The sixth Expedition to Nimrud sponsored by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq took the field on March 3rd, 1955, and concluded its work on May 5th. Once again we are indebted to several Institutions and many persons for their help. Generous financial aid was received from the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the Griffith Institute; the City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham; the University of Cambridge; The Iraq Petroleum Company which through the good offices of Mr. M. S. Maidand lent us machinery and invaluable technical aid; much personal service was given to us through the kindness of officers in the Company. The Expedition is again deeply grateful to H.E. Dr. Naji al Aṣil, the Director General of the Iraq Antiquities Department and to all members of his staff for their goodwill and skilled advice. To H.E. Rashid Nejib, the Mutasarrif of Mosul, and to many friends in that town, as well as to the British Vice-Consul and to the British Institute we are also deeply indebted.

In the course of the season we had the honour of receiving His Excellency the British Ambassador and Lady Wright and many other distinguished guests. More than a thousand visitors watched the progress of the excavations at various times.

During this season excavation was continued in a small area of the Burnt Palace and in the street flanking it on the east, with the object of elucidating the building sequence on the Palace site, and providing a stratigraphical link with the newly discovered Nabu Temple complex. The work was restricted by the presence of the massive walls of the latest palace, which have concealed or destroyed much of the evidence; and it must be emphasised that the sequence described here, although it probably presents an accurate picture of the general development of the site, is local and may be varied elsewhere by the absence of some building phases and the interpolation of others. The areas examined were:

(i) the north-west and south-east corners of the Palace courtyard, with the three rooms running northward from the east end of the Throne-Room, numbered 7, 11 and 20 on the previously published plan (Fig. 3),

(ii) a narrow section across the street that divides the east wall of the Palace from the Nabu Temple façade,

(iii) the Temple façade and the shrine of Nabu.

The fifteen letters here published, unlike the two previous selections, do not form a coherent group, although in a few cases two or three letters can be considered together on the basis of the occurrence in each of the same proper name or technical term. Their principal common feature is that, even though at least two concern affairs in Babylonia, none of them can usefully be treated in relationship to any of the main geographical areas—Babylonia, Syria and the districts on the northern and eastern frontiers—to which a large part of the collection relates.

The present writer has once again the privilege of thanking his teacher, Professor Emeritus Sidney Smith, for assistance and advice in his initial attempts at editing these letters, and Professor C. J. Gadd for examining, and making some valuable suggestions upon, the more difficult of the letters, particularly XXV, XXVII, XXXI and XXXII.

The stamp seal under consideration comes from Professor M. E. L. Mallowan's excavations at Brak. It was found in the debris on the Agade floor of Court 3 in the Palace of Naram Sin, and dated to that King's time. The excavator has listed it with the important objects which deserve special attention.

This strange seal (Pl. XIII. 1) deserves indeed a study of its subject, its style and especially the idea underlying its composition. The scene depicted on the seal is not unusual as far as subject is concerned, quite singular, however, in its composition. Fortunately, the interpretation of this complicated composition is self-evident. Not only a single “phase in a cow's career” to quote Sir Arthur Evans, is recorded in this idyllic scene, but three of them, reflecting the cow's whole career. The three drawings of Fig. 1 are the result of dismembering the complicated picture into three distincdy different postures of the cow: (a) Grazing, with her head bent down; (b) giving birth to a calf; (c) suckling and licking her youngster. It is clear that not three animals are depicted, but only one single cow at three successive stages in time. This summary expression of a story which comprises a series of consecutive movements is indeed ingenious. It becomes a photographic story rather than a mere picture.

The Tablet 6 A 343, which is now in the possession of the Danish National Museum at Copenhagen, was excavated in the year 1936 by the Danish Expedition to Hama in Syria. For permission to publish the text, I am indebted to the Carlsberg Foundation, which sponsored the excavations; to Professor Harald Ingholt, Yale University, who directed the Expedition; and to Mr. Niels Breitenstein, Keeper of the Department of Classical Antiquities at the Danish National Museum. I take the opportunity to thank Mr. Breitenstein for his interest in my work with the Hama tablets in general. For very generous and valuable assistance with the reading and interpretation of difficult signs and passages especially in the latter part of the text, I am much indebted to Professor Benno Landsberger of the University of Chicago.

The tablet 6 A 343 was found in the remains of the ancient city of Hama, in Building III of Level E, which provides us with the year 720 B.C. as a lower date: the year in which Hama was conquered by the armies of Sargon II of Assyria. It is, however, possible that at least some of the tablets found in Building III should be dated to the ninth century B.C., inasmuch as a letter (6 A 334) found in the same archaeological context may with some probability be dated to the reign of one Marduk-apil-uṣur, a local ruler of Suḫi and a contemporary of Shalmaneser III of Assyria.

Until the discovery of the royal archive of Mari belonging to the first half of the eighteenth century B.C., the principal sources for the study of the history of international law and diplomacy in the second millennium B.C. were the diplomatic records of the Egyptian and Hittite empires found at Tell el Amarna and Boǧazköy, covering the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C.; few earlier documents of international character were known. The new evidence, combined with that of contemporary texts from Babylonia and Alalaḫ, proves that many of the rules and principles recognised in the fourteenth century B.C. as governing the relations of civilised states were already established some four centuries earlier.