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.

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 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.

The Royal Cemetery at Ur, with its almost two thousand graves, is one of the most impressive archaeological settings in southern Mesopotamia. Although most of the graves have been assigned to the Early Dynastic Period, more than three hundred graves have been dated to a timeframe from the Late Akkadian Period to the end of the third millennium B.C. However, the precise dating of many of these graves is under debate because stratigraphic data are often lacking, and the material culture used for dating has mainly been cylinder seals and other small finds. Due to the poor quality of the data published by Woolley, pottery has rarely been used to establish chronological determinants that could be useful in dating the graves. Thanks to the Ur Digitization Project, the field records from the Ur excavations are now available online. Among them are the Field Notes, which often contain pottery drawings, reproduced to scale. This paper re-analyses some of the graves in the Royal Cemetery at Ur that have been dated to the final part of the third millennium B.C. This analysis is based on a typological approach to the pottery assemblages that allows revised chronological determinants for dating selected grave contexts.

In the early 1990s the two fragments of black stone making up the Tower of Babylon stele with pictures of the ziggurat in Babylon and the king Nebuchadnezzar II were found in the large open trench from the German excavations of Amran in 1900. The findspot was about 20 m north of the Esagil temple in Babylon, but the level where it was discovered is not Neo-Babylonian but later, possibly Parthian. The archaeological and historical background of the stele is discussed, and the image of the Ziggurat on the stele is considered. After 28 years in the Schøyen Collection Oslo, the stele is now in the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ištar of Nineveh at first glance presents a dilemma for the researcher. While she was a most important goddess, patron of a major town in north Mesopotamia, very little is known about her. As to her importance, in Hurrian religion Teššub and Ša'uška of Nineveh were heads of the pantheon. Here she is given her Hurrian name, Ša'uška. Thus the Mitanni king Tušratta in the Amarna letter no. 23, to Amenophis III, writes that Ša'uška of Nineveh, lady of all the lands (dMÙŠ šauruni-i-na nin kur-kur gáb-bi-i-ši-na-ma), wanted to travel to Egypt and to return. She is further called “lady of heaven” (nin ša-me-e) and “our lady” (nin-ne). Amarna letter no. 24, from the same Mitanni king to the same Pharaoh, refers to Ša'uška of Nineveh as “my goddess” (uruni-i-nu-a-a-we dša-uš-ka-a-wa de-en-ni-iw-wu-ú-a: VS XII 200 iii 98). One might conclude that “lady of heaven” alludes to her as Venus in the sky, but it might also mean the abode of the good gods without any astral allusion. It has been alleged that her wish to travel to Egypt was in the capacity of a goddess of healing, to cure the Pharaoh of his malady, but this is mere speculation. The letter gives no hint of this.

This brief international affair illustrates the problems excellently. There is a mass of cuneiform material bearing on the Sumerian Inanna and her Babylono-Assyrian counterpart Ištar, especially hymns and prayers. From them one can extract her major attributes — sexuality and war — and her astral presence in the planet Venus. The occurrence of related gods in other ancient Near Eastern regions — Aštart and Anat in Syria, Aṯtar in Arabia — suggests that the origins of the cult go back perhaps to neolithic time or even earlier, and the certain relationship with the Greek Aphrodite and Roman Venus attests to the power of this cult, however one explains the connection. However, in each Mesopotamian well-established centre of this cult one can assume that local customs and traditions will have added something to the basic “theology” we extract from our general knowledge of the goddess. For Ištar of Nineveh the episode of Tušratta may or may not allude to her star Venus, but otherwise it is totally uninformative about her “theology”. And that is typical for most of the other dated and precisely located evidence.

It was a pleasure to accept the Buccellatis' invitation to publish the upper half of a flat, lead figure of a woman found at Urkesh and return to an old interest of mine. I once surmised that such objects were used by merchants in the metals trade as “cash” when travelling from Mesopotamia to Anatolia.

The Urkesh piece is defectively cast, and the ridge above the eyeballs and the edge of the chin give the face a misleading, cheerful expression. From other examples we know that the ridge would probably have surrounded the eyes and that, above the remnant of a protruding chin, the mouth would have been straight. The long thin nose is still preserved. Curls over the forehead are represented by round knobs, as are the tresses falling on either side of the face. The woman is nude except for four ridges of a high collar necklace. The breasts, represented as small knobs, are placed very high on the chest and the fingers of the upraised hands are spread as if supporting them. A prominent knob, surrounded by a wide ridge, emphasizes the navel.

The Urkesh piece is very welcome as an excavated example of a familiar but rare type of lead figurine. The first example was found in third-millennium levels at Troy on the west coast of Turkey in the nineteenth century. Four moulds for casting such a figurine are also known. These are peculiar in having so many dies tightly crowded onto a single surface. They are for amulets, jewellery and stamp seals, as well as the figurines, and each object has its own pour hole for casting it separately.

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.

This article discusses the two main royal palaces constructed in Kalḫu during the ninth century: Ashurnasirpal II's Northwest Palace and Shalmaneser III's Military Palace. Through a re-examination of the architecture of both palaces, it will be argued that the two were more alike than has been commonly assumed. The military nature of the Military Palace did not preclude the presence of most types of spaces that were already present in the Northwest Palace. By discussing the differences and similarities between the kinds of spaces, decoration and spatial organisation found in each palace this article tries to offer a new analysis of both, and of the nature of Late Assyrian royal palaces more broadly.

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).

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.