Considerable mystery surrounds the state god of Assyria, Aššur. Though this country was a little removed from the centres of Sumero-Babylonian culture and had distinctive traits of its own, compared with Syria and Elam it was definitely within the cultural milieu of Mesopotamia. This applies to religion also, where Adad and Ištar, for example, as worshipped in Assyria, are clearly the counterparts of the Adad and Ištar known from southern Mesopotamia. But the state god Aššur is different. He was peculiarly an Assyrian god without other cult centres, except when Assyrians established them, and he is not fully a deus persona. One seeks in vain for his identity. First, he lacks the family connections which are characteristic of all the major gods and goddesses of the Babylonians and Sumerians, uniting them in one big clan. Who was his wife? He sometimes is named with Ištar as though they were husband and wife, but this is not expressly stated, and one may wonder if the pre-eminence of Ištar in Nineveh does not explain this. They were the chief deities of the two main Assyrian cities. After a while Ninlil begins to appear as his wife, but this merely reflects his identification with the old Sumerian chief god—he is called “Assyrian Enlil”—and this use of Enlil's wife Ninlil merely underlines the lack of any native Assyrian wife of his. The same applies to the rare mentions of Ninurta and Zababa as his sons: they were long before sons of the Sumero-Babylonian Enlil. The only relative not clearly borrowed from southern Mesopotamia is Šeru'a, who, despite a little confusion, is not the same as Eru'a, a title of Zarpānītum, Marduk's wife. Yet even in Neo-Assyrian theological texts it is openly disputed whether she is Aššur's wife or daughter!

From Assyria and Babylonia in the first half of the first millennium B.C. comes a series of small figurines in the round and relief plaques, which are usually found beneath the floors of buildings within receptacles of baked or unbaked brick or (at Nineveh) stone slabs or (so far restricted to Aššur) pottery jars; the figurines themselves are almost invariably of sun-dried clay, very occasionally, perhaps, of terracotta or metal. Their purpose, as texts prescribing the rituals involved attest, was to avert evil from the buildings and sickness from the inhabitants. The British School's Nimrud complement comprises at least 136 relevant pieces from 66 separate deposits discovered in three buildings: the Burnt Palace, the Acropolis Palace (AB) and Fort Shalmaneser, and dating possibly from the reign of Shalmaneser III (?) or, at least, Adad-nirari III down to the fall of the Assyrian Empire in 613 B.C.

In this paper I shall deal with just one, but perhaps the most important, area on which the series sheds light, namely the question of the identification of the creatures represented by the various iconographic types. It can hardly be denied that the study of apotropaic figurines is of somewhat limited importance in itself. Where it succeeds is rather in the light which it throws upon other matters of more general and basic interest. It is vital here to recognize the official nature of the ritual and practice, and the consequent position of the iconography of the figurines in the official religion of the Assyrian state. And while there are no apparent documentary sources directly concerning, for example, the subjects of the apotropaic palace reliefs, there are texts ordaining procedures for apotropaic rituals involving figurines, which often enable identifications of analogous types.

The centenary year of Rassam's Jirjib sounding seemed an appropriate occasion on which to reconsider, and perhaps to some extent resolve, a rather odd set of problems to which this little-known operation had given rise. The matter is not one of great intrinsic importance, but does provide a useful cautionary tale for those scholars who have to deal with nineteenth-century records. What happened, essentially, was that in April 1882 Hormuzd Rassam, director of the British Museum excavations in Mesopotamia, passed through Der ez-Zor on the middle Euphrates. There, he reported to his employers, “I heard that some important antiquities had been found near Ras Alain, or the source of the Khaboor, in northern Mesopotamia on the river Jirjib. I sent at once, therefore, an agent thither to examine the spot”. Before the end of May, however, the kaimakam (or local governor) of Ra's al-‘Ain had stopped the work, and confiscated the “head of a black statue” which the agent had found “in the small space he was allowed to excavate”.

Other unpublished reports by Rassam are slightly more specific. There are said to have been “some statuettes in black basalt and bas-reliefs representing, I believe, hunting scenes”, or “sculptures in black basalt in which are represented antelopes, horses, armed men, bulls, and other figures”. Another report says: “the head of one of the statuettes representing a man was taken away from him [the agent] by the said Kayamakam, but he has brought a piece of a broken bas-relief with him to Mosul, which I have sent for to forward to England”. It is plain that Rassam, by then in Baghdad, never visited the mound in person.

Since the birth of Assyriology there has been recognized at the heart of the neo-Assyrian empire what J. N. Postgate has termed “the symbiosis of Aramaic and Assyrian writing systems”. In 1865 Sir Henry Rawlinson published several cuneiform tablets bearing notes in Aramaic on their edges. These notes were often written with a reed pen while the clay was still soft, the fibres of the point leaving their distinct marks in the clay (e.g. the two examples illustrated in Iraq 34 (1972), Plate LIVb, c). It may be that other notes were written in ink on hardened tablets, but have been erased in the course of time. Certainly ink was used for annotations on tablets in the neo-Babylonian and Persian periods, applied after the clay had dried, as it had been long before by the Egyptian clerks at El-Amarna. While the ink notes could have been added at any time after the tablets were inscribed, far from the places where the tablets were written, those applied while the clay was damp were clearly contemporary with the writing of the cuneiform, and originated in the same place. The purpose of these notes is clear: they were dockets or labels to identify the documents, such as “quittance deed of Hazael” (Iraq 34, 134–7). Their presence in the citadel at Nineveh implies there were scribes at work there who could not read cuneiform, yet who would need to distinguish one document from another. Nineveh is the only known provenance for such dockets, although there are some which have reached museums without any information about their discovery (the Hazael deed mentioned, a deed for the division of an inheritance now in Copenhagen, a corn loan in private hands, and a text in Brussels).

The discovery in 1979 of an anthropoid statue at Tell Fekherye (the site of Sikan, the sacred precinct of ancient Gozan) with an extensive bilingual inscription in Akkadian and Aramaic has renewed speculation about the extent of the Aramaic-Assyrian symbiosis in the earlier Neo-Assyrian period. First edited by A. Abou Assaf, it has recently been re-edited in a monograph by the latter together with Pierre Bordreuil and Alan R. Millard.

A date of around the 9th century for the statue is favoured by the Editors. This date seems reasonable on most grounds, though some adjustment up or down may prove necessary. Arguments based on Aramaic palaeography may be used to push the date higher. On the other hand, strong topical similarities with the Mati-ilu treaty (mid-8th century) may be sufficient grounds to lower the date (cf. comments to ll. 32, 34, 37). Abou Assaf first dated the statue to the 9th century mainly on art historical grounds. The Edition seeks to pinpoint this by identifying Sassu-nuri, the father of Adad-id'i, the statue's donor (l. 12), with the Assyrian eponym of 866.

The excavations at Kish from 1923–33 are an important episode in the annals of British archaeology—or to express it more accurately Anglo-American archaeology. For it was a combined Oxford University—Field Museum Expedition to Mesopotamia which conducted the excavations at Kish during these years. Much material was brought to light as a result of these excavations, but the reports from the period on the archaeological finds left much to be desired in terms of accuracy and completeness.

It is only in the past two decades after a long hiatus that the interpretation of the records and material from the expedition has been put on sound modern archaeological footing. This has resulted mainly from the labours of two scholars, P. R. S. Moorey of the Ashmolean Museum and McGuire Gibson of the University of Chicago. In addition to the two monographic treatments of the archaeological record of Kish, Moorey's Kish Excavations 1923–33 and Gibson's The City and Area of Kish, one of the most interesting products of these studies is Gibson's article The Archaeological Uses of Cuneiform Documents which appeared in Iraq 34 a decade ago. Using Professor Gurney's card catalogue of the tablets in the Ashmolean collection as a basis Gibson outlined the “patterns of occupation at the city of Kish” as shown by the cuneiform tablets. The most important conclusions in the article concern the texts from the Chaldean and Achaemenid periods and their effect on the assessment of the archaeological data from Late Babylonian Kish.

This article aims to open up a discussion of the term hanšû as applied to land in the Neo-Babylonian period. With this in mind, a complete list of the hanšû references known to us is included, to aid any further study of the term. Hanšû is found in the following forms, 50, 50ú, 50ú.meš, 50meš, 50meš.e, 50e and 50e. meš, and is so far attested from the cities of Babylon, Borsippa, Dilbat, Hursagkalamma, Nippur and Uruk. It appears from the reign of Marduk-apla-iddina II to that of Darius.

Turning to the dictionaries, we find hanšû to be “land held in feudal tenure by 50 men”. One thinks of a parallel with the Late Babylonian bīt qašti texts, in which groups of men, known individually as bēl qašti, held land in return for military duties. Approaching hanšû with this in mind, we should look for the duties that these fifty men performed in return for their land. Further, we should look for other aspects of feudalism in Neo-Babylonian society. Yet it is exactly these which are not to be found. One is made aware of a strong temple interest in land, and the ownership of land by private individuals is also very well attested. In contrast, however, evidence for the activities of the crown in relation to land (or the army) is meagre. Royal land, the pīhat šarri, did exist, but we have gained little idea as to its extent or as to how it was exploited. Thus, if we are to argue that hanšû land was feudal land, held by fifty men who performed feudal duties, the proof must come from within the hanšû texts, as external proofs are not to be found.

In this report I shall deal mainly with the Eanna temple economy, and with the amount of income and payments made. The income of Eanna had several sources, the first being the tithes and compulsory payments on products, silver or manufactured goods made by craftsmen in the territory controlled by Eanna. Interest was due when the payment of tithes was postponed. In such cases citizens preferred to take loans from private money-lenders or large business houses. There are a number of documents in the Egibi and Murašu archives describing cases of loans of silver for the payment of tithes. These loans were made according to the usual terms, i.e. 20% interest with guarantees and pledges. We do not know why, if the rates were the same, citizens did not prefer to pay interest to the temple. Perhaps the answer can be found in the records of loans of silver and products given by the temple itself. In a number of cases these documents are formulated as exchanges. For example, in YBT VI, 90, Eanna exchanges barley for dates but the text nevertheless contains a clause according to which the debtor must return the required quantity of barley.

Das früheste konkrete Zeugnis von der Tempelsklaverei im Babylonien der hellenistischen Zeit findet sich im Protokoll einer Gerichtssitzung in Uruk (302 v. Chr.). Hier handelt es sich um einen Sklaven eines schon verstorbenen kinderlosen Mannes, der bereits früher dem Gott Anu zur Tempelsklaverei (širkûtu) geweiht war von einem Bruder des Sklavenherrn, der selbst schon verstorben war aber drei Söhne hinterlassen hatte. Es gab auch noch einen dritten Bruder, der bei seinem Tode einen Sohn hinterliess. Der letztere klagte auf die Überlassung eines Teils des besagten Sklaven, der sich auch weiterhin im Status širku befand. Das Gericht beschloss, ihm ein Drittel dieses širku zu übergeben, die anderen zwei Drittel aber den besagten Vettern zu überlassen. Daraus erscheint u.a., dass širku (ein Tempelsklave) ein gewisses Interesse für seinen ehemaligen Herrn auch weiterhin darstellte. Möglicherweise war es ein Interesse wirtschaftlicher Natur, d.h. der Sklave fuhr fort seinem ehemaligen Herrn in gewissem Mass zu dienen, oder der letztere erhielt irgendein Entgelt für ihn vom Tempel.

Ein weiteres Zeugnis für die Tempelsklaverei aus Uruk datiert von 219 v. Chr. In einem Vertrag über Besitzverkauf wird einer der Zeugen als rab širkē (Vorgesetzter von širku) bezeichnet. Es muss ein Freier gewesen sein, weil in der hellenistischen Zeit Sklaven oder širku nicht als Zeugen in Kontrakten auftreten.

Wenig früher, 225 v. Chr., wird in einer Urkunde aus Seleukia am Tigris (Tell‘Umar) eine Sklavenweihung (lúqal-(la)me) an širkûtu (in der Schreibweise lúŠeŠ-ki-ú-ta) erwähnt.

Ausser dieser Verträge über die Institution širkûtu in der hellenistischen Zeit, werden Angaben auch in dem Formular der Verträge über Sklavenverkauf erwähnt. Die Sklavenverkäufer bürgen dafür, dass die Sklaven, die entfremdet werden, nicht zu bestimmten sozialen Kategorien gehören, keine Freien sind usw. In der Aufzählung dieser sozialen Kategorien in der entsprechenden Klausel des Formulars steht širkûtu an erster Stelle.

A study of the cryptographic cuneiform texts brought to light a small group of texts which pair numerals with syllabic signs. A brief description of the corpus and preliminary observations about the texts follows.

Each of the texts pairs numerals written in standard sexagesimal notation with the signs of Syllabary A (Sa). I call these texts number-syllabaries. All of the number-syllabaries are in a late hand; some are datable to the Seleucid period by the cursive form of the numeral nine. All of the exemplars are known or suspected to have come from Babylon.

The corpus consists of these texts: MMA 86.11.364 Rm. 806, BM 47732 + 48191, BM 77233, BM 46603(+)46609. Each of these, except BM 77233, duplicates part of at least one of the other fragments.

MMA 86.11.364 is the largest and most complete exemplar of the number-syllabaries. The pattern of its entries, numeral—DIŠ—syllabic sign, is standard for the other texts. This pattern clearly differs from the one in lexical texts, where the DIŠ sign indicates the initial component of each entry. MMA 86.11.364 preserves each Sa sign only once, and not the number of times it appears in Sa.

BM 47732 + 48191 is the largest of the BM number-syllabary pieces. It duplicates the Metropolitan text in two places. Unlike the latter, however, BM 47732 + 48191 repeats the syllabic signs and their corresponding numbers as many times as the sign forms appear in Sa.

The motif of a man holding two lions without attacking them with any weapons is to be found again and again, from the beginning to the end of Ancient Oriental Art, that is, from 4th millennium B.C. stamp seals and the knife from Djebel el-Arak to the last cylinder seals in Achaemenian style. To call the man “Gilgamesh” or “Daniel”, however, is only to provide “nick-names” for him, since there is no serious contemporary written evidence to identify him.

It is only in the realm of Christian Art, as, for example, on a magnificent Nestorian silver plate in the Hermitage Museum, recently published by B. Marshak, that we can confidently describe the hero as Daniel in the lions' den. This later development of the motif has been excellently described in two articles by W. Deonna. Even, however, in the case of the famous suaire de St. Victor at Sens, we can only be sure that the figure was interpreted as that of Daniel in the secondary, European usage of the suaire, that is to say when it was given, around A.D. 760, to the Archbishop of Sens or, earlier, came to the monastery of St. Maurice d'Agaune. It is, however, most probable that, when it was originally manufactured, in southern Iraq or Khuzistan sometime before that date, Daniel was indeed the figure represented, since the Muslim conquerors of Susa also believed that he was the holy man who had lived and been buried in that city. Ibn Hauqal, for instance, tells us that general Abu Musa, the conqueror of Susa, suppressed there a local cult procession bearing Daniel's body while praying for rain, but that Abu Musa buried the coffin again “in the midst of the river”.

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

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

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

Evidence for the Mesopotamian diet comes from several sources. Palaeobotanical and zoological remains found on excavated sites tell of the existence of edible plants and animals in the area; scenes on cylinder seals, plaques and reliefs show people eating and cooking; and the cuneiform texts give details of crops grown, animals kept and food issued to the gods, to the king and his household and to ordinary people. Unfortunately this evidence is not evenly spread for every period or every town. Texts giving information about food are abundant at Lagaš during the reigns of Lugalanda and Urukagina in the Early Dynastic III period, at Ur in the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods, at Mari during the reign of Zimri-Lim in the early second millennium and at Nuzi and Nippur during the mid-second millennium (e.g. Deimel 1931, Pinches 1908, Birot 1960 and 1964, Bottéro 1957, Lacheman 1950, Clay 1906). But there are many gaps and there are few, if any, ration lists during the Neo-Assyrian period. The identification of many terms is uncertain and disputed. This difficulty in interpretation does not only apply to texts. To take another example, the scenes on cylinder seals are small and often stylized. They may have ritual rather than practical significance and of course they may be inaccurate, showing what the craftsman believed happened and not what actually did. However, there was no great division between town and country and one job and another so that a seal-cutter living say in Tell Harmal would be familiar with the activities of a farmer, or a brewer or a baker.

Anyone reading the Gilgameš Epic cannot help being puzzled by the words pukku and mekkû which have been very much discussed by specialists and are still so enigmatic that some translators no longer attempt to render them.

The state of the question is as follows.

The von Soden dictionary translates pukku by “Trommel” (drum). Such was also Landsberger's first interpretation, but he later changed his mind: since the pukku occurs once with some playthings such as a skipping rope, he suggested a hoop, but finally, one year later, owing to a passage, “Ich lasse die Schädel rollen wie pukku”, which seems to imply “eine massivere Struktur”, he plumped for “eine Art Polo oder Croquet mit Holzkugeln”, i.e. wooden balls.

As for mekkū, von Soden gives several meanings: first, a pestle used with a sieve; second, “Trommelstock” (drumstick). This we must stop to consider for a while, since this implement, the drumstick, is not attested in ancient Mesopotamia. Drums are very often represented in Mesopotamian reliefs. There are several kinds of them, either shallow and small, like our timbrel or tambourine; or barrel-shaped or conical and hanging from the belt; or again larger ones set on the ground; none of these is ever played with a stick. Even the gigantic Gudea drum is played with bare hands.

Material analysis is a basic task of archaeometry, but it is problematic in many ways: the analysis should be representative but should not destroy or damage the object: the analysis should be rapid and inexpensive in order to enable the study of large quantities of objects for statistical evaluation. Analyses based upon small subsamples tend to give random results, i.e. results not representative for the entire specimen, but analyses of the entire body should be truly non-destructive.

EDS-XFA (energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis) is one of the few non-destructive analytical tools giving chemical information on the average composition of a surface. Nearly 90% of all natural chemical elements can be detected provided they are present as major or minor constituents. Like all instrumental techniques, EDS-XFA is based upon a comparison of unknown samples with standards of known composition (for details see Bertin, 1978); quantitative analysis is possible when surface conditions (size, morphology, texture, etc.) of unknowns and standards are identical. Regarding archaeological objects, the sample surface should not be treated, smoothed or flattened, but has to be left in its original morphology (which varies from specimen to specimen) and this may influence the analytical results. These are therefore considered to be qualitative and are essentially used to establish groups of similar chemical composition (Fig. 1). This chemical classification, when applied to cylinder seals, is closely associated with mineral/rock species since a clear interdependence exists between mineral species and their composition. The mineralogical classification, however, is, by tradition, based upon physical properties of minerals like optics, hardness, etc., and not primarily on their chemistry.

Für die Fundgattung der Tonlebermodelle bietet sich eine, den Omentexten vergleichbare Einteilung in Kompendien (=Schullebern) und Berichte an. Die als Berichte angesehenen Exemplare können als Nachbildungen von Opferlebern verstanden werden, deren morphologischer und pathologischer Zustand inschriftlich, graphisch oder in einer Kombination beider Methoden auf ein Modell übertragen wurde.

Im Rahmen der bisherigen Bearbeitungen derartiger Stücke wurde zwar auf die Abhängigkeit von Text und Markierungen hingewiesen (Landsberger/Tadmor, 1964: 202–205; Nougayrol, 1968: 32–34), ihr Wert für eine Interpretation auch der unbeschrifteten Lebermodelle jedoch nicht erkannt; außerdem fanden auch die archäologischen Kriterien kaum Beachtung. Anhand einer Tonleber aus Mumbaqat/Syrien sollen die Relevanz der Fundlage für eine Verwendung derartiger Objekte und bisher nicht beobachtete Möglichkeiten zu deren Auswertung im Sinne der Omina aufgezeigt werden.

Das hier diskutierte Modell fand sich, mit der Schauseite nach oben, in dem weißen Verputz der ältesten Phase einer Treppe verbaut, die in das Allerheiligste eines als Steinbau 2 bezeichneten Tempel führt (Orthmann, 1976: 29–32). Diese Fundsituation läßt den Schluß zu, daß die Darstellung auf diesem Modell die Ergebnisse einer eigens für die Errichtung des Tempels untersuchten Opferleber widerspiegelt; eine Annahme, die zweifellos eine positive Gesamtaussage der vorausgegangenen Leberschau impliziert.