The first season of excavations at Tell al Rimah was undertaken from March 1st to May 13th, 1964, by a joint expedition of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq and the University Museum, Philadelphia. My thanks are due to my colleagues on the staff for hard work in the difficult circumstances of makeshift accommodation and a new site. Mrs. T. H. Carter of the University Museum was Assistant Director and took charge of Area C of the excavations. Miss Barbara Parker was epigraphist and photographer, assisted in the latter task by Mr. Nicholas Kindersley, who also undertook a part of the surveying. Mr. Julian Reade supervised the excavation of Area A, the temple, and Mr. David Crownover of the University Museum joined us in the second half of the season to give valuable assistance with the supervision of the dig and the cleaning and recording of finds. Many visitors gave us generous help; Mr. David French in the survey of other sites in the area, Mr. Jeffrey Orchard with the catalogue of finds, Professor Jørgen Laessøe with the epigraphy, and Miss Ann Searight and Miss Nan Shaw with the cleaning and conservation of finds. Sayyid Tariq al Na‘imi was the representative of the Directorate-General of Antiquities, and his energy and local knowledge were invaluable to us. We owe a great debt to the officials of the Government of Iraq for their hospitable assistance, to H. E. the Mutasarrif of Mosul Liwa and to Sayyid Ahmed al Mufti, Qaimaqam of Tell Afar. In Mosul Sayyid Selim al Jelili, Inspector of Antiquities for Mosul Liwa, was always ready to help with our problems. And, as always, the success of our work was largely due to the aid and advice, both practical and scholarly, of Dr. Faisal al Wailly, Director-General of Antiquities, and Sayyid Fuad Safar, Inspector-General of Excavations, and their staff.

Plaine immense, de 900 à 950 km de longueur et de 100 à 200 km de largeur, la Mésopotamie a toujours créé beaucoup de difficultés aux archéologues et aux historiens lorsqu’il leur fallait localiser des sites antiques. Bien qu’extrêmement aride en effet, – il tombe moins de 200 mm de pluie dans toute la région située entre Bagdad et la mer, – la Mésopotamie est parcourue par deux grands fleuves: l'Euphrate et le Tigre, aussi étrangers au pays que le Nil peut l'être à l'Egypte; à la différence de ce dernier cependant, ils ne coulent pas, encaissés dans des vallées capables de les contenir, aux très hautes eaux. A partir de Ramadi pour l'Euphrate, de Beled pour le Tigre, ces deux fleuves dominent les pays environnants comme le font le Rhin et la Meuse dans les Pays-Bas. Or, à Ramadi et à Beled, l'Euphrate n'est plus qu'à 47 m 20 d'altitude et le Tigre à 31 m 55 alors qu’ils ont encore à parcourir respectivement 890 et 970 km jusqu’au Golfe Persique. En temps de crue, les fleuves peuvent donc se répandre sur des milliers de km2 et submerger tout le pays.

Une “construction énigmatique” a été dégagée à Tello sur un des tells dits de l'Est. A. Parrot, qui est l'inventeur de cette construction dont on ne possède jusqu'à présent aucun autre exemple, en Mésopotamie, a proposé d'y reconnaître un hypogée réel ou symbolique. Le chef de la mission archéologique de Tello, faisant état des objections qu'avaient suscitées cette explication, écrivait en 1948: “Cette identification n'a sans doute pas paru convaincante, mais les difficultés d'interprétation sont telles que jusqu'ici personne n'a proposé quelque chose d'autre”. Effectivement, il fallut attendre 1960 pour que soit formulée, par Th. Jacobsen, une nouvelle hypothèse: la construction érigée au tell de l'Est aurait, dans l'antiquité, fait partie d'un ouvrage hydraulique.

De nombreux objets en terre cuite, dont nous avons fait l'étude, ont réapparu au cours de déblaiement de la “construction énigmatique”. Qu'y faisaient-ils? C'est, au départ, pour tenter de serrer de plus près cette question que nous avons été amené à rassembler tout ce qui avait été écrit au sujet de la construction, à classer les données, à approfondir la deuxième hypothèse, peu explicitée. Un dossier se trouva ainsi constitué. Il pouvait intéresser les spécialistes de l'Iraq ancien, d'autant plus qu'il allait être jumelé avec un article d'Etienne de Vaumas, Maitre de Recherche au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, article précisant la provenance des eaux de Tello et faisant connaître aux philologues et archéologues le point de vue d'un géographe spécialisé dans les questions iraquiennes. C'est pourquoi Iraq, après avoir estimé que ce double travail entrait dans son cadre, a bien voulu l'accueillir.

The palace of Ashurnasirpal at Nimrud was the best preserved of all those discovered in the nineteenth century. The slabs along its walls had never been burnt, and most stood or survived to their full original height. But because the sculptures upon them were generally repetitive and so not necessarily required by the British Museum which paid for their excavation, while the subjects had a special appeal to missionaries and lovers of the picturesque, they became more widely dispersed and consequently misunderstood than those of any other building. The narrative reliefs have been frequently illustrated, but these were found only in the throneroom B and the eroded west wing; the remaining rooms were decorated with pictures either of genies and sacred trees or of the king flanked by genies and courtiers. These formal reliefs outnumber all those surviving complete from elsewhere; a study of them is essential for any understanding of the techniques and procedures used by Assyrian sculptors. A preliminary need, however, is to work out the positions in which the extant slabs stood before their removal. The following article is an attempt to point out, by reference to unpublished examples, some of the main characteristics which distinguish the reliefs from different rooms and on which the full list of provenances in the appendix is based.

Ashurnasirpal moved the capital of Assyria to Nimrud-Calah in his fifth year (879 B.C.), but vital public buildings were still being constructed long after his death. Presumably the palace was given priority, as the king was resident in Calah just before starting on his sixth campaign, but the standard inscriptions which are carved on every wall-relief in the palace as well as on the inaugural stela include a mention of his expedition to the Mediterranean; since this was not undertaken until some time between his eighth and nineteenth years, a reasonable date for the completion of the decoration may be a little before 870.

In recent years many different suggestions have been made in an effort to solve the admittedly difficult problem of the chronology of the last kings of Assyria. Any new proposal must take account of the following:

1. Aššurbanipal (a) accession year, 669 B.C. year 1 begins with Nisannu 668.

2. Aššur-etillu-ilani (a) ruled in Assyria a minimum of 4 years, 8 months (Clay BE VIII, 1, No. 5: Nippur, i.viii.4, šar (mât) Aššur (ki)).

The Nimrud tablet IM 67618/ND 5576 was excavated at Nimrud in the 1956 campaign. During a stay in Baghdad in the autumn of 1964 I copied the text and identified it as a duplicate of IM 67619/ND 5577, the tablet found next to it in the excavation. Both tablets were found in the ruins of the Ezida Temple, in the pit in NT 12. When excavated they were unburnt. ND 5576 is a fragment of a tablet the lower part of which is preserved. It measures 12·8 × 10 cms. ND 5577 is a tablet with both obverse and reverse preserved. The obverse is much defaced and its upper part is almost destroyed. The tablet has no colophon. It measures 25 × 10·5 cms.

The text of ND 5577 was copied and edited by the present writer some years ago. It contains three bilingual incantations. According to their subscriptions the first (obv. 1–26) and the second (obv. 27–43) were catalogued as nam-erím-búr-ru-da “(incantation) for absolving evil”. The third incantation (ob. 44-rev. 48) has an abbreviated ritual subscription mentioning the god Nun-ura. In their style and phraseology they offer strong resemblance to the texts of the series Utukkī lemnūti. ND 5576 provides another version of the greater part of the third incantation preserved on ND 5577. The present article will give a revised edition of the first incantation of ND 5577 based on a renewed collation of the text and a critical edition of the two versions of the third incantation. Copies of the text of ND 5576 will be found on Plates XXXIII–XXXIV.