“Terracotta …, Amulet in the form of a cylinder seal … This terracotta object is an example of the kind of thing that is so crude that no one wants to publish it, with the incidental result that we probably have a somewhat distorted idea of the average standard of production in some periods; many authentic amulets or seals of this quality have probably been presumed to be fakes.”

Julian Reade's comment defines precisely the opinion held by archaeologists regarding clay seals. It also helps to explain why museums and private collectors have not acquired clay seals which were generally regarded to be, if not crude and insignificant, possible forgeries. The number of clay seals excavated in archaeological sites impels us to examine them more thoroughly than has been the case so far.

Tablets of the Middle Assyrian period are rare in the collections of the British Museum, principally because the German excavations at Aššur, from which most come, were plainly more carefully controlled than many early excavations. Thus it is a pleasure to place this article, which presents three Middle Assyrian tablets, in a volume celebrating Lady Mallowan and Prof. D. J. Wiseman, to both of whom Assyriology is grateful for the edition of many documents from a younger Assyrian capital, Nimrud. The three pieces published here are a fragment of edicts, a document listing personnel, and a collection of omens.

When the hoard of tools excavated by Loftus at Tell Sifr in Iraq, in 1854, was reassembled for publication some years ago (Moorey, 1971), a number of items mentioned by Loftus (1857, 268) could not be traced in the British Museum reserve collections nor was it then possible to arrange for the analysis of selected objects. In the intervening years the missing items have been located. The parts of two sheet-metal cauldrons (Figs. 1–3), with cast handle fittings, have now been identified whereas in 1970 only a single fragment was located (Moorey, 1971, no. 83). The “copper ingot” reported by Loftus has now also been traced (Fig. 4), as have a copper or bronze ferrule (Fig. 5) and the “dice-box” (Fig. 6). It has been possible to increase the significance of this still unique find by some investigation of the metals and alloys from which it was made (Table 1). The following notes are supplementary in every way to the original paper, whose substance is not repeated here. The numbering of objects in the previous paper is retained.

For Barbara who introduced me to Iraq and Donald who introduced me to cuneiform

The Uruk period is one of the most fascinating in the archaeology of the Near East. Its great temples, fine sculpture and glyptic, metal-working skills, and, above all, introduction of writing, mark it as the summit and the turning point in the beginnings of urban civilization. By these characteristics its spread can be traced up the Tigris and Euphrates into central Syria and Anatolia, and eastwards across Iran. Beside the impressive products of its architects, artists and clerks, the Uruk culture proclaims its presence most loudly through its pottery. Among the pots and pans, the most common is one of the simplest and least attractive of all near eastern pots, the bevelled-rim bowl (Glockentopf, écuelle grossière à lèvre bisautée).

The site of Tell Mohammed Arab was excavated by the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq, under the direction of Dr. Michael Roaf, as part of the Eski Mosul Saddam Dam rescue project (Roaf, 1983a, 1983b, 1984). Seven cylinder seals and two impressions on pottery were found in the Middle Assyrian levels and one Neo Assyrian seal came from a Hellenistic pit.

Two main areas of Middle Assyrian occupation were excavated. In the Central Area three separate building levels (b, d and f) were interspersed by periods when this part of the site was used for graves (a, the earliest, c and e). Artefacts from level d are comparable to material from Sheikh Hamad, on the Khabur in Syria, which can be securely dated to the 13th century B.C. thanks to a find of tablets. On the other hand there are few parallels with the 15th—14th century Mitannian site of Nuzi and this would indicate that the Mohammed Arab levels are generally later. However, they cannot be too far removed in time because seals 1 to 4, which are Mitannian in style, were found in buildings of phases i and ii in the Western Area (Fig. 1) which probably correspond to level b and part of c in the Central Area.

The inscription of which a small part forms the basis of this study, was discovered in a recess of courtyard E of the North-West Palace during the third season of the Nimrud excavations in 1951. A full account of the discovery is given in Chap. IV of Mallowan's Nimrud and its Remains, and I am pleased to make initial reference to this work in a volume dedicated to Lady Mallowan. For the text and a first discussion of the stele one turns to the edition of D. J. Wiseman published in Vol. XIV of this Journal, and his name also I should like, in this issue, to associate with these pages.

Since the publication of the stele in 1952, three new translations have appeared, namely, those of Jorgan Laessøe, A. L. Oppenheim, and A. K. Grayson, and a number of improvements to the text and interpretation have been made by Wolfgang Schramm, and, following collation, by J. N. Postgate. Despite these attentions, however, many problems still remain, and it is the purpose of this investigation to examine two passages at the end of col. i which remain obscure and unsatisfactory at the present time.

Three cuneiform inscriptions, two on clay and one on stone, were discovered during the 1985 season of excavations at Tell Brak, and each is published in the present note.

No. 9 (TB 7037); see Fig. 1

No. 1 is a fragment of an unbaked Old Akkadian administrative document, a thin flake from near the right edge of what is probably the reverse. It measures 2·7 × 2·4 × 0·4 cm (at maximum), and is evidently a ration list or something similar. Each entry is separated from the following one by two deep rulings, the upper sweeping up to the right. Numerals are clear in lines 1′ and 3′, while line 2′ is probably the end of a personal name. The traces after the numeral in line 1′ are apparently an erasure.

The 1986 season of excavations at Tell Brak produced inscribed material on a modest scale. Twelve tablets, complete or broken, were recovered, together with a number of trivial fragments, and one bulla bearing the impression of an inscribed seal. The material was found in two separate archaeological contexts. Two tablets lay in a large room (Room 1) on the north side of the Mitanni fortress or palace on site HH. These pieces, one of which is inscribed with the name of the Mitanni king Tušratta, are of some historical interest. Of particular importance is the mention of a town named Nawar, in view of the discussion, continued over many years, of the possible location of the towns of Urkiš and Nawar, ruled over by the early Human ruler, Atal-šen. The remaining material, comprising ten tablets, some trivial scraps, and a seal impression, were recovered from a context of debris on site FS. The latter group of finds, dating from the Old Akkadian period, consisted mainly of economic and administrative documents. The seal impression is of special interest, as it bears the name of an ensi of Gasur (later Nuzi), the first such officer whose name has been discovered. The material is presented in chronological order, the Old Akkadian tablets (Nos. 12 to 21) and seal impression (No. 22) preceding the tablets of the Mitanni period (Nos. 23 and 24). The numbers assigned to these pieces continue the sequence begun in previous articles by Dr. I. L. Finkel, in which details have been provided of inscriptions found prior to 1986 during the current series of excavations at Tell Brak. I am much indebted to Dr. Finkel, and to Professor W. G. Lambert, for reading through a draft of the present article, and for the many valuable criticisms and suggestions which have resulted. I should also like to thank the Directors of the excavations at Tell Brak, Professor David Oates and Dr. Joan Oates, but for whose efforts the opportunity to work on the material presented here would not have arisen.

The present article concerns the Northern Ubaid and Late Chalcolithic periods in Syria and northern Mesopotamia and presents an updated chronological framework for both periods, mainly based on recent excavations at the large site of Tell Hammam et-Turkman on the Balikh. Tell Hammam et-Turkman is a huge mound, measuring 500 × 450 × 45 m, and is located about 75 km north of the modern town of Raqqa, on the east bank of the river Balikh, northern Syria (Fig. 1). Since 1981 the University of Amsterdam has carried out excavations (Van Loon 1982, 1983, 1985; Van Loon and Meijer 1983) which have given ample evidence of the importance of the site during the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C., but test trenches on the east slope of the tell indicate that already during prehistoric times Tell Hammam et-Turkman was an impressive mound. Northern Ubaid-related levels comprise an accumulation of almost 15 m of occupational debris, immediately followed by Late Chalcolithic layers, which reach a thickness of about 10 m. At present, the prehistoric mound is almost completely buried underneath an extensive overburden of later occupational remains.

Here I confine myself exclusively to the results of the trenches on the east slope of Tell Hammam et-Turkman. A series of trenches 2 m wide was laid out, to be excavated in a number of steps. These narrow trenches perfectly met our aim, which was to set up a stratigraphy and pottery sequence at the site. The chronological positioning of the ceramics is based on the delineation of continuity and change in vessel shape, techniques of pottery manufacture and pottery decoration. It is important to stress the continuous and uninterrupted local development of the prehistoric ceramic sequence at Tell Hammam et-Turkman.

The Late Babylonian tablet BM 92687 preserves a unique Babylonian birds-eye-view sketch of the Earth's surface. The sketch, commonly called “The Babylonian Map of the World” or “Mappa Mundi”, occupies the lower half of the obverse while the remainder of the obverse and entire reverse préserve related textual information. The tablet was first published almost a century ago by F. E. Peiser in ZA 4 (1889), 361–370, and has since attracted a great deal of attention. In 1906, R. C. Thompson re-copied the tablet as CT 22, 48. This second copy served as the basis for later studies by E. F. Weidner in BoSt 6 (1922), 85–93 and E. Unger in Unger, Babylon, 254–8 (1931). Unfortunately, neither the early copy by Peiser, nor CT 22, 48, is completely reliable. The two copies disagree on a number of points, and a new collation of the tablet revealed a number of errors. For instance, Peiser drew two nagû at the bottom of the map which are omitted in CT 22, 48, and both copyists read the label in the lowest oval inside the circle (no. 8) sideways! Thus a new copy and edition of the text is warranted although a few signs may have disappeared over time. (Copy: see Fig. 2 p. 152; photographs, Plate X).

The “Lion-demon” (Akk. ugallu, “Big Weather-beast”) is a human-bodied creature with a lion's head, donkey's ears and human feet or, more usually, the talons of a bird (Plate XIa). With variations on this form beginning in the Akkadian period, the figure is known from Old Babylonian down through Kassite, Late Assyrian, Late Babylonian and into Achaemenid times. Since the completion of a corpus of material depicting the figure in the art of Mesopotamia and the Near East (Green 1986), I have obtained photographs of two seals dating from the virtual chronological limits of the type's depiction in Mesopotamia, one Old Babylonian, the other Late Babylonian. A fuller supplement to the work, with additional and formerly restricted material, will appear eventually, but in the meantime, as these two particular seals were included in this catalogue, as nos. 41 and 144, but with somewhat incorrect descriptions (pp. 181, 229) based upon the line-drawings of their earlier publication (reproduced ibid., Pls. 8 and 38), it seems desirable, in the interests of an early corrective, to present here these photographs (Plate XIb and c) and some brief comments, as promised in the postscript to the catalogue-article (p. 254). I have to thank Dr. J. P. A. van der Vin of the Royal Coin Cabinet, The Hague, for the photographs and for permission to publish them, and, in the year of her eightieth birthday, I offer this short piece especially to Lady Mallowan, whose interests in Mesopotamian magic and iconography are well known.

This note concerns a pair of copper/bronze horse bits from recent excavations at Tell al-Haddad, a site in the region of the Hamrin Dam project in eastern Iraq. The bits were found in 1980 by Iraqi archaeologists in the course of the removal of a grave belonging to a modern cemetery that covered the whole of the mound. Nothing was found with the bits to fix their date, but pottery described by the excavators as Kassite was found over the tell, below the surface, but above Old Babylonian levels. The bits were assigned to the Kassite period.

The nearly identical bits clearly form a pair and show no sign of wear. They have solid bar mouthpieces and circular cheekpieces (Fig. 1; Plate XIIa). The mouthpieces (overall L.: c. 0·227 m, within cheekpieces: c. 0·168 m) are round in section and relatively thick (0·011 m). Their ends pass through the centres of the cheekpieces and are hammered out flat and rolled back on themselves, forming small loops that may have carried rings for the attachment of the reins.