Mukannišum, le destinataire de la lettre A. 1285, était, à l'époque du roi Zimri-Lim, chargé d'une multitude de tâches et de responsabilités concernant surtout la production industrielle et artisanale. C'est dans le cadre de ces activités que le roi lui transmet, par cette lettre, des instructions concernant, entre autres choses, l'approvisionnement en laine de haute qualité destinée à la fabrication d'un vêtement taddîtum. Texte et Copie, voir ci-dessous.

Le roi estime donc, d'après cette lettre, que Mukannišum doit pouvoir se passer de la laine fournie par Hammurapi de Babylone, et s'en procurer suffisamment — et d'assez bonne qualité — en triant la laine produite par “la tonte du palais”, buqûm ekallim. Sans doute faut-il prendre cette expression dans son sens le plus large, buqûmu désignant l'ensemble de la production de laine du royaume et ekallum faisant référence non pas au palais en tant qu'édifice, mais à l'institution palatiale avec ses ramifications provinciales. Il semble bien d'ailleurs que l'argumentation développée par le roi, ll. 32–34, soit fondée sur la distinction entre la laine qui se trouve effectivement, à un moment donné, au palais, et qui risque d'être insuffisante (l. 3), et la laine de “la tonte du palais”, citée explicitement l. 21 et l. 24, et implicitement ll. 33–34, parmi laquelle il est certain que Mukannišum trouvera la matière première nécessaire. D'autre part, lorsqu'à la fin de la lettre, ll. 53–54, le roi affirme qu'on fera appel, pour la fabrication de ce vêtement, aux réserves du pays tout entier, il fait sans doute encore allusion, entre autres fournitures, à la laine.

The archive of Iltani from Tell al Rimah in northern Iraq consists of 150 letters and fifty economic records. It almost certainly falls within the period of Cappadocian trade known as Kültepe Ib; one līmu name, Ṣabrum, is common to this archive and the texts of Kültepe Ib. This single name cannot be considered a certain link, since it has no patronymic in the records of Iltani; however, the name Kaneš occurs in two of the letters, and this gives support. The letters show that Hammurapi of Babylon was at that time the overlord of Iltani's people; Zimri-Lim's court at Mari is never mentioned, and so a date between Hammurapi's 32nd and 38th years is very probable. This is likely to be within the period of Kültepe Ib according to several scholars.

Of the forty letters between Iltani and her husband the ruler Aqba-hammu, ten are concerned with cloth, garments and workers in the local textile industry. A further eleven letters to Iltani from various different people are likewise concerned, and some mentioned textiles in fairly large amounts. Of the economic records, four concern textiles, two of them in large quantities, and the ration lists name groups of textile workers. From the letters alone one may deduce that textiles were important business at Rimah; compare the letters of Šibtu and her female contemporaries at Mari in which cloth and garments are mentioned usually as single items for personal use. Further comparison of the two groups of letters from Mari and Rimah makes it clear that the ruler and his wife were more closely concerned at Rimah than at Mari with making cloth and garments, and distributing them.

Le vin est une marchandise importée dans le royaume de Mari. La vigne était cultivée autrefois, comme elle l'est encore aujourd'hui, à l'Ouest (Alep-Homs) ou au Nord (Nizip-Gaziantep). Les grossistes en vin sont tantôt les producteurs eux-mêmes, tantôt des marchands ou des spéculateurs établis dans le royaume de Mari. C'est un produit dont le Palais est grand consommateur; il arrive même que le roi s'occupe de sa réexportation.

Le vin est acheminé le plus souvent par la voie fluviale, sur des bateaux spécialement aménagés pour ce transport. Il est toujours compté en quantité de “jarres” qui sont donc certainement de capacité constante. L'examen attentif des textes amène à la conclusion très probable que cette capacité était de 10 qa et que la jarre de vin valait 6/10e de sicle d'argent.

Wenn im folgenden die Beteiligung nomadischer Gruppen an Handel und Handelsverkehr skizziert werden soll, so muß zugleich auf Umstände hingewiesen werden, die eine entsprechende Aussage erschweren oder relativieren. So ist es bereits problematisch, inwieweit wir aus der Bezeichnung von Menschengruppen mit einem Stammesnamen bzw. dem Namen einer Untereinheit eines Stammes auf eine nomadisierende oder wenigstens teilweise nomadisierende Lebensweise dieser Gruppen schließen dürfen. Selbst Anzeichen für eine auf Nomadismus deutende Wirtschaftsführung oder Verhaltensweise sowie der Aufenthalt in einem Gebiet, das nur eine periodische Weidenutzung gestattet, können nicht als beweiskräftige Argumente für eine Zuweisung dieser Gruppen zu den Nomaden gelten. Zweitens ist die bekannte Tatsache in Erinnerung zu bringen, daß uns von den Nomaden selbst eine inschriftliche Überlieferung so gut wie völlig fehlt. Das impliziert eine Quellensicht, die sich am Urteil der Seßhaften, und zwar primär der Stadtbewohner, orientiert. Die Folge sind sowohl ein Desinteresse an allen stammesinternen Angelegenheiten, die nicht im politischen oder ökonomischen Blickfeld der Seßhaften erscheinen, als auch eine Dominanz des negativen Aspekts bei der Darstellung der Kontakte zu nomadischen Gruppen. Das Besondere, vor allem das Störende und Feindliche, tritt in der inschriftlichen Überlieferung stärker hervor als das Normale, Gewohnte. So ist für die nachfolgende Skizze die Einschränkung zu machen, daß die Verwertbare inschriftliche Überlieferung nicht nur dürftig und einseitig ist, sondern oft auch nicht entscheiden läßt, inwieweit wir überhaupt berechtigt sind, eine Quellenaussage hier mit heranzuziehen.

An investigation of the social position of the merchant at Nuzi, of his rôle in the spheres of trade and credit, and of the commercial procedures most commonly in use may be regarded as a useful contribution for a better understanding of the Nuzian economy. An analysis of this kind has not yet been undertaken, in spite of the wealth of textual material—in fact the trend of Nuzian studies has been mostly towards an elucidation of “juridical” problems, with the result that the field of exchange and trade has been disregarded. Significantly enough, all that we can recall are the two pages on the merchant, written by A. L. Oppenheim in 1939 and the essay of D. Cross, whose main concern was to establish a list of commodities and calculate their prices.

With the present investigation I intend to focus on the position of the merchant in the context of Nuzian society and economy, and to analyse the procedures in use for carrying out trade enterprises. Other aspects connected with the subject of trade, e.g. commodities, prices, provenience and destination of goods, etc., will be dealt with in forthcoming articles.

Pour le commerce, comme pour l'ensemble des relations internationales, une très grande homogénété de structure semble s'être établie peu après le milieu du IIe millénaire avant notre ère dans le Proche-Orient. En vertu de la documentation actuellement disponible, la période la plus riche en renseignements est centrée sur le XIVe siècle avant notre ère; elle déborde légèrement sur la fin du XVe siècle et sur la première moitié du XIIIe siècle. Les sources utiles proviennent des archives de Boĝazköy, d'El-Amarna et surtout de Ras-Shamra.

Archaeological evidence from Ugarit shows that a lot of goods were imported to this kingdom from Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Cyprus, the Aegean, the Syrian coast and inland, Egypt and other countries, but only the written sources can give us a clear picture of the amounts of goods, the trade-routes, methods of transportation, the structure of prices etc.

We shall not enter here into a discussion concerning all the goods and their prices known to us from the alphabetic-Ugaritic and Akkadian texts from Ugarit; we shall deal here with only one of the principal goods, the metals, and study the question of transportation of commercial goods in this kingdom in the XIV–XIII centuries B.C. Unfortunately we do not yet know the prices of grain in Ugarit, and therefore this basic product is not included in the study of prices.

Seven Amarna letters (EA 33–39) are addressed to Egypt by the king of Alašiya, whose name is not given, and one by his chief minister to the minister of Egypt (EA 40). The letters contain references to an exchange of gifts, which were delivered by sea (EA 39 and 40). This exchange amounted to the maintenance of commercial relations and one letter even mentions, in a broken context, Egyptian tradesmen (EA 34). This is what the king of Alašiya writes to the king of Egypt:

38 [. .uš-ši-ir] ki-ma ar-hi-iš39 [a-nakurA-]la-ši-ialútám-kà-ri-ia40 [ù 2] o1[ú-meštám-] kà-ru-ka ù41[1 m]e-i-it [x-x-]GA-GI it-ti-šu-nu,

“[let go] quickly [to A]lašiya my tradesman [and] your [twen] ty [tra]desmen and [one h]undred2 …… with them”.

All these Amarna letters date most likely from the reign of Amenophis IV (1379–1362), alias Akhenaten.

A somewhat earlier reference to Egyptian trade with Alašiya is to be found in an Ugaritic letter uncovered in room 77 of the main palace of Ugarit3 and addressed to Nimmuria, viz. Amenophis III Nebmare (1417–1379)4, by an official whose name is omitted.

In her Fauna of Ancient Mesopotamia, Mrs. van Buren pointed out that if elephants in the Middle East did not become extinct till about 800 B.C., then it was strange that there are not more representations of them. There is a lapis amulet from Kish which is rather indistinct, a miniature vase of sandstone and quartz decorated with a row of three elephants which was bought in Mosul, two cylinder seals which are related to seals of the Indus Valley type, and a Hittite seal found at Beth Shan which has been dated to the fourteenth century B.C. A terracotta from Diqdiqqeh near Ur shows an elephant being ridden and should probably be dated to the late third millennium B.C. An elephant-shaped cult stand and an elephant-shaped vessel come respectively from fourteenth century Beth Shan and from Hilani I at Zincirli where it can be dated to the time of Esarhaddon, Finally, an elephant is depicted together with monkeys and Bactrian camels on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III in the ninth century.

The earliest accounts of actual live elephants are found in Egyptian records of the middle of the second millennium B.C. under Thutmoses I (1525–1495) and of the middle of the fifteenth century B.C. when Thutmoses III killed a herd of 120 elephants “near the water-hole of Niy” or, according to an alternative reading, “for the sake of their tusks.” The water-hole at Niy is probably the Lake of Apamaea.

Als gegen Ende des Monats Hibur in einem uns leider nicht ganz genau festlegbaren Jahre während der Regierungszeit Aššur-bel-kala's (līmu: Ili-iddina) die Prinzessin [x]-iššite erkrankte, wurde der mašmāšu Aššur-išmanni beigezogen. Er verordnete offenbar eine Salbe, für die 14 Drogenbestandteile erforderlich waren. Wir besitzen die Quittung über den zweckgebundenen Empfang dieser teils pflanzliehen, teils tierischen Substanzen in der Tafel VAT 18057, die H. Freydank demnächst in seiner Sammlung mA Texte der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin veröffentlichen wird. Ich danke Herrn Freydank sehr herzlich für seine Erlaubnis, den Text hier bereits verwenden zu dürfen.

Knapp zwei Monate später wird wieder ein Kind im Königshaus krank — diesmal ein Prinz namens Ulalu (übrigens kein sehr schmeichelhafter Name, wenn nicht gar “Schwächling” hier appellativisch für ein noch unbenanntes Kleinkind gemeint ist; einen Prinzen Ulalu kennen wir sonst nicht, wissen allerdings auch nicht, ob er vielleicht die zur Debatte stehende Krankheit und Behandlung gar nicht überstanden hat). Wieder verschreibt Aššur-išmanni eine Salbe, diesmal noch etwas komplizierterer Zusammensetzung — ich zähle 20 Drogenbestandteile — und auch dieses Mal hat uns der Zufall die Quittung erhalten in dem von F. Köcher als BAM 263 veröffentlichten Text VAT 10044. Eine beträchtlich verbesserte Kopie des in BAM noch missverstandenen und fehldatierten Textes wird wiederum H. Freydank vorlegen, mit dem ich gemeinsam in Berlin beide Texte nebeneinander gründlich kollationieren konnte.

Although there has been much speculation about Urartian trade and the influence it might have had on countries to the West, I hope to show there is no evidence for such exports. On the contrary, Urartu seems to have been the receiver of some goods made in the South-West (either through trade or through plunder or imposition of tribute) and the producer of other goods which found their way to the North-east. The points of this paper have been made before, but in the face of new contentions to the contrary, it may be useful to restate them. Among small objects from north Syria commonly found in Urartu one might mention faience scaraboids with the emblem of the moon god of Harran.

The hypothesis that Urartian goods were widely traded to Greece and Italy through Syrian ports or overland via Phrygia is mainly based on the appearance, at a number of Greek and Italian sites, of copper or bronze basins with sets of four carrying-rings fixed by means of attachments in the shape of “sirens”, i.e. male or female busts rising out of a circle with bird's wings and tail. The most common obviously non-Greek and non-Italian type of female siren is characterized by a squat neckless head with thick short curls, huge eyes and nose, puckered mouth and receding chin.

The first post-war season of excavation at Tell Brak took place from March to May, 1976. The expedition, directed by the writer, was sponsored by the Institute of Archaeology, University of London, and was generously supported by grants from the British Academy, the British Museum, the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, the C.H.W. Johns Fund of Cambridge University, the Gordon Childe Fund of the Institute of Archaeology, and an anonymous Trust. I take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to our supporters, and to the members of the staff who worked extremely hard in conditions that were sometimes difficult, for we were living in rented village houses and tents and relied entirely on local transport. They were Dr. T. A. Holland (Assistant Director), Miss Katharine Fielden (in charge of pottery), Miss Ann Searight (Conservator and Draughtsman), Mr. P. G. Dorrell (Photographer and Geomorphologist), Mr. J. D. Hawkins (Epigraphist and Registrar), Mr. J. E. Curtis and Mr. D. G. Jeffreys (Archaeologists), Mr. S. F. Hall (Architect) and Mr. J. Hanbury Tenison (Archaeological Assistant). We must also extend our warm thanks to the Director-General of Antiquities, Dr. Afif Bahnassi, and the members of his staff, especially Dr. Adnan Bounni and Sayid Kassim Tuweir who bore the burden of our arrangements in Damascus, and the Department's Representative in the field, Sayid Subhi Yunan. Without their unstinted and friendly assistance our work would not have been possible.

The pottery from the 1976 excavations at Tell Brak comprises a fairly homogeneous, probable Late ED—Late Agade group, much of which proves to be similar in character both to that of the ED—Agade periods obtained by Sir Max Mallowan in 1937–8 and to the more recently excavated ED material from Tell Chuera.

The four principal wares and the majority of rim profile types were present in all phases but despite the overall similarity of the pottery it is reasonable to suggest that it falls stratigraphically into three groups:

The earliest, Phase 3, consists of a small amount of material from pre-Temple levels and is probably of the Late ED period.

Phase 2 finds are of Agade date and were obtained from levels associated with the building phases of the Temple.

Phase 1 pottery, the largest group, from levels subsequent to the Temple, is probably of post-Naram-Sin to, at the latest, Ur III date. There may however, have been a break in occupation of the site during this period.

The volume of the 1976 ceramic sample is small and this discussion is mainly limited to that which was obtained from Trenches A, B and the lowest levels of D where the stratigraphy is best understood. The sample is unlikely to be comprehensive and it will therefore be pertinent at this stage to describe and illustrate as much of the material as possible and to comment upon its relation to material from other sites where relevant. Statistics quoted and conclusions reached should be considered as preliminary findings which may be enlarged or altered by the consequences of further excavation at Brak.

The cylinder seals and some impressions from the excavations at Tell al Rimah were published in Iraq 37 (1965). There remained for publication the seal impressions on the business documents dating to the thirteenth century B.C., all of which appear to belong to one archive. They were published by H. W. F. Saggs, D. J. Wiseman and Nicholas Postgate in Iraq 30 (1968), 154 ff. During a month's visit to Baghdad in 1973 I photographed as many impressions as I could find and Carolyn Postgate drew them. After I left Baghdad, she completed the drawings, finding impressions of the same seal on other tablets, and I have not seen the tablets since. She has however collated her drawings in response to my queries and additional photographs have been taken by Peter Dorrell, Jonathan Tubb and Christopher Watkins, working in very difficult conditions; I am grateful for their help. The impressions are extremely difficult to photograph and even in many cases to see, the tablet being sealed before the text is written, while the clearest impressions on the edges give insufficient space for a complete impression. It is ironic that the Middle Assyrians whose intaglio craftsmen produced such superb works of art should have left the worst record because, unlike the Late Assyrians, they left no space on their documents for the seal impression. In these circumstances Carolyn Postgate's work has been arduous, and I am most grateful to her, for her labours have enabled this addition to the corpus of Middle Assyrian seal design to be published.

The British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq returned to Abu Salabikh for a second season from September to December, 1976, and we must first record our gratitude to all those who made the excavations possible. As last year our thanks go first to Dr. Isa Salman, Director General of Antiquities, Dr. Abdul-Hadi al-Fouadi and all members of the Directorate without whose co-operation our work would have been impossible. To our representatives, Sd. Sabah Abboud, M.A., and Sd. Abdul-Mejid Muhammad, goes the appreciation of the team, both as a whole and individually, for their unfailing courtesy and assistance. Financial support for the excavations was given by a number of institutions to all of which we wish to acknowledge our indebtedness: the British Academy (Albert Reckitt Archaeological Fund), the Trustees of the British Museum, Birmingham City Museums and Art Gallery, the C. H. W. Johns Fund, University of Cambridge, the Manchester Museum, the National Geographic Society, Washington D.C., and the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. As last year we owe a special debt to Professor G. Gullini and members of the Italian Archaeological Institute in Baghdad for the hospitality of their superb dark-room facilities which they generously placed at our disposal. I should also like to record our gratitude to Monberg Thorsen A/S for a gift of cement which enabled us to add a kind of bathroom to our facilities at the site.

The reports given below cover excavation work in Iraq during 1976. As in previous years the collection is not entirely complete, the chief omissions being the Iraqi work at Nimrud and Nineveh, which will be included in our next compilation to enable reports to appear first in Sumer. Unless otherwise specified, the information on each site has been kindly provided by the director of the excavations, and the final version generally checked by him.

Since this is the fifth collection of reports it seemed a convenient moment at which to take stock, and we therefore include among the reports all the sites covered by us in the period 1971–76 together with a bibliography for those seasons. We do not claim that this is complete, but with the help of the excavators we do hope to have given the main bulk of publication, and to be fairly up to date; sometimes we have given an imprecise reference which we could not confirm, rather than omit it altogether. Although the bibliography is only intended to cover work executed in our five-year period, we have occasionally, and unsystematically, listed publications of earlier seasons.