The reports given below cover excavation work in Iraq from June 1972 to May 1973. The information on each site has been kindly provided by the director of the excavations, unless otherwise specified, and the final version has been checked by him wherever possible. The sites are arranged in alphabetical order, according to their best known name.

The material for this report was assembled by Mr. J. N. Postgate, Assistant Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq. The Editors are glad to acknowledge his efforts, and wish to express their gratitude to all those colleagues who have so willingly contributed information on their work, and especially to Dr. Isa Salman, the Director-General of Antiquities in Iraq, for his generous co-operation which alone has made the compilation possible.

The third season of excavations of the joint expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University to al-Hiba took place from October 1972 to January 1973.

Work was concentrated in Area B located in the high west-central portion of the mound where occupation continued into the Old Babylonian period. Beneath the surface are the remains of an enormous platform of mud-brick, undoubtedly an Old Babylonian temple platform. Only the core of the platform was preserved.

The fragment published here is of black stone, from Mosul Museum, registered IM 55640, where the writer saw it on display in 1967. It comes from a stela that was probably similar in shape to most other neo-Assyrian stelae, and it records not only a military event and the king's name, but also a royal grant of land.

Of all figures seen in Mesopotamian art, the naked or kilted human male figure with curls of hair on either side of his face is one of the most familiar. A form of this figure was portrayed already in the Jemdet Nasr period; he became common in Early Dynastic III, and particularly in the Akkadian period, after which he was less popular, though he was revived from time to time, probably until Achaemenid times. Since the early identification with Gilgamesh has been abandoned, he has been referred to by many names: the “six-locked hero”, “wild man”, “naked hero”, or whatever. Long ago Erich Ebeling cited evidence that his Akkadian name was talīmu, the “twin”. F. A. M. Wiggermann, in his article “Exit talim!”, and later in his valuable book Mesopotamian Protective Spirits, has argued that this familiar figure was instead referred to in Akkadian, at least in the first millennium B.C., as laḫmu, the “hairy one”, the “Hairy”. This identification has been accepted by numerous other scholars.

Wiggermann presents the following evidence for his identification (listed from the most general to the most specific, rather than in Wiggermann's own order):

1. Lexical evidence to show that the root lḫm means “to be hairy”, and that the noun laḫmu means “the hairy one”.

2. Various citations of the noun laḫmu that in general are consistent with the identification.

3. A very specific association of the term and the image in the Neo-Assyrian texts which prescribe the preparing of figurines to be buried in houses and palaces for protection against evil spirits. This evidence is the same as was used by Ebeling for his identification of the “wild man” as talīmu, which Wiggermann wishes to discredit.

Where possible, each item in the catalogue is arranged as follows: (i) Excavation number of tablet, (ii) Size in cm. (iii) Condition of tablet, (iv) Number of lines, (v) Locus. Usually the Room number is given in brackets, (vi) Description: type of tablet, outline of contents, date.

ND 201. 9·2 × 8·4 × 4·3 (thick) cm. Fragment from the centre left edge of a large, slightly plano-convex, limestone tablet. Parts of 4 + 5 ll. Found in ash rubbish outside S. external wall of bathroom and c. 2 m. above floor level.

Fragment from a Standard Nimrud Wall Inscription of Assur-naṣir-pal II. Duplicate of B.M. 90868, obv. ll. 31–35, rev. ll. 14–18 (published by L. W. King A.K.A., pp. 177–188).

A recent survey in the western foothills of the Zagros Mountains has located five new Neolithic sites. We present here the occupational features and finds of this period in the Sar Pol-e Zahāb region, along with an interpretation of their distribution and associated settlement patterns. Our research indicates that the visible distribution of Neolithic sites is highly influenced by geomorphological factors. All sites are located on natural outcrops or on the edge of alluvial plains. Many others have certainly been buried beneath layers of later sedimentation. All of the sites identified by our survey are small and of modest elevation, with cultural remains, particularly ceramics, similar to Neolithic sites such as Guran and Sarāb in the central Zagros region and Jarmo and Tamarkhan in Mesopotamia. Based on the ceramic evidence and the location of the region, between the central Zagros mountains on the east and Mesopotamia on the west, we suggest that this vast area maintained an integrated ceramic tradition, which suggests an overall cultural homogeneity of these areas during the seventh and early sixth millennia B.C. In other words, these recent discoveries indicate that similarities in Neolithic material culture in the Māhidasht, Kermanshāh and Hulailan plains with material culture of regions in Mesopotamia are not accidental or random but indicative of a large coherent zone with unique ceramic and cultural traditions (the patterned ceramic tradition of Sarāb-Jarmo), extending from Iraqi Kurdistan east into the central Zagros range. Regarding the lack of eighth and seventh millennium B.C. sites in the northern reaches of the Iranian part of the Zagros range, we may consider the pathway of Sar Pol-e Zahāb a primary route for transporting obsidian to upland areas of the central Zagros. This also suggests a lasting network of cross-regional communications, since archaeological discoveries prove this pathway was the main node connecting these two cultural regions for a long period of time.

The purpose of the present paper is to review the question of the “bâtiment isolé” located at the north-west corner of the royal terrace at Khorsabad. The author seeks first to demonstrate how this building can be connected with the one depicted on relief 12 in Room VII of Sargon's palace, and secondly to propose a reconstruction both of the plan and the elevation of the building, incorporating all the special features belonging to it (column, capital, roof and so on). In order to do so, the author compares typically Assyrian plans, such as those of reception suites, with the remains of the “bâtiment isolé”. The reconstruction of the elevation of this building will partly be based on the relief from Room VII and partly on archaeological remains, such as column bases like those found at Khorsabad (Palace F and Residence K) and at Nineveh.

While excavating the Palace of Sargon at Khorsabad, for the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, we were called from our house one night (March 20th, 1930) by the sound of singing and the clapping of hands which accompanies the dances of that country-side. In front of our gate we found the villagers squatting and standing round an open space in which two figures performed. One was dressed as a woman, in a black garment, with anklets, bracelets, and veil. In her we recognized later one of our workmen. The other personage was wearing a high pointed basket as headgear, a goatskin round his shoulders, and a bell tied to his girdle; he carried a heavy stick, and both had their faces blackened.

Frederick Charles Cooper accompanied Austen Henry Layard on his second expedition to Assyria (1849–1850) and recorded the excavations at Nimrud and Nineveh, and expeditions to other sites. The British Museum recently purchased twenty-eight of Cooper's drawings that were previously unknown. Six of them are published here because of their particular archaeological interest, and they can be linked to entries by Cooper in his diary, now also in the British Museum.

The object of these notes is to give an account of the recent archaeological discoveries which have thrown considerable light on most ancient Cyprus. A good number of problems concerning the prehistoric culture of this island have been solved, while simultaneously others have emerged opening a good field for future archaeological work and speculation on the origins of Cypriot culture. As Professor Myres states in his most recent general review of the origin of Cypriot civilization, ‘A neolithic chapter has been added at the head of the long island story…’. This naturally does away with the previous theory that the red-ware culture of Bronze Age Cyprus, thought of Anatolian origin, is the earliest in the island. But even with the discovery of earlier cultural stages the problem of the origin has not yet been solved. Whether, however, the red-ware culture of the Bronze Age will continue to be considered as ‘suddenly introduced as a ready-made and a different culture’, as Professor Myres states in the above-mentioned survey, is a matter which should be examined in the light of new discoveries.

Among the tablets from Sippar in the British Museum catalogued by E. Leichty, four unidentified prism fragments were found. Fragments of two of these had earlier been rejoined and copied by Pinches. All four prism fragments come from relatively small five-sided prisms and are written in neo-Babylonian script. The prisms share features that suggest they may be fragments or duplicates of the same or very similar inscriptions: appearance and orthography (texts 1 and 2); identical lines and columns showing third-person verbal forms (texts 2 and 4); and similar closing sections (texts 1 and 3). Transliterated and translated below, the texts of the prism fragments are not identifiable as duplicating in style or content any other known inscription of an Assyrian king. They are for this reason interesting.

1. BM 56617 (87–7–14, 996b + 1815), joined and copied by Pinches, is the largest of the fragments published here. The records of the British Museum state that the prism fragment comes from Aboo-Habba (Sippar). The fragment preserves four of its five faces; the top and bottom of the prism are broken away. The preserved portion of column i begins with the usual opening titles of the king and thus the missing portion above–at least 5 lines–probably contained an invocation to a deity. The prism should probably be assigned to Esarhaddon, although his name does not appear in the inscription, because of the appearance of Sennacherib's name as the first name in the genealogy that follows the king's titles.

The so-called “Iltani archive” is not only one of the few cuneiform archives we know which belonged to a woman, but also so far the only larger group of Old Babylonian texts from northern Mesopotamia which may essentially date to a period after the sack of Mari, when Babylon gained ascendancy in the north, and is therefore of considerable interest. In spite of the excellent editio princeps of the archive and admirable efforts of its reviewers, many difficulties of interpretation, even with regard to quite basic issues, persist, mainly because the letters in Iltani's archive are too short and cursive to permit a coherent reconstruction of its historical context. Building on previous analyses this paper discusses possible solutions to some of these difficulties, and although necessarily of a tentative character, the following brief remarks may hopefully further the understanding of this interesting archive and its setting.

With its more than 200 texts the Iltani archive is by far the largest group among the Old Babylonian texts found at Rimah. The archive consists of 151 letters, 50 administrative texts, 1 school text and a few fragments found in two rooms, VI and XIV, of the phase 3b palace.

As shown by her seal inscription Iltani was a daughter of Samu-Addu, king of Karana in the time of the “Assyrian interregnum” at Mari, and married to the diviner Aqba-Hammu, known from the Mari texts to have been a highly placed official under Aškur-Addu, king of Karana during the latter part of Zimri-Lim's reign, and presumably Iltani's brother. It is generally agreed that her archive must date mainly after the fall of Mari, at a time when Hammurapi of Babylon had extended his power over much of Upper Mesopotamia, and Aqba-Hammu ruled Karana as a vassal of Babylon. Zimri-Lim and Aškur-Addu are never mentioned in the texts, Aqba-Hammu, in one of his two extant seal inscriptions declared himself “servant of Hammurapi” and brought tribute to Babylon, local scribes in the Karana area used “southern” styles, and finally many of the letters in the archive generally show quite clearly that the Sinjar area now was linked with Southern Mesopotamia.

The cylinder seals and seal impressions from Brak have an importance out of proportion to the quality of their workmanship. All the circumstances of their discovery are scrupulously recorded, a great help in determining the approximate date of each piece, and a sure guaranty against any suspicion of forgery. They may not all be of outstanding artistic merit, but a few seem to be unique in the choice of subjects reptesented, and almost every one of them can show some detail or peculiarity which is well worthy of study. Professor Mallowan in his catalogue describes and discusses these works of glyptic art, and his extensive knowledge of the subject, and his diligent researches enable him to make illuminating comparisons and to give suggestive explanations of the more difficult problems. He has, indeed, given us all the essential information and much more besides in his valuable and penetrating discussion. The seals, however, were only a small part of the immense mass of material which he, as excavator, had to set in order, study and describe. It is because his harvest is so rich and abundant that it seemed worth while to gather up stray gleanings dropped from his full sheaves, Knowing well that the few observations which can be contributed, will only render more evident the value and importance of what he has given us.

During the month of April 1952 we were digging the deepest levels of a brick-lined well which had been found a year previously within the chamber NN of the North West Palace of Aššur-naṣir-pal. Below the two hundred and forty-fifth course, at about 18 metres (60 feet) down from the well-head, we were struggling to bail out the water faster than it was surging up. Indeed, we only succeeded in getting down to bedrock, 25·4 metres or 331 courses from the top, by working continuously all day, and then again, after a respite at sunset, by the light of hurricane lamps from midnight for six hours until dawn.

In the deeper levels many objects which had been cast into the well when Calah was sacked at the end of the seventh century B.C. began to appear. As each drum-load of precious sludge was ready to be hauled to the surface we realised that any one of them might hold a king's ransom. At last it happened. The foreman announced that ‘a lady has been found,’ and before our eyes we saw this ivory head emerge from the deep waters where it had lain, immersed in mud, for more than 2,500 years. Carefully we wiped away the thick coat of slime that partly concealed her face, her hair and her crown. What we beheld was a thing of beauty still radiant with life. The warm brown tones of the natural ivory, set against the dark black tresses of hair that framed the head, combined with the soft rounded curves of the face to give an extraordinary impression of life. The slightly parted lips appeared to have a light reddish tint; the black pupils of the eyes were encased in dark lids; the crown, fillets and stand were of a rather darker brown than the face. Originally crown and base must have been decorated with ivory studs of which only two now remained.

Of the excavations that have taken place in Iraq since the 1930s, many have revealed remains dating to the Early Dynastic period. None of these has been published as fully as the Diyala sites excavated by the Iraq Expedition of the Oriental Institute of Chicago from 1930 to 1938. (Frankfort, 1939, 1943, 1955; Delougaz, 1940, 1952, Delougaz and Lloyd, 1942; Delougaz, Hill and Lloyd, 1967.) It is these sites that still provide the largest collection of well-stratified pottery for this period, and thus material from newly-excavated sites has always been compared to that from the Diyala region.

There are two major disadvantages to this state of affairs. Firstly, it is undesirable that any kind of archaeological material comparison should be limited to just one region or site; and secondly, notwithstanding the importance of the city of Eshnunna (Tell Asmar), the Diyala region was a fringe area, and the style of its pottery should not have to be accepted as the norm for Southern Mesopotamia or anywhere else.

About thirty years ago clay cones bearing a newly recovered inscription of En-temena appeared in the antiquities market. The inscription is often referred to as the “brotherhood text,” because it relates that friendship was established between En-temena, governor of Lagash, and Lugal-kinishe-dudu, governor of Uruk. Since the inscription was new, it was soon published in a number of journals.

The inscription is of primary importance for the discussion of the location of Bad-tibira because it describes En-temena as the man who built the temple E-mush for the goddess Inanna and the god Lugal-E-mush, an epithet for Dumu-zi. From other texts it is known that E-mush and E-mush-kalama, presumably names for the same temple, were located in Bad-tibira. If the site where the cones had been discovered by robber diggers could be found, then the location of the ancient city of Bad-tibira could be re-established.

Since a vendor of the cones had said that they came from Medain, one of the reasons for the French excavation at a mound called Medain near Lagash was to attempt to locate Bad-tibira. Unfortunately, however, the labours of Ghirshman and Tellier were not successful in ascertaining the site of Bad-tibira.

The Brooklyn Museum houses twelve stone slabs with carved decoration from the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II. The motif of a stylized tree — the so-called Sacred Tree (see Figs. 1, 4, 6) — appears on seven of those slabs which come from rooms F, I, L, S, T of the ninth century palace at Nimrud. These tree renderings are representative of the sacred tree-type found in ten rooms of the royal residence and the west wing. Approximately 96 sacred trees, in two-register arrangement, appeared on the pictorial decorations in room I; the same motif occurred about 75 times in one-register arrangement on the reliefs of the other rooms. The abundance of the sacred tree motif on the wall decorations of the Northwest Palace attests to the significance of this plant. Its design deserves investigation; in Layard's words, “the tree, evidently a sacred symbol, is elaborately and tastefully formed.”

In his study of the Ashurnasirpal II reliefs in American collections, Stearns did not attempt to list the sacred trees, because “variations in the sacred tree occur only in minor details,” and “the tree in itself is rarely useful in identifying the location of the reliefs.” These statements make clear Stearns' belief that the sacred trees were nearly alike. Other scholars, notably Weidner and Reade, have pointed out that on a number of slabs now in American and European museums are carvings of matching half trees, therefore indicating that when paired, these trees belonged to adjoining slabs originally. In trying to match half trees, one finds that individual sacred trees do differ in the rendering of specific details. Bleibtreu, in her analysis of the sacred tree-type, lists three variants of the flower found on the palmette-garland framing the individual tree on three sides. The present author, after examining the sacred trees carved on the slabs in The Brooklyn Museum, concludes that the design of the tree-type is more varied than heretofore presumed, and that its construction is more complex than indicated in previous descriptions of the subjects. An analysis of the Assyrian sacred tree-type may lead to possible conclusions regarding its intended image: a stylized palm tree, a cult object, an emblem of vegetation or “tree of life”, an imperial symbol, or a combination of those forms. In addition, one may consider to what extent the rendering of individual trees was the consequence of artistic inventiveness.

Die Studie behandelt Fischknochen, die während archäologischer Ausgrabungen durch das “Oriental Institute” der Universität von Chicago und die British School of Archaeology in Iraq auf dem Tell Abu Salabikh/Iraq geborgen wurden. Ein kleiner Tell des Materials stammt aus der Kampagne von 1963, die unter der Leitung von D. Hansen stand. Diese kleine Aufsammlung von insgesamt 51 Fischresten (Tab. 1) erhielt ich durch Vermittlung von R. Englund, Berlin, von R. Biggs, Chicago, zur Begutachtung zugesandt. Sie lagen “among the debris in the rubbish pit where the tablets were found” (Biggs, brieflich; s. auch Biggs 1966). Der weitaus größere Tell des Fundguts kommt aus den von N. Postgate, Cambridge/GB, geleiteten Ausgrabungen von 1975 bis 1983 in der Stadt auf dem Tell von Abu Salabikh, die Zeugnisse aus dem 3. Jahrtausend v. Chr. und zwar aus der Frühdynastischen Periode I bis III ans Tageslicht förderten (Postgate 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1983; Postgate und Moon 1982).

Während der Ausgrabungen wurde im allgemeinen nicht gesiebt. Lediglich “the material from a large ashy deposit (trenches 6G76 and 6G86) was partly dry-sieved and 1/10th of that also flotated” (Postgate, brieflich). Dadurch erklärt sich die größere Fundzahl aus diesen beiden Schnitten im Vergleich zu derjenigen aus den übrigen Fundstellen, hier als Einheit zusammengefaßt: 4J87/88, 5I10/98, 6G36/45–47/63/64/75. Außerdem wurden Fischknochen in Gräbern geborgen: 4J88, 5I31, 6G45/56/64/66/75.

Le bel objet que représente notre planche XL est à Paris dans la collection de M. Maurice Bérard, qui nous a très aimablement permis de le publier ici. Nous lui en exprimons notre vive gratitude. Malgré quelque doute qui affecte l'interprétation de ce petit monument, son intérêt est trop grand pour qu'il convienne d'en différer la publication. Le vendeur — un antiquaire de Beyrouth — donnait, paraît-il, comme lieu de provenance le petit village de Niha dans le Liban, bien connu par ses deux temples. D'autres déclarations parlaient de Kerak Nouh, tout près de Zahlé et peu éloigné de Niha. Ces deux prétentions ne sont pas impossibles, mais on verra que le décor de l'objet appartient en tout cas à des cultes qui n'ont pas de rapport avec les sanctuaires de Niha, voués au grand couple syrien de Hadad et d'Atargatis. Si l'objet vient bien de cette région, il faudra l'attribuer à un culte étranger, non attesté jusqu'ici dans ces montagnes.

Il s'agit d'un couteau d'apparat dont la lame de fer n'a laissé qu'un tronçon corrodé. Mais le manche de bronze, couvert de figures en relief, est parfaitement conservé sous une jolie patine vert-olive. Le sommet de cette poignée représente une tête de taureau à la puissante encolure, marquée de fanons. La garde forme une simple barre transversale, terminée d'un côté par une tête de sanglier, de l'autre par une tête de lion. Quan t au corps de la poignée, il est enlacé dans les plis d'un serpent, dont la tête est appliquée contre la nuque du taureau (pl. XLa).

U.E.T. VI, Part II will consist of about 150 plates of copies prepared by C. J. Gadd from some 200 pieces varying in size from fairly well-preserved four column tablets to small fragments and “buns” inscribed with but a few lines of text. Tentatively, the arrangement of the volume is planned to be as follows:

Lamentations. All in all there are nineteen tablets and fragments inscribed with several different lamentations. Thus, there is a fragment which is probably part of the long known Nippur lament, which begins with a bitter wailing over the destruction of Nippur and Sumer as a whole, and ends on a note of joy celebrating their delivery and restoration by king Išme Dagan of Isin. There is a well preserved tablet inscribed with lines 110–171 of “The Curse of Agade”, the historiographic lament which concerns the rise and fall of Sargon's capital, Agade. There is a fragment inscribed with part of a composition which may be designated “The Lamentation over the Destruction of Erech and Sumer”, for which there are available at present four published and five unpublished pieces; as yet only a small part of this composition can be restored, a passage of about 120 lines containing the partially preserved text of kirugu 4, 5, and 6. Six of the Ur pieces are inscribed, not unexpectedly, with “The Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur”, which I published some 25 years ago as no. 12 of the Oriental Institute's Assyriological Studies. Five of these are excellently preserved tablets, but since the text has been almost completely available in published form for many years, the new Ur material will add but little that is new except, of course, a considerable supply of new variants which should prove to be of some significance.