The most important contribution to the subject of Urartian archaeology is the publication in 1950 of a preliminary report on the excavations at Karmir-Blur. This (Karmir Blur, I) is a short work of 97 pages accompanied by 16 half-tone illustrations and 64 text figures by B. B. Piotrovsky (Akademii Nauk Armyanskoy S.S.R.., Erivan, 1950). Its importance lies in the fact, first, that it is the first controlled excavation of any importance which has taken place in Urartian territory, and second, in the nature of the material discovered and described. The care with which the excavation was evidently conducted further adds to its importance. As copies of this work outside the “Iron Curtain” must be exceedingly rare, we have thought fit to present a detailed and illustrated summary for the benefit of Western students. The book, too, may be condensed with some profit, as it repeats itself in different chapters yet lacks enough cross-references.

Injunctions to secrecy in the colophons of scholarly cuneiform tablets offer potential insights into the classification and protection of knowledge in Mesopotamia. However, most models of a body of “secret knowledge” defined by the so-called “Geheimwissen colophons” have found it difficult to account for a seemingly disparate corpus of protected texts. This study argues first for an expanded definition of intellectual protection, which leads to a larger corpus of protected texts. Through a case study of Late Babylonian colophons from Uruk, it is suggested that there is a strong correlation between texts related to the professional specialism of the tablet owner, and the occurrence of protective formulae in the colophon. This implies that it is fruitful to consider “secret knowledge” less as an abstracted corpus of esoteric texts and more as a mutable categorisation strongly linked to professional and individual intellectual identity.

The British Archaeological Expedition to Kuwait was formed in the spring of 1998 as the result of a visit to Kuwait by Harriet Crawford in November 1997. This visit took place at the invitation of the Director of the National Museum, Dr Fahad al Wohaibi. Several possible projects were discussed and permission was later granted by the Secretary-General of the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters for a preliminary survey by the Expedition, to be carried out jointly with a team from the National Museum of Kuwait, of the area known as as-Sabiyah at the north end of Kuwait bay (Fig. 1). The area had already been the subject of a preliminary study by Dr Fahad, who had identified one well-preserved site (H3) with both painted and plain Ubaid pottery on the surface. It was also agreed that the team should undertake exploratory work at this site. Dr Fahad's generosity in inviting a British team to work with him in the area was matched only by the kindness with which the Expedition was received in Kuwait. The achievements of the first season are due in large measure to the support offered to us by our colleagues in the National Museum and in the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters.

The objectives of the first season, which lasted for five weeks in October and November 1998, were as follows: to begin a detailed archaeological survey of the Jazirat Dubaij, a promontory within the Sabiyah area; to conduct a preliminary examination of the geomorphology of the area in order to establish the configuration of the shoreline at a period contemporary with the Ubaid-related site now known as H3; to contour this site; to undertake a surface collection of artefacts at H3; to confirm the presence of structures at the site and to establish the depth of deposit present. All these objectives were achieved.

The discovery of an inscribed statue of Shalmaneser III at Nimrud during the 1961 season of excavations by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq was reported in the last issue of this journal. It is the purpose of the study which follows to present the text of the inscription, together with a translation, some discussion of setting and content and notes on deserving passages.

As was stated in the first report, the statue, a fraction over one metre in height and diagonally broken at its left lower corner, was found leaning against the North wall of the storeroom NE 50, situated in the North-East courtyard of Fort Shalmaneser. The exact position is shown on the accompanying detail from the 1961 plan, given in Fig. 1. The statue ‘had apparently been brought in to Fort Shalmaneser for repair, since we found dowel holes bored in the opposed faces of the fracture. It seems unlikely that an object of such importance would have been broken in normal circumstances, and the damage may have been the work of the invaders in 614 B.C.’ One may perhaps admit the possibility of another explanation (see below), but it is worth recalling that the fragmentary condition of the Shalmaneser statue found at Nimrud in 1956 has also been plausibly attributed to an act of Median violence.

This year is a particularly appropriate one in which to revive the subject of the Royal Assyrian Seal, for it is exactly a century since the publication of Austen H. Layard's Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, in which —among so many other things that remain vivid and delightfully instructive —the royal character of the type of stamp seal under discussion was first suggested. The most recently discovered example of an impression of the Royal Seal was found some months ago at Nimrud.

What are the common features found in the extant specimens of impressions of the Royal Seal? It is always a stamp seal, the outline of the engraved sealing surface being circular. The bearded king is shown standing, right foot forward, wearing the standard royal head-dress of the period, his clothing terminating slightly below the knees. His left arm is outstretched, the hand grasping the top of the head of a lion which faces him. The king's right hand holds a dagger which he is plunging into the lion's chest. The lion itself is rampant, left hind leg forward, left front paw hanging ineffectually close to the king's right thigh; the lion's right front leg is poised, ready to strike, behind the lion's head. As in the vast majority of ancient Mesopotamian representations of lions, its mouth is wide open and its tail curls in.

About 1965 I gave a lift to an old villager somewhere near Shergat in northern Iraq. Hearing that I was English, he said that he remembered the English and produced, instead of some casual polite remark, the very specific comment: “they were just people, they introduced fair courts.” It was, though he could hardly have known it, a reference to the remarkable work of Sir Edgar Bonham-Carter, who in the early days of the Mandate founded Iraq's School of Law and re-established the machinery of justice, drafting a great deal of the necessary legislation himself and creating a system which in principle still exists. He was one of those British officials whose services in Iraq are indeed memorable, and it is a great honour for me to be giving the eighth Bonham-Carter Memorial Lecture today.

We in the small archaeological world, however, think of Sir Edgar especially as a leading spirit in the establishment of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, first chairman of the Executive Committee, and husband of course of Lady Bonham-Carter who is still one of the School's best friends. So I thought it appropriate that I should devote this lecture to another man who also, in his own way, bridged two cultures (Figs. 1, 2) and who was in fact the first Iraqi archaeologist, with great achievements and discoveries to his credit.

Yet Hormuzd Rassam, instead of being crowned with the honours that were his due, ended his life in disappointment and relative obscurity. His reputation has never fully recovered from the malicious attacks made upon it in his lifetime, and from the failure then to acknowledge his contribution to our knowledge of ancient Iraq. His reputation as an archaeologist in particular has suffered from the vastly improved archaeological techniques which were developed in Iraq a generation after he himself had left the field. He is condemned for not recording and publishing his excavations properly, and for being a treasure-hunter rather than a seeker after truth, when such criticisms might more reasonably be directed

The recent discoveries at the site of Tell es-Sawwan, south of Samarra, have completely revolutionized our ideas concerning early village communities in Mesopotamia. Earlier excavations at sites like Jarmo, Matarrah, and Hassuna had in no way led us to expect the elaborate and extraordinary ground stone industry or the early mud-brick architecture that was to emerge from this site. Moreover, the evidence for cereal cultivation reveals an agricultural situation hitherto unsuspected in the Tigris valley. Three seasons of excavations have been carried out at Tell es-Sawwan by the Iraqi Directorate-General of Antiquities, and the preliminary report of the first season by Dr. Faisal El-Wailly and Mr. Behnam Abu Al-Soof has now appeared in Sumer. The writer wishes to express her gratitude both to Dr. El-Wailly and Mr. Abu Al-Soof for their very generous permission to publish here the baked clay figurines from the first two seasons.

The present paper is intended as a continuation of a previous article and a report of work done on a number of small fragments, most if not all fragments of prisms, found during the excavations at Nimrud in the years 1955–1957. The majority of these fragments are inscribed with parts of the Annals of Ashurbanipal. The text of two fragments, ND. 5414 and ND. 5416, was identified as part of the Annals of Sennacherib. Only two fragments, ND. 5537 and ND. 6205 E, remain unidentified, though there can be little doubt that they belong together with the Ashurbanipal texts. In several cases one or more fragments join other fragments. After the division of the texts between London and Baghdad it is often impossible to check new joins resulting from study of the texts. The exact character of a join will be indicated in the catalogue of the fragments which will be given below. A concordance listing the correspondence between the standard versions of the Annals and the texts published here will be added for reference. Copies of the texts are presented on Plates XIV–XXIX (these follow the approximate order of the excavation numbers given below).

The purpose of this article is to provide a brief stratigraphic summary of the 14 seasons of excavations at Tell Brak from 1976 to 1993, under the auspices of the Institute of Archaeology, University of London, and more recently, the McDonald Institute of the University of Cambridge. These excavations cover four millennia and have been carried out at a number of different parts of the site which, owing both to distance and site morphology it has not been possible to connect physically. In the course of fourteen seasons initial interpretations have inevitably changed; a major purpose of the article, therefore, is to provide an up-to-date framework within which the detail of the earlier reports can be read. Three final volumes are envisaged. The first, on the second millennium materials, is nearing completion and will be followed by one on the Akkadian and later third millennium occupation of Brak, with a third volume devoted to the prehistory of the site. This article thus constitutes an interim measure, to clarify the contexts of already published material; views presented here supersede those in all previous reports, including the previously published summary articles in Hamidiya 2 (1990). A full bibliography of preliminary reports is appended.

It was on the 18th March, 1949, that we set to work on the mound of Nimrud, high up on its western flanks. Our party was composed of twenty-two skilled men from Qala'at Sharqat, who later on were joined by one hundred and twenty labourers from the neighbourhood. For many days and nights it had rained heavily, and between us and the river Tigris, a mile to the west, there lay a great sheet of water through which the men had waded from the village of Nimrud, where the shaikh had given them lodging for the night. From where we were working we had a clear view of the green plains of Assyria stretching northwards towards Nineveh and southwards towards Assur: to the east, over more undulating ground, we could see the mountains of Kurdistan and of Persia.

A hundred years had passed since Austen Henry Layard had laboured on this spot: our men were well aware of the prizes he had found and of how much more might still await discovery; for to the trained eye it was clear that, in spite of the vast amount of soil which had been removed from the Assyrian Palaces in the preceding century and subsequently thrown back into them, an immense amount of uncharted ground still awaited exploration. And it was not only the prospect of finding hidden treasure that attracted us. On every aspect of Assyrian life questions had been raised to which Nimrud might supply an answer. The pickmen themselves had about them an air of excitement and expectancy and, as the third generation of trained workers in the field, a sense of their historic mission.

The eleventh season of excavations at Nimrud opened on March 2nd, 1961; full-scale operations ended on May 5th, but a small party continued the extraction and conservation of the ivories for a further two weeks. The expedition was generously supported by contributions from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada, the University of Pennsylvania, the British Museum, Les Musées Royales d'Art et d'Histoire, Brussels, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the University of Sydney, the University of Cambridge, and the Iraq Petroleum Company. I must once again express my gratitude to all the members of the staff. Miss Barbara Parker, in her tenth season as epigraphist and photographer, shared the epigraphic work with Mr. James Kinnier Wilson, Lecturer in Assyriology at Cambridge University, and Mr. Alan Millard; Mr. Jeffery Orchard catalogued the ivories and other finds, Mr. Nicholas Kindersley was in charge of the pottery, and Miss Charmian Reed and Mr. Eric von Gericke undertook the cleaning and treatment of the ivories. In addition, we were fortunate to have the experienced help of Dr. Vaughn E. Crawford of the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the latter part of the season, both in the field work and the photography. The quantity of ivories found was as great, and the body of inscribed material greater and more complex, than in previous seasons; that we were able at the same time to plan and record a large area of Fort Shalmaneser, yielding important historical evidence, reflects the ability and industry of my colleagues in their special fields, and their versatility in sharing the varied general duties of the dig. We must also record our thanks, for their constant and cordial cooperation, to the Director General of Antiquities, Sayid Taha Baqir, and his staff, to the Inspector General of Excavations, Sayid Fuad Safar, and to Sayid Selim al Jelili, now Inspector of Antiquities in Mosul Province, who spent his third season with us as representative of the Directorate General and as a valued member of the expedition.

There are two reasons for the regrettable shortage of radiocarbon dates for prehistoric Mesopotamia. One is that much of the relevant excavation took place before the development of such techniques; the second, the inconvenient fact that the prehistoric farmers of Mesopotamia were uncommonly tidy and swept clean their house floors, leaving for posterity little in the way of carbonized or any other remains. Excavations like that at Ras al ‘Amiya failed to reveal any recoverable quantity of charcoal in spite of a diligent search, while at Choga Mami, where every scrap of such material was preserved, many of the samples have proved too small for dating purposes. In this situation it is perhaps useful to publish quickly and briefly the first date from the latter site, remembering at the same time the unreliability of a single unsupported date from any site:

The charcoal sample which produced this date came from what has been termed, perhaps inadequately, the “Transitional Samarra/Hajji Muhammad phase”, so designated because the ceramic material included pottery comparable, and in some cases identical, with ceramic types of these two otherwise distinct assemblages. Although some of the pottery is indistinguishable from that found in true Samarran context, there is no doubt that this phase at Choga Mami clearly post-dates classical Samarra.

While a good deal of attention has been given by prehistorians to the process of “state formation” in the ancient Near East, less effort has been devoted to exploring the nature of historical states through their archaeology. This article endeavours to redress the balance a little, by looking at some of the documentary evidence for the process of government in Assyria in the late second millennium BC, in particular at its level of intervention in local economies, and by placing it alongside the archaeological evidence for the presence of Assyrian administration, as reflected in the ceramic repertoires of Tell Sheikh Hamad on the Habur and Sabi Abyad on the Balikh. Both the literate administration and the material evidence for craft production display a degree of conformity which would seem to reflect an ethos of centralized control. This invites comparison with the material evidence for other Late Bronze Age palace regimes, whether archives of Mycenaean clay tablets or the ceramic repertoire of the Hittite empire. Here too written instruments and material markers of state control could be taken to reflect a concept of the “state” (as opposed to “empire”) which does not agree well with some analyses of social evolution in this region, and prompts some concluding thoughts on the relationship between the material record and the ethos of government in state-run societies.

The study of chronology is little but a dry exercise when undertaken for its own sake alone. Yet, there can be little doubt that it remains a necessary prelude to virtually all of the more interesting analyses of social, political, economic, and other issues which archaeologists may seek to address. It is in this spirit that I would like to present a reevaluation of the internal chronology of the Royal Cemetery of Ur which has formed the basis of my ongoing research into various sociological aspects of the cemetery.

The Royal Cemetery constitutes a vast body of data, largely without parallel in Mesopotamia. Well excavated and reported for its time (Woolley, 1934, 1955), it contained more than 2,000 burials, many of them with lavish sets of material accompaniments. The so-called Royal Tombs, from which the cemetery derives its name, contain, in addition to vast quantities of material wealth, the bodies of anywhere from a few to more than 70 individuals accompanying the principal occupant of each tomb. Although the most spectacular graves all appear to date to the earliest portion of the cemetery's use, burials continued to be made in the cemetery, apparently without interruption, for some 500 years.

Kani Shaie is a small archaeological site in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, centrally located in the Bazian Basin, a narrow valley at the western edge of the Zagros Mountains along the major route between Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah. Its main mound was inhabited almost continuously from the fifth to the middle of the third millennium, c. 5000–2500 B.C.E. This period of Mesopotamian prehistory, corresponding to the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, witnessed major transformations such as initial urbanism and intensification of interregional interaction networks. The recent resurgence of fieldwork in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq is beginning to reveal local trajectories that do not always match the established chronological framework, which is largely based on changes in ceramic technology and styles observed in northern Mesopotamia. Here, we discuss the ceramic sequence retrieved from a step trench at Kani Shaie spanning the entire Late Chalcolithic (c. 4600–3100 B.C.E.). A bottom-up approach to potting traditions at the site allows an initial assessment of the relationship between local communities in the Zagros foothills and large-scale developments in the Mesopotamian world. We argue that the evidence from Kani Shaie reflects a long process in which different communities of practice made active choices of adopting, adapting, or rejecting non-local cultural practices.

The flourit of early Sumerian civilization in southern Iraq marked a degree of economic differentiation, sociopolitical complexity, and urbanization previously unseen in the ancient world. This article reports the results of recent geo-archaeological investigation of three complementary resources in southern Mesopotamia that are thought to have offered an ecological advantage, thus laying the economic foundations for these developments: (1) expansive irrigable plains; (2) vast pasture lands; and (3) the littoral resources of levee back swamps/deltaic marshes. Focusing on the area of the Hawr al-Hammar marshes, the authors conducted preliminary archaeological, geological and landscape investigation over the course of 18 days in the autumn of 2010, funded by a U.S. National Science Foundation High Risk Research in Physical Anthropology and Archaeology grant.

A study of Iraq with a view to carrying out prehistoric investigations into the earliest settlements of the northern plain, suggested that one large area offered good possibilities. Not only does it stand away from those regions where, for various reasons, it is impracticable to carry out field work, but it is unknown territory as far as archaeology is concerned. That part of the Hatr a which surrounds Hatra, particularly the region to the west, is rather daunting countryside. Many thousands of square kilometres of slightly rolling, treeless and salty steppelands with seasonal salt lakes and watercourses, brackish springs and waterholes, not to mention an annual rainfall of only about 200 mm. do not seem conducive to early settlement. Nevertheless, one small Hassuna/Samarra settlement, Umm al Dhiabba, situated about 15 km. west of Hatra, had long been known. It seemed reasonable to suppose that more sites would be found in the area. Furthermore, Jebel Sinjar is only three days' walk at most N.W. from Hatr a for an unencumbered man, but moving with sheep the same journey today takes five days. The Sinjar then is close, but more important, beyond it lies the Khabur, the probable diffusion route for that conjectured third region of early cultures lying between those of the Zagros and the Levant-with-Anatolia, and perhaps located somewhere in the Mardin area. Some early settlers fanning out from the Khabur might well have established themselves along the watercourses running down into the Hatr a from Jebel Sinjar as they did across the fertile plain to the north of the area under discussion, as the large Hassuna site at Yarim Tepe and others in the Tell Afar region would seem to indicate. Finally, prehistoric research in Iraq has been largely confined to the Zagros foothills and Tigris banks; the settlements of the central northern plain were unknown. Accordingly the north central Hatr a was chosen for a short preliminary survey using Hatra as a base.

To judge from the reliefs in the palace of Ashurnasirpal at Nimrud, elaborately patterned clothes were very much in vogue in 9th century B.C. Assyria. Even soldiers in battle may wear gaily decorated skirts. The patterns consist mostly of floral or geometric designs on the order of those first seen on royal garments on post-Kassite kudurrus. Since such patterns are brightly coloured in the wall paintings at Til Barsip or on the enamelled bricks at Assur, we are led to believe that the designs carved on the reliefs represent embroideries.

A small number of figures (only some of them royal) on the reliefs from Nimrud wear robes decorated with unusually complex patterns, consisting of figures of animals, monsters, genii, kings and some narrative scenes. This special kind of embroidery caught Layard's attention and he painstakingly recorded the designs in his Monuments of Nineveh, published in London in 1853. From these drawings a picture has been formed of 9th century B.C. Assyrian textiles. The embroidery patterns have been used to date Assyrian motifs, as well as to identify the Assyrian prototypes for elements in Assyrianizing art from other areas. The export of such textiles has been credited with spreading Assyrian motifs abroad. The importance which these special embroideries have in Assyrian studies is, then, out of proportion to the tiny scale, or to their incidental contribution to the aesthetic effect of the sculpture of the palace.

It is with the greatest pleasure that I dedicate this brief article to Professor Seton Lloyd, an archaeologist of enormous distinction, and one whom I am pleased and honoured to call friend, whose work in Iraq still forms the basis for all prehistoric interpretation.

Well-dated ceramic materials are rare, even in the archaeology of the historic periods in Mesopotamia. In particular the third millennium remains imprecisely documented, especially in the north. It is for this reason that I present here a preliminary report on the pottery from the Late ED III destruction level at Tell Brak. Seldom can pottery of such early provenance be so precisely dated. There can be no doubt that this level represents the initial Agade conquest of the north, and the vessels published here comprise the complete or reconstructable pots found in situ on the floors of major buildings in areas CH and ER destroyed at this time (Pls. VIIIb, IXb, XVIa, b). In both areas many of the vessels contained cereals and other food substances, and it is from these well-stratified deposits that the radiocarbon samples have been obtained.

The brief discussion of warfare in Asia Minor which here follows will be limited to the Hittite period (about 1800–1200 B.C.). It is the only period of Anatolian history illuminated by written sources which are indispensable for deeper penetration into life, motivations and thinking of the ancient. I have to forewarn you that nothing much can be said that has not been said before.

No doubt warfare in Asia Minor goes back to the very beginnings when the land was first settled. But what could be said about warfare in prehistoric times? Only the fortifications of the prehistoric settlements have survived, the weapons found in them; the tombs of their warriors and that which accompanied them into the beyond. These relics acquire significance beyond the antiquarian interest they command as soon as they can be fitted into a comprehensive picture of historical development; as soon as states, archaic and primitive as they may seem, city-states, kingdoms etc., emerge. This is the case in Asia Minor with the beginning of the second millennium B.C.