‘During the purification of Delos by Athens in this war all the graves in the island were taken up, and it was found that above half their inmates were Carians: they were identified by the fashion of the arms buried with them, and by the method of interment, which was the same as the Carians still follow? (Thucydides 1. 8, tr. Crawley.)

In the Near East the term ‘Bronze Age’ still represents a well-defined stage in the development of man's material civilization and can be used with advantage in conjunction with a chronological framework based on Historical evidence. In Mesopotamia, for example, the term ‘prehistoric’ can be confined to a period earlier than the beginning of the third millennium B.C., and the ‘Bronze Age’, which in Europe denotes a period which is entirely ‘prehistoric’ in the Near East signifies a stage whose efflorescence, varying in different regions, can be historically dated with fair accuracy. Within this period we can isolate the various archaeological remains of different civilizations by classifying them according to their material (pottery, bronzes, ivories, faience, &c.). Then for purposes of detailed study we can classify the objects within each of these main branches into groups (though here the division does not invariably depend on material), and a ‘grammar’ of one group can be described as the definition by their forms of the various classes in the general group, giving a series of dated or datable instances.

For one who had the privilege of displaying to the first readers of Iraq some specimens of a game long favoured in many parts of the ancient East, it may not be inappropriate to celebrate this journal's recommencement with a less substantial allusion to a like subject. This is a reference in a Babylonian augural text to something which, as I shall try to make plausible, may perhaps be a game with some likeness to Chess. A reinforcement of this will then be sought from the observation of a single detail in the archaeology of Chess, which seems to point back to a Babylonian prototype of unique character.

In A. T. Clay's Babylonian Records in the Library of J. Pierpont Morgan, part IV, is published as No. 13 a tablet from Erech of the Seleucid period, inscribed with a chapter of ‘omens, derived from inspection of the entrails of a sacrificed victim. The tablet in question is the seventh of the augural work called as a whole barûtu, i.e. ‘seership?’ and at the same time is the third tablet of the section called šumma tiranu, i.e. ‘if the guts (&c.)’. Though this copy was written in the year 213 B.C. that is, of course, no reason for supposing that its contents were composed at that time. A fragment of the same compilation was in the Assyrian royal library at Nineveh, and this takes it back to the seventh century B.C. at least. No doubt most of its contents are older still.

In a previous report we summarized the results of excavations undertaken by the Directorate-General of Antiquities at ‘Aqar Qūf (Dur-Kurigalzu) during the season beginning early in October 1943 and ending on February ioth, 1944. Work was next resumed at the beginning of November 1944 and continued until January 15th, 1945. The field staff consisted of Sayid Taha Baqir, M.A., Curator of the Iraq Museum, as Field Director, Sayid Mohammed Ali Mustafa as Architect, Sayid Izzeddin Sanduq as Registrar, and Sayid Sabri al-Dhiwebi as Camp Manager. All the photographs used to illustrate this report were taken by the Department's photographer, Antran Ivan. As during the previous seasons at this site, excavations were conducted under the guidance of Mr. Seton Lloyd, F.S.A., Technical Adviser to the Directorate-General.

The Mesopotamian evidence discussed in this article indicates 1356 for the accession of Ashur-uballiṭ I, who from the Amarnah correspondence is known to have been a contemporary of Akhenaten. Egyptologists believe that the lowest possible date for the death of Akhenaten is 1358. We are dealing here with a comparatively remote period, and a discrepancy of only 2 years may not seem very significant. But closer examination reveals that the discrepancy is considerably greater. Several years must be allowed for the overlap between the reigns of Akhenaten and Ashur-uballit; moreover, if the Menophres theory is accepted—that a Sothic cycle began in the first year of Seti I—the date 1358 for the death of Akhenaten does not allow for a sufficient interval between Akhenaten and Seti. The Mesa inscription proves that 59 years elapsed between the accession of Akhenaten and an unknown year in the reign of Horemhab. It has hitherto generally been assumed that the year in question was the last of Horemhab's long reign, but in the absence of any evidence to this effect such an assumption is absolutely inadmissible if we intend to abide by probabilities. Consequently, the discrepancy we are confronted with here must be increased by the number of years between this unknown regnal year of Horemhab and his death.

In November 1938, after completing the excavations at T. Brak, the Expedition, which had been operating at that site under the auspices of the British Museum and of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, moved to T. Abyaḍ in order to examine a number of selected sites in the Baliḫ valley. Our soundings at five mounds in this district occupied a period of 6 weeks' work, and thanks to the knowledge of kindred archaeological material acquired during four previous campaigns in the Ḫabur valley, we were enabled in this short space of time to obtain a clear picture of the main sequence of culture on the Baliḫ from the early chalcolithic period down to the middle of the second millennium B.C. The more spectacular results achieved at T. Brak and the discoveries made during the last season at T. Chagar Bazar in the Ḫabur valley will be described in subsequent numbers of Iraq. In the meantime it will be convenient to dispose of the Baliḫ valley material forthwith, as briefly as possible, since most of the finds from this district merely amplify and confirm the evidence already obtained on the Ḫabur.