Although W. K. Loftus is best remembered today for his pioneer excavations at Susa and Warka, one of his most remarkable single discoveries was made in April, 1854, at Tell Sifr in Iraq. For the first three months of the year, accompanied by Boutcher as artist, he had been engaged on excavations at Warka sponsored by the Assyrian Excavation Fund. He then moved his expedition to Senkara (Larsa), a site fifteen miles south-east of Warka, called to his attention through a rapid visit there by Baillie Fraser in 1834. Among the large mounds visible from Senkara across the ancient canal, Shatt al Kar, is that of Tell Sifr, which promising local reports of its contents induced Loftus to explore. Indeed the mound had already been honey-combed by a notorious group of clandestine excavators searching for gold in Parthian graves. It was they who had named the site ‘Sifr’ after the numerous copper objects they discovered there, much no doubt to their chagrin. Within a matter of days the party of Arabs despatched by Loftus had “cut some enormous gashes into the little conical mound, which crowns a low platform nowhere exceeding forty feet above the desert”. The discovery with which this paper is concerned was made on the south-east side of the tell and may best be described in the excavator's own words:

“A trench was dug into the south-east side of the principal mound, according to instructions, and soon came against a brick wall, which, from its position, supported by a three-feet buttress, and its elevation in two-inch gradines, was evidently the exterior of a building. Its thickness was not ascertained, but it encased an internal mass of mudbrick, as explained by some other trenches. Following this wall for a distance of about six feet, the workmen discovered a number of copper articles arranged along it, which form a very curious and quite unique collection, consisting of large chaldrons, vases, small dishes and dice-boxes (?); hammers, chisels, adzes, and hatchets; a large assortment of knives and daggers of various sizes and shapes—all unfinished; massive and smaller rings; a pair of prisoner's fetters; three links of a strong chain; a ring weight; several plates resembling horses' shoes, divided at the heel for the insertion of a handle, and having two holes in each for pins; other plates of a different shape, which were probably primitive hatchets; an ingot of copper and a great weight of dross from the same smelted metal. (Here Loftus notes: ‘The whole of the articles obtained from Tell Sifr are deposited in the British Museum’). There was likewise a small fragment of a bitumen bowl overlaid with thin copper; and a piece of lead.” Loftus believed he had found the stock-in-trade of a copper smith, but was puzzled by their ‘connection with the public edifice, near which they were uncovered’. He inferred the date of this copper hoard from the Old Babylonian tablets and envelopes found close to them. This archive had been carefully stacked upon bricks with a cover of reed matting. Impending seasonal floods brought the work at Tell Sifr to a premature end. The site has never subsequently been scientifically examined.

The second season of excavations at Tell Taya lasted from the beginning of December, 1968, to the end of February, 1969. They were again sponsored by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, which provided equipment and the loan of the Rimah dig-house, and were financed largely from the School's Jebel Sinjar Fund, set up by an anonymous donor to assist research on northwest Iraq during the third millennium B.C.; part of a grant to the writer, given by the Gerald Averay Wainwright Fund (Oxford University) for work on this period, was also used.

The staff consisted of the writer as director; Mr. Hugo Blake, who worked mainly on site Si, as assistant-director; Miss Nina Shaw, who was responsible for the conservation and registration of objects, and also did much of the photography; and Miss Ann Hechle, who recorded the pottery. Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Postgate were with us for a time, and in the absence of inscribed material the former undertook part of the surface survey while the latter helped on the excavation generally. All members of the staff, however, did far more than this bare list of assignments might imply, and I am deeply grateful for their devoted perseverance through what was said, at Tel'afar, to be the worst winter in living memory. The Iraq Directorate-General of Antiquities was represented by Sd. Mahfudh Abdullah and Sd. Nehad ar-Rawi, and we were as usual indebted, both to them and to many other government officials in Baghdad, Mosul, and Tel'afar, for their invaluable interest and support.

At present, all the metalwork excavated at Nimrud by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq between 1949 and 1963 is being catalogued with a view to publication. As the amount of gold jewellery is relatively small, and because as a group it seems to form an easily separable entity, it has been decided to isolate it from the main corpus of metal objects and publish it independently. The authors are grateful to Professor Sir Max Mallowan for permission to publish this material, to Dr. Isa Salman, Director General of Antiquities and to Dr. Fawzi Rashid, Director of the Iraq Museum for permission to examine the gold jewellery now in Baghdad and for their unfailing help, when the work was undertaken in the Iraq Museum.

It must be stressed that this article is confined exclusively to gold jewellery. Apart from pieces of gold-leaf used in overlaying ivory, which were found in some quantity, a few other pieces of goldwork were excavated, which cannot be recognised as jewellery and will appear in the main corpus of metal objects. Considering the extent of the excavations at Nimrud, it is immediately surprising that so few examples of gold jewellery were found: the only reasonable explanations for this paucity would seem to be firstly that Kalhu was very thoroughly ransacked in the years marking the end of the Neo-Assyrian empire, and secondly, that the communities settled on the mound after 612 B.C. were not sufficiently prosperous to have much enjoyed articles such as gold jewellery.

A fragment of a sculptured miniature column was found in Shrine 10 situated to the west of the Great Temple at Hatra. This shrine has been assigned to Nergal on epigraphical and iconographical grounds. The fragment comprises the upper part of the column with a rectangular capital (measuring 8.7 × 7.7 cm.) surmounted by a hollow incense receptacle (diameter 6 cm., height 3 cm.). The fragment is carved with low reliefs on four sides. On one side is a relief of a male figure (Plate XXXIII a), the legs of which, below the knees, are missing. He stands to the front with the head slightly turned to the left. His head is dominated by a mass of hair drawn to the back as indicated by very shallow incisions (Plate XXXIII b). An eagle with completely spread wings stands over the head. The figure wears an oval-shaped beard, the end of which is broken off. The features of the face are summarily and crudely indicated. Over his shoulders, he wears a chlamys fastened on the right shoulder with a brooch. The folds of his garment are visible on the shoulders and on the upper right arm. The rest of the body is left uncovered. A small rectangular object protrudes from his chest, but its purpose is not known to me. The right arm is raised to shoulder level, and with his hand he grasps a double axe, its upper end chipped off. He wears a plain bracelet on his right wrist. His left arm bends at the elbow and he holds in his hand a thick rope or a leash connected to an animal, of which the top part of the head is missing. The animal, carved frontally, could very well be a dog. The carving of the body of the figure is successful, for it shows some understanding of modelling, even though the figure is rather small to show further details. The muscles of the abdomen slightly bulge, indicating the movement of the right arm.

WIR verdanken Barbara Parker die Veröffentlichung eines zweifellos interessanten “kappadokischen” Zylinder-Siegels aus Privatbesitz in Iraq 29 (1967), 3–5 (Plate III). Die vorzüglichen Photographien (Plate IIIa-d) erregten sogleich mein Interesse und verleiteten mich zu einer—wie mir selbst schien— recht gewagten Lesung.

Frau Parker war inzwischen so freundlich, mir eine Abrollung dieses Siegels zu schicken, wofür ich ihr auch hier bestens danken möchte. Die Abrollung hat meines Erachtens über die Photographie hinaus nichts wesentlich Neues ergeben.

Ich möchte hier also die alte Fassung dieser kurzen Mitteilung mit einigen zusätzlichen Hinweisen auf die Abrollung und ergänzenden Bemerkungen zur Diskussion stellen.

Zunächst eine kurze Zusammenfassung: Das 1·9 cm lange Siegel aus Hämatit wird offensichtlich als echt angesehen; dies sei auch hier angenommen.

Das Siegel trägt eine Legende, die direkt, nicht in Spiegelschrift, eingraviert ist. Die bildliche Darstellung wird (auf p.3) in zwei Teile geteilt: die “central scene”—grob schematisch: eine sitzende und eine stehende Figur, einander zugewandt—, neben der “anscheinend ursprünglich eine aus vier Zeilen bestehende Inschrift gestanden sei”; zwei Zeilen der Inschrift seien später teilweise getilgt (“defaced”) worden. Beweis dafür sei das nur mehr undeutlich erkennbare Zeichen KI in der dritten Zeile. Dem wird ausdrücklich hinzugefügt, dass keine weiteren Spuren teilweise getilgter (“obliterated”) Zeichen erkennbar seien.

In the Iraq Museum are displayed two large fragments of a floor mosaic found during a series of emergency surveys and excavations, carried out in 1957–58 by the Directorate General of Antiquities of Iraq. The works were conducted in the plain on the Lower Zab river, south of Rānya (Arbil Liwa), which was due to be flooded on the completion of the Dokan dam.

This work was necessary because in the plain—known locally as Dasht-i-Bitawīyn and some 80 square miles in area—there were at least forty tells which would be submerged on the completion of the artificial lake.

The mosaic was found about 10 miles south of Rānya, at Tell Khwāris which is situated at the confluence of the Lower Zab and its tributary Rubar-i-Basalam. Tell Khwāris is 100 m. long, 80 m. wide and 4 m. high.

Nearby dwellers in the course of their agricultural works had dug a deep trench on the summit of the mound and had brought to light several pieces of the floor mosaic which were subsequently destroyed. Members of the Directorate General of Antiquities when informed of the discovery, were able to trace all extant parts of the ancient floor and remove them to Baghdad.