabled me to examine at first hand the material in the Louvre and the Musées Royaux at Brussels as well as the collections in the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge, and the Institute of Archaeology, London, and I am indebted to the authorities of all these Museums for permission to publish many of the axes in their collections. These collections and the mass of scattered material in both excavation reports and special studies form the basis for this essay, which must be regarded merely as the outline for a typological scheme which, when more stratified material is available, will no doubt have to be modified and developed.

Arslan Tash, the site of the ancient town of Ḫadatu, lies about twenty miles to the east of Carchemish. After a series of preliminary excavations in the latter part of the nineteenth and the beginning of the present century, it was scientifically excavated in 1928 by a French expedition led by Thureau-Dangin. The town's fortifications were examined and four buildings discovered; a Hellenistic temple and an earlier shrine dedicated to Ishtar, a Late Assyrian palace and a smaller residential building, the ‘Bâtiment aux ivoires’. In the succeeding forty years much has been added to our knowledge of Late Assyrian architecture, principally by the excavations at Khorsabad by the Oriental Institute of Chicago and by those of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq at Nimrud. In the present article an attempt is made to utilize this new information in the further interpretation of the plans of the palace and Bâtiment aux ivoires at Arslan Tash and in the determination of their dates.

A delicate vessel, not uncommon in levels of the seventh century B.C. is the small thrown goblet (e.g. ND.1839, Plate XLI No. 1), generally some 8–10 cm. in height, with a fairly high-shouldered belly, and a wide neck of almost cylindrical form, splaying slightly out towards the everted lip. The neck accounts for between one third and one half of the total height of the vessels. The bases of these goblets show that they were commonly pinched off a clay matrix, though a fragment of fine drab ware (T.W. 53, Room 18) found in the lowest sub-level of 4, which probably belonged to a pot of this kind, exhibits a small ring-foot thrown from excess clay at the base. This pot must have been inverted and re-centred on the wheel—no easy task with this sort of fabric; its date is probably a few decades before Assur-bani-pal.

A particularly interesting feature of some of the more delicate goblets is the pattern of rows of fingertip indentations round the outside of the belly of the pot. The original reason for the development of this ornament, with its particular spacing, was clearly an inescapable practical fact. For a pinched-off pot has to be caught in the potter's free hand as it is finally separated from the clay matrix; and the makers of these goblets used to catch them with their fingertips, which indented the fine, slimy body of which they were made. The potters then added further indentations to make a pattern. The original set of finger impressions can be identified on complete pots by fitting them to one's own finger-grip.

During the last decade hydrographers, geographers, and geologists have applied their specialised knowledge to the geophysical systems which condition the life of man in the Mesopotamian plain. While their various contributions have directly and indirectly focused attention on the authenticity of the Flood, some historical data which are relevant to it have also been discovered. It therefore seems opportune for an archaeologist to reopen a discussion which now has an easy approach through two excellent monographs by Alexander Heidel and André Parrot. The former elucidates the relationship of the accounts in the Book of Genesis to the earlier cuneiform sources from which the Old Testament story was only indirectly derived; the latter has discussed the historicity of the Flood on more general grounds, and believes that the Old Testament account was derived from the cuneiform by the Patriarchs some time after the eighteenth century B.C. when they sojourned in Mesopotamia.

A very unusual literary tablet, Kt. j/k 97 from Kültepe, was published by C. Günbattı in 1997. It is inscribed with what already the first editor described as an Old Assyrian version of legends about Sargon. Since then the tablet has caused a good deal of discussion. Translations or editions have been made by M. Van De Mieroop (2000), K. Hecker (2001), B. Foster (2002, 2005), A. Cavigneaux (2005), and J. G. Dercksen (2005). These studies represent extremely different approaches: Hecker takes the text at face value and reads it as a laudatory royal inscription, whereas others see it as a kind of parody of inscriptions or legends about Sargon (Van De Mieroop 2000; Foster 2002, 2005), inspired by Mario Liverani. Dercksen (2005: 108) goes to the opposite extreme, stating that the “supposedly literary character of the text can be ignored, as this modern concept was alien to OA society”. He sees the text as “not a parody”, but instead as having “functioned to extol Sargon of Akkad during kispum celebrations that were part of the official cult of Assur”. Cavigneaux's study suggests a middle way between these extremes.

The tablet was found — and probably written — in Anatolia within the community of Assyrian merchants living abroad in Kaneš, on a tablet that looks very much like a normal business letter. It was excavated in 1958 in the house of Aḫ-šalim, an ordinary merchant, from whose house a number of other texts have been published. It alludes to the legend Sargon King of Battle, in which, following M. Liverani (1993: 52–6), Cavigneaux understands an expedition of Sargon to Anatolia, aided by the merchants of Purušḫaddum, as in fact referring to the Old Assyrian colonization in Anatolia. Cavigneaux further suggests what kind of situation lies behind our text (2005: 596): “Le nouveau texte … suggère de manière très concrète que les marchands assyriens berçaient leurs soirées au coin de la cheminée, au long des hivers anatoliens, d'histoires dont les rois d'Akkad étaient les héros”. He sees the text as an unicum, with hardly any chances of ever finding a duplicate (p. 597).

This article is concerned with the seals and seal impressions on clay labels and business documents discovered at Nimrud during the five seasons of excavations conducted by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, from 1949-1953. The seals, and particularly the impressions of seals on dated tablets, and a few bullae provide a valuable addition to our knowledge of the development of Assyrian seal engraving. One of the aims of this study is, of course, to obtain as close a dating as possible for the different types. For this we have previously been dependent on the few seals in public and private collections, dated by inscription; on the seals and impressions from the excavations at Assur, dating mostly to the thirteenth century B.C., and to the ninth-eighth centuries B.C.; on the few seals found at Khorsabad, presumably not later than the reign of Sargon; and on the impressions upon clay sealings found by Layard in Sennacherib's palace at Quyunjik, (a few of these Layard illustrated and others he described).

The new material leaves inevitably a number of gaps and problems; one of the principal gaps seems to be the lack of evidence for seals made at the time of Tiglath-pileser III; for example, we do not know whether the delicate engraving of seals such as ND.305 (Pl. XI, 1) was practised in his reign. The stone reliefs from Nimrud of Tiglath-pileser III are evidence of a distinctive development in design, and a comparable development in the art of seal engraving might be expected.

The sixth season of excavations at Tell al Rimah took place from the middle of March to the end of May, 1971. The work was directed by the writer, assisted by Dr. Julian Reade (Assistant Director), Miss Nan Shaw (Conservator), Mrs. Carolyn Postgate (in charge of pottery), Miss Shereen Ratnagar (registrar), Mr. David Hawkins (epigraphist) and Mr. John Curtis (archaeologist) who also took charge of the metal objects. Sayid Sabah Abboud was the Representative of the Directorate General of Antiquities, and played a full and energetic part in the work of the expedition. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the whole staff, and to Dr. Isa Salman, Director General of Antiquities, Professor Fuad Safar, Inspector General of Excavations, and all our other friends and colleagues in the Directorate General for the warm welcome and friendly cooperation which we have always received from them. We were especially pleased this year to receive visits from Professor and Mrs. Seton Lloyd, who stayed and worked with us for some days, and from Mrs. Diana Helbaek, Director of the British School. One other visitor to the site deserves special mention, Sayid Hassan Abdullah, who worked for us for many seasons at Nimrud, but who began his career in excavation under the late Professor Walter Andrae at Assur in the closing years of the last century. The excavations were sponsored by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, assisted by grants from the British Academy, the Musée Royal d'Art et d'Histoire, Brussels, and an anonymous donor.

The volume of ivories found at Nimrud is overwhelming. Nevertheless, this very quantity presents us with unique opportunities to investigate the ivory trade in the early first millennium B.C. It allows us to gather together groups of similar styles and thus, if it can be accepted that a coherent style-group was probably the output of a specific “school” of carving, to define the production of different schools. The principal purpose of this article is to try to reconstruct the output of one of these schools, the flame and frond school, which belongs to the North Syrian tradition of ivory-carving. After bringing together some of its products, another aim is to suggest the school's original location and the time of its floruit.

Only a minority of the ivories found at Nimrud were in the easily recognizable Assyrian style, best known from the wall reliefs. The remainder were carved in a variety of styles and techniques and were almost certainly brought to Nimrud as booty or tribute. As early as 1912 Poulsen suggested that these ivories could be divided into two groups, the Phoenician and the North Syrian. The criteria he used to distinguish them were the absence of Egyptian elements on North Syrian ivories and the relationship between North Syrian ivories and reliefs found at Syrian sites such as Carchemish, Zincirli, Maras and Tell Halaf.

The sixth (1955) season of excavation by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq at Nimrud (ancient Kalḫu, Biblical Calah) was mainly devoted to clearing buildings in the south-eastern corner of the akropolis. One building to the north of Ezida, the temple of Nabu, contained a long Throne-room (SEB2) where lay a varied collection of ivories and bronzes from Assyrian furniture broken when the building was destroyed by fire. Amid this debris more than three hundred and fifty fragments of baked clay tablets were found scattered in the north-west corner of the room between the dais which once supported the royal throne and the door leading to a small ante-chamber (NTS3). Some fragments were also found in the southern doorway of the Throne-room and in the adjacent courtyard (Fig. 1). It will probably never be known with certainty, whether the documents had once been housed in this room or thrown there when the building was sacked by the Medes about 612 B.C. A special room (NT12) in the neighbouring Nabu Sanctuary seems to have been set aside for the use of scribes and for the storage of tablets and this may have been their original location.

These fragments proved to be parts of a few large tablets of which one was reconstituted in the field. Miss Barbara Parker, who was present at the time of discovery, soon identified the text as a treaty made in 672 B.C. by Esarhaddon, king of Assyria (681–669 B.C.), with a chieftain of the Medes named Ramataia of Urukazaba(r)na. The remaining texts were duplicates except that they named different city-govenors, or chieftains, as the other party to the agreement. The dated fragments bear the same Eponym year-date of 672 B.C. With commendable speed Miss Parker published a brief report based on her preliminary reading of about three hundred lines of the Ramataia text and some of the fragments.

In this paper I intend to use the Heracles figure, a prime example of the application of Graeco-Roman imagery to the ever-varying process of expressing Near Eastern forms of religion in the Roman period, to illustrate and guide a brief discourse on the methodological problems concerning the approach to a religious world which was more heterogeneous than is sometimes thought. Iconographic representations of a male figure with club and lion's skin as his main attributes are widespread in the Near East, and indeed far beyond, in the Roman period. In what follows I will concentrate on the place and functioning of this so-called Heracles figure within the context of the religious life of Palmyra and Hatra, two desert cities which, each in their own distinctive way, present examples of a complex religious system in which different elements coexisted and might have influenced each other. Evidence from elsewhere in the Near East that may contribute to our perception of the variety of values which a Heracles figure could embody for different groups of worshippers will also be taken into account.

With regard to the places on which I am focusing, I prefer to refer to the figure with club and lion's skin not as “Heracles” but as the “Heracles figure”, because neither at Palmyra nor at Hatra is that figure ever called by his Greek name in accompanying inscriptions. What the evidence does reveal, though, is that the Heracles figure enjoyed great popularity (especially at Hatra) and was clearly conceived of as deeply rooted in the divine world of both places. As we will see below, it is possible, although not “proven”, that both in Palmyra and in Hatra the Heracles figure was identified with Nergal, a deity with certain chthonian aspects from the Mesopotamian divine world. Nevertheless, the identifications are problematic, and one ought to attend to the names and epithets actually given by worshippers.