During the last decade hydrographers, geographers, and geologists have applied their specialised knowledge to the geophysical systems which condition the life of man in the Mesopotamian plain. While their various contributions have directly and indirectly focused attention on the authenticity of the Flood, some historical data which are relevant to it have also been discovered. It therefore seems opportune for an archaeologist to reopen a discussion which now has an easy approach through two excellent monographs by Alexander Heidel and André Parrot. The former elucidates the relationship of the accounts in the Book of Genesis to the earlier cuneiform sources from which the Old Testament story was only indirectly derived; the latter has discussed the historicity of the Flood on more general grounds, and believes that the Old Testament account was derived from the cuneiform by the Patriarchs some time after the eighteenth century B.C. when they sojourned in Mesopotamia.

In the main publication of excavations by the ‘Weld-Field Expedition to Mesopotamia’ at Tell Uhaimir little attention was paid to work in area ‘P’. In his account of the 1923–4 season's work Langdon published the headless statue found on the site and referred briefly to the ‘Old Sumerian Palace’ where it had been excavated. Later Mackay recorded that two buildings were examined in the area, one as large as palace ‘A’, but probably earlier. Much of the plan could be traced on the ground and the walls, of plano-convex brick, survived to about thirty centimetres above foundation levels. At the time the importance of this building in area ‘P’ was overshadowed by richer excavation in area ‘A’, where a directly comparable group of buildings was found with a greater variety of furnishings. The remains in ‘P’ were not so extensive, less well preserved and not so easily interpreted. Seen in perspective the site gains considerably in interest. Despite extensive excavations on Early Dynastic sites in South Mesopotamia only three structures have been found which might reasonably be described as palaces, though evidence for temple development in this period is now well illustrated by finds at a number of sites. Were it not for the necessarily restricted scope of excavations on the very large areas embraced by ancient Mesopotamian cities, this might be taken to suggest that still, even by the end of the Early Dynastic period, the city ruler's residence was an indistinguishable part of the temple complex, except in the most politically developed cities.

The story of the encounters of Gilgamesh with the ‘Ale-wife’ and with Ur-shanabi the ferry-man, in his quest for the secret of immortality, is partly preserved on tablets from the Nineveh libraries and from Babylon, and partly on a fragment of Old Babylonian date. This last was purchased, from among a group of tablets said to come from Sippar (Abu Habba), by Bruno Meissner, for the Berlin Museum in 1902. It provided the first tangible evidence of the existence of a text earlier than the ‘canonical’ Assyrian and, by overlapping part of the story already known, revealed something of the literary changes which had taken place during the intervening centuries. More recent discoveries have shown that there were several Old Babylonian text-types.

The Meissner Fragment is the lower part of a tablet with four columns, two on either face, containing fifteen and fourteen lines of the obverse and fifteen and fourteen of the reverse. Translations of the text may be found in the late Alexander Heidel's book and in A.N.E.T. The first column narrates the care of Shamash for Gilgamesh, probably included in Tablet IX of the ‘canonical’ version. In columns two and three the hero explains his search to the Ale-wife, who attempts to dissuade him with her famous carpe diem speech, a speech not inappropriate to one of that profession.

Almost all modern writers agree on the list of the stations on the caravan road linking Mosul to Nisibin, as it was known to the Arab geographers of the classical age (ninth–eleventh centuries) and their successors of the Middle Ages. Starting from Mosul it includes: Balad, Bâ’aynâtha, Barqa’îd, Adhrama, Tell Farrâsha and Nisibin.

The first station, Balad, does not raise any problem; its identification with Eski-Mosul fixes it firmly on the map, on the Tigris, at a distance of 40 kilometres to the north-west of Mosul (see Fig. 1).

After Balad, questions begin to arise, and it may not be impossible that some of the proposed localisations could be revised.

These localisations are well known:

For Bâ’aynâtha, de Goeje proposed Abû Wadjnah, in Iraq, near the ’Ain Zâlah airfield of the Mosul Petroleum Company, and Dussaud suggested Tell al ’Uwaynât, also in Iraq, to-day on the railway line Mosul-Syria.

Barqa’îd was pushed back by de Goeje and Von Oppenheim beyond the Syrian border, to Tell Rumailân (or Rumaileh) near Tell Hâdi, with, as a corollary, the localisation of its replacement, Bashazza, at Tshilagha, 25 kilometres to the West of Qubûr al bîdh, also in Syria.

A Number of small fragments of tablets found in the Nabu Temple excavations at Nimrud (Kalḫu) bear parts of Neo-Assyrian historical texts. In a few instances these inscriptions join texts already published or supplement known texts, while some, though duplicating well-known records, are worthy of note as indicating building activity or the presence of the king at Kalḫu. Copies of these fragments, some made during the excavations, are presented here (Plates XXVI–XXVII). It will be remembered that the ‘vassal-treaties’ of Esarhaddon came from this same building.

A fragment of a large tablet (ND.4369; Plate XXVI) is inscribed in the large square script characteristic of the Middle Assyrian hand and imitated and developed for the neo-Assyrian monumental writing. This tablet may have been a draft for the mason inscribing an account of the events in the accession and first years of Shalmaneser III (859/8 B.C.). The text is similar to that of the royal annals from Assur, the obverse describing the march from Aridi to Hubushkia (S.E. of L. Urmia) and the reverse the campaign in Amurru, where a statue of the king was set up on Mt. Lallar, and the attack on Aḫuni of Adini.