This article introduces a small group of ivories held in the Sanandaj Museum, which were discovered in 1997 during the seventh season of Nasratolah Motamedi's excavations at Ziwiye, northwest Iran. An investigation of the decorative, figurative, and stylistic characteristics of these pieces reveals a strong Neo-Assyrian influence, with close similarities to the palace reliefs of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud, as well as the influence of Assyrianizing Urartian art. These extensive cultural influences on Mannaean art can be seen in terms of political and economic relations with the two regions.

Recent fieldwork and archival sedimentary materials from southern Iraq have revealed new insights into the environment that shaped southern Mesopotamia from the pre-Ubaid (early Holocene) until the early Islamic period. These data have been combined with northern Iraqi speleothem, or stalagmite, data that have revealed relevant palaeoclimate information. The new results are investigated in light of textual sources and satellite remote sensing work. It is evident that areas south of Baghdad, and to the region of Uruk, were already potentially habitable between the eleventh and early eighth millennia B.C., suggesting there were settlements in southern Iraq prior to the Ubaid. Date palms, the earliest recorded for Iraq, are evident before 10,000 B.C., and oak trees are evident south of Baghdad in the early Holocene but disappeared after the mid-sixth millennium B.C. New climate results suggest increased aridity after the end of the fourth millennium B.C. For the third millennium B.C. to first millennium A.D., a negative relationship between grain and date palm cultivation in Nippur is evident, suggesting shifting cultivation emphasising one of these crops at any given time in parts of the city. The Shatt en-Nil was also likely used as a channel for most of Nippur's historical occupation from the third millennium B.C. to the first millennium A.D. In the early to mid-first millennium A.D., around the time of the Sasanian period, a major increase in irrigation is evident in plant remains, likely reflecting large-scale irrigation expansion in the Nippur region. The first millennium B.C. to first millennium A.D. reflects a relatively dry period with periodic increased rainfall. Sedimentary results suggest the Nahrawan, prior to it becoming a well-known canal, formed an ancient branch of the Tigris, while the region just south of Baghdad, around Dalmaj, was near or part of an ancient confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates.

This article presents three rock reliefs of the Parthian era in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, documented in Amadiya/Amedi by Columbia University's Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments survey project in 2013. The paper discusses the iconography, style and date of the reliefs and the methods that the Columbia team used to document them, including photogrammetry, perspectival corrected and perspective controlled stills, and 360° immersive, processed panoramas. At the same time as presenting a reading of the relief imagery, the article offers a preliminary self-reflective consideration of the documentation methods we have been utilizing for the study of rock reliefs in the past seven years. These technological advances, enormously useful for digital image capture, are nevertheless a form of imaging and must be understood as such methodologically. The final results of these kinds of technically advanced images of rock reliefs must rely on modes of visual interpretation that remain subjective and dependent on visual analytical skills based in historical knowledge, stylistic and iconographic analyses, as well as on-site, close up material-tactile studies of surfaces, of carving styles and methods. Finally, taking architectural context and landscape into account, the paper makes the case that the location of the reliefs dating to the Parthian era, at the citadel's entry, guided and inspired the Seljuk era monumental portals of Amadiya/Amedi that were subsequently erected and sculpted in dialogue with the ancient remains.

A chariot drawn by two people, on which the Neo-Assyrian ruler is represented as either sitting on a throne or standing in a “chariot-box”, is attested from Assurnaṣirpal until Assurbanipal. It is deployed on the one hand for short journeys in the immediate environment of the palace or in areas which the king can reach neither by chariot nor on horseback. A similar vehicle is used on seals that contain ritual scenes. Although some details of these seal-scenes showing various reed constructions can be explained through reference to texts, carriages are not mentioned in the ritual texts.

BM 32482 + is a Late Babylonian tablet with descriptions of rites and ceremonies held in the Eturkalamma temple of Bēlet-Bābili (Ištar of Babylon). The text refers to prayers and recitations to appease the goddess. Cult personnel from her temple (išippu priest) are also mentioned, as is music, a nigûtu performed by a nadītu priestess, a ritual involving a sakkikuddītu, a cultic commentary, omens involving birds, and astrological observations. Despite the fragmentary condition of the tablet, it seems that the performance of the nigûtu was in one way or another related to the preservation of the temple rituals, which would otherwise have been forgotten.

Recent studies of cultural interaction in the Assyrian empire have focused on the process of assimilation and the production of alterity. In this article, I argue that Assyrian royal rhetoric goes beyond emphasizing simple difference, instead using depictions of cultural diversity to demonstrate the truly universal nature of the empire. I elucidate this rhetoric by comparison the world fairs of the 19th and early 20th-centuries. These fairs advanced European imperialism by allowing visitors to explore the vast extent of empire. I argue that the enumeration of exotic tribute in Assyrian texts and the iconographic depiction of foreigners on reliefs similarly served to concretize Assyrian power. Unlike modern European empires, however, Assyrians did not consider ethnicity to be constitutive of citizenship. Thus, while the Assyrian approach to diversity was certainly instrumentalizing, it was also inclusive of cultural difference. In this respect, the Assyrian understanding of human diversity shares much in common with the way the empire treated other types of difference, ranging from topographic variation to biodiversity. From the imperial vantage point, each of these elements had the potential to be tamed in a way that highlighted the control of the king over the four quarters of the world.

This article provides the first detailed overview of an archive that once belonged to Austen Henry Layard and his family. The collection, deposited in the Special Collections and Archives at Newcastle University, consists of handwritten letters, a dozen books, hundreds of folios, photos, maps, and various other objects: all this material is still unpublished. The archive is particularly interesting due to its nature: it was kept and bequeathed for generations as a family assemblage, and it includes materials that help to better understand several data contained in Layard's publications, his excavations in the ancient Assyrian capitals and his commitment to the dissemination of the knowledge of Assyrian culture. The archive also sheds light on previously unknown private aspects of Layard's wife, Enid Guest, and offers a wealth of information on the cultural legacy left by Layard within his own family, among his descendants.

Paolo Emilio Botta, who was sent to Mosul as the French Consul in 1842, explored at Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunus and then began investigating ancient stone foundations at Nebi Yunus. Muhammed/Mehmed Pasha and local religious leaders, who were worried that the tomb of prophet Yunus (Jonah) and a local mosque would be destroyed by the excavations, opposed these investigations and the work stopped as a result. After Nebi Yunus, Botta started to work at Kuyunjik in December 1842. While his workers were busy at Kuyunjik, someone from the village of Khorsabad talked about stones with inscriptions and reliefs on them on top of a hill. After three months of exhaustive work at Kuyunjik, on March 20th, 1843 Botta sent a group of workers to Khorsabad for excavation. However, problems arose about Botta's work in Mosul. The Pasha of the province in particular created obstructions. We have done research in the Ottoman Archives of the Prime Ministry of Turkey on Botta's excavation permits and documents, the obstructions created by the Pasha of Mosul, the details of the story of Botta's experiences at Khorsabad and the relevant correspondence. In these archives we have found documents about the problems Botta experienced at Khorsabad, the conditions for excavation permits and the construction of an excavation house, the plan of the excavation house mentioned by Botta, which was drafted like a fortress next to the village houses and sent to Istanbul, as well as petitions of the villagers opposing Botta's work and his excavation house. Here, we attempt to re-read Botta's excavation seasons, permits and the problems he encountered through the documents in the Ottoman Archives in order to understand how this period is to be understood. Through these documents and correspondence, we were able to study the problems that arose between the Ottoman State and France as a result of Botta's excavations at Khorsabad.

New fieldwork at Ur has begun to investigate urban scale, city organization, and the environment of the city's hinterland. Analysis of new sources of declassified aerial and satellite imagery from the 1950s and 1960s, recent unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photos, and a systematic surface collection show that Ur may have expanded to between 120–500 hectares in size during its later periods of habitation, far larger than the sixty hectare maximum size previously estimated. Traces of buried architecture visible in the UAV photos and topographic models generated from UAV photos allow for the generation of hypotheses about the city plan of Ur during the Late Larsa/Old Babylonian and Neo Babylonian periods. Relict watercourses mapped in the vicinity of the main mound indicate how the city might have been supplied with water in some periods. Alongside this site-based work, historical aerial and satellite imagery provide an updated picture of ancient hydrology, environment, and settlement patterns around Ur.

At some point early on during his reign, Sar-kali-sarrē, made a journey to Sumer. The occasion was so momentous that an entire year was named in commemoration of the excursion. This paper investigates the evidence for that royal visitation, with special attention given to the administrative documents that record the king's sojourn at Girsu. The investigation also considers the rationale for the king's decision to make an expedition to Sumer and asserts that Sar-kali-sarrē may have undertaken the journey in order to begin his building works at the Ekur in Nippur. In addition, the paper identifies some of the highest officials of the Akkadian court who traveled with the king. These individuals are significant because they are usually conspicuous in administrative documents, and as such their presence can establish prosopographic synchronisms between Sargonic archives.

The earliest evidence suggesting the human utilisation of wild date palm fruits in the Near East is dated to the sixth and fifth millennia B.C. Despite the lack of archaeological data, it is commonly believed that at the end of the Late Uruk period (c. 3300–3100 B.C.) the Sumerians established the first date palm plantations. Nevertheless, this belief has never been well-proven by any scientific data, which makes this issue open to debate. This article points to the images of the date palm known from the pictographic script from Uruk as an important source of botanical data—a concept which has never been discussed in the literature—and elaborates on the phenotypic traits of the Phoenix dactylifera L. discernible there. It aims to establish the level and condition of horticultural knowledge of the cultivators of the date palm tree in the late fourth millennium B.C.

Many of the botanical traits found on the date palm pictographs are noteworthy, especially where the morphology of the crown, trunk, and root zone are concerned. Most importantly, the identification of pictographs representing date palm inflorescences prompts us to the conclusion that the Sumerians discovered the dioecious nature of the Phoenix dactylifera L., selecting the staminate inflorescences to pollinate female trees by at least c. 3300 B.C. The discovery of this method of artificial fertilization was a turning point in Mesopotamian agriculture since it enabled farmers to obtain a better crop while economizing on space and labour, constituting the beginning of the date palm plantations that are still such a feature of present-day Iraq.

BM 108868, an unpublished Old Babylonian tablet containing a collection of moral and existential sayings is edited here for the first time, accompanied by a commentary, photos and a hand-copy. With this discovery, the existence of a solid 2nd millennium tradition of monolingual Akkadian proverbial sayings is established.

Šamaš-šuma-ukīn is a unique case in the Neo-Assyrian Empire: he was a member of the Assyrian royal family who was installed as king of Babylonia but never of Assyria. Previous Assyrian rulers who had control over Babylonia were recognized as kings of both polities, but Šamaš-šuma-ukīn's father, Esarhaddon, had decided to split the empire between two of his sons, giving Ashurbanipal kingship over Assyria and Šamaš-šuma-ukīn the throne of Babylonia. As a result, Šamaš-šuma-ukīn is an intriguing case-study for how political, familial, and cultural identities were constructed in texts and interacted with each other as part of royal self-presentation. This paper shows that, despite Šamaš-šuma-ukīn's familial and cultural identity as an Assyrian, he presents himself as a quintessentially Babylonian king to a greater extent than any of his predecessors. To do so successfully, Šamaš-šuma-ukīn uses Babylonian motifs and titles while ignoring the Assyrian tropes his brother Ashurbanipal retains even in his Babylonian royal inscriptions.