This article introduces a small group of ivories held in the Sanandaj Museum, which were discovered in 1997 during the seventh season of Nasratolah Motamedi's excavations at Ziwiye, northwest Iran. An investigation of the decorative, figurative, and stylistic characteristics of these pieces reveals a strong Neo-Assyrian influence, with close similarities to the palace reliefs of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud, as well as the influence of Assyrianizing Urartian art. These extensive cultural influences on Mannaean art can be seen in terms of political and economic relations with the two regions.

The title abu Amurrim means literally “father of Amurrum”. It is attested for five rulers of the Old Babylonian period: Kudur-Mabuk, Warad-Sin, Rim-Sin, Hammurabi and Ammiditana.

There are also two published texts in which it is not certain whether the bearer of the title was a king or, like Kudur-Mabuk, a ruler of equivalent status. UET 5 62 is quoted in full below; for the moment it will be sufficient to note Kupper's plausible suggestion that in that text the person referred to as king is Warad-Sin, whereas the abu Amurrim is Kudur-Mabuk.

Kupper has also suggested that in PBS 8/1 79 the abu Amurrim is Ipiq-Ištar, the king of Malgûm. The text records a MU.TÚM delivery of two head of cattle by a certain Ipiq-Ištar, AD.DA MAR.TU. Here there is nothing in the context to suggest the latter had royal status; the only reason for making the suggestion was that elsewhere the bearers of that title were either certainly of royal status or, as in UET 5 62, probably of royal status.

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).

The length of the costumes depicted upon archaic Sumerian representations affords a clue for dating them. A consideration of monuments of which the relative antiquity is certain shows a gradual elongation of the dress in Mesopotamian lands, from the most ancient period down to the Sargonid dynasty.

Entemena of Lagaš, who reigned shortly before Sargonid times, wears the full length dress which extends down to his feet, it being made of six or seven rows of fleecy flounces (Fig. 1). His uncle Eannatum wears a similar dress on the Stele of the Vultures.

The grandfather of Eannatum, Ur-Nanše, has a dress which leaves off above the ankles, and is composed of only three superimposed rows of flounces (Fig. 2).

The ‘Relief Circulaire’ of Lagaš is, according to stratification, more ancient than the representation of Ur-Nanše. Here the length of the dresses is still shorter (Fig. 3).

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 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.

In June 1995 the Iraqi Department of Antiquities made repairs to the south wall of the cella of the temple of Nabû ša ḫarê at Babylon. During the course of these repairs Elham Hashim Ali, a member of the Department's staff, found an inscribed clay cylinder embedded about one metre inside the thickness of the wall and one and a half metres above the building's lower floor.

When the temple of Nabû ša ḫarê was excavated in 1979, the only foundation document discovered there was part of a clay cylinder found in secondary context among the debris that had accumulated over the south-east part of the kisû of the temple. The fragment, published by Antoine Cavigneaux in 1981, bears the remains of a cuneiform text in 28 lines. The ends of the lines are missing, but enough survived for Cavigneaux to identify the text as a foundation inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II (1. 1: dnabû(nà)-ku-dúr-ri-ú-ṣ[ur]) reporting his construction of a temple of Nabû (1. 28: bit (è) dna-b[i-um … ]). Many school tablets found in the temple and published by Cavigneaux in the same year bear the ceremonial temple name é-nig.gidru-kalam.ma-sum.ma, “House which Bestows the Sceptre of the Land”. This was already well known as the name of the temple of the god Nabû ša ḫarê at Babylon from the many inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar II which report its rebuilding, and from the standard list of the temples of Babylon (Tintir IV 15). For this reason Cavigneaux suspected, even before the discovery of the cylinder fragment, that the building excavated by Danial Ishaq was the temple of Nabû ša ḫarê. The sanctuary of this god, first encountered in the eleventh century, is well attested in the first millennium BC. Its importance rested on the probability that it was the place where the Babylonian crown prince was invested. It is now known to have survived as a building until at least 78 BC, at which time an astronomical diary reports armed conflict among citizens of Greek descent in the temple's vicinity.

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.

Looking back as one can now do over a long period of time spent at the British Museum, it is clear that a major contribution to the development of the Research Laboratory was made by Leonard Woolley not only on account of the quantity and diversity of the material that he produced for study and treatment year after year, but by the stimulating influence of his presence as a co-worker. Indeed, without this, the annual task which confronted a small and devoted laboratory staff would have been well-nigh impossible.

The first rumour of his return was quickly followed by the arrival of dozens of boxes, petrol tins, containers of any and every sort and a selection of these reached the Laboratory and duly gave forth many hundreds of match boxes, tins and cigarette packets all carefully labelled, all very dusty, but all containing treasures that meant something, at least to the excavator. And so the hospital cleanliness of the Laboratory inevitably suffered a change and rooms took on the aspect of that partially-organised chaos wherein someone can always claim to know where objects have been put. In the midst worked Woolley in the deepest concentration—and he was a whale for work—but always with a ready smile for the right kind of interruption.

The splendid discoveries made by Sir Leonard Woolley at Ur in the years between 1927 and 1931, of tombs with a wealth of grave-goods unparalleled before or since in Western Asia, were given a sombre aspect by the revelation that such sacrifice of material wealth had been accompanied by no less lavish expenditure of lives. The principal occupants of those tombs had been attended by a whole cohort of human and animal victims, put to death at the time in their places and attitudes and with all the equipment which had been proper to them in their lives and services. So plainly was all this revealed by the excavations that the whole scene of the funeral could be reconstructed by a modern artist in a picture which scarcely needed to draw upon the imagination.

Some controversy took place in the succeeding years upon the character of these human sacrifices, but it would now be generally agreed, I think, that they were no other than at first supposed, a dramatic example of the ancient (though late-lingering) rite of sending a deceased lord into the other world fully furnished with all the ministers as well as all the gear of his earthly state. Both written descriptions and archaeological discoveries have repeatedly attested this gruesome practice in various parts of the world, and it is no longer true that in the abundant literature of Sumer and Akkad there is no trace of such an observance—I allude, of course, to the Sumerian fragment published by Dr. S. N. Kramer and called by him ‘The Death of Gilgamesh’.

In order to understand the unique reception of ancient Assyria in nineteenth-century America, it is necessary to describe the British public's own reception of the earliest British Museum exhibits, together with the marketing of publications of Layard and others. And, in order to grasp something of both Britain's and America's keen fascination with the earliest images of Assyria, I must introduce you briefly to the changing perceptions and tastes in admissible historical representation that, I believe, drove this fascination.

The British public's breathless enthusiasm for the monuments from Bible lands had radical origins in English soil. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century antiquarians surveyed, sketched and wove theories about the prehistoric relics that dot the English landscape, occasionally linking them with a mythical Christian past. William Stukeley, for example, student and first biographer of Sir Isaac Newton, made something of a career out of surveying Avebury and Stonehenge, in an early eighteenth-century quest for evidence that could link the Britons of Celtic fame with the peoples and the received timeline of the Bible. By the early nineteenth century, the Gothic Revival movement had begun in earnest. Its proponents saw this project as a moral mainstay in the revitalization of English society and culture. English prehistoric and medieval monuments would be measured, drawn, catalogued, published, and ultimately by so doing, laid at the feet of the British public. The Napoleonic wars accelerated this movement, for Continental sightseeing was impossible, so the classic Grand Tour evaporated down to an insular walking tour. This of course fuelled the sense of British national destiny:

Tablets of the Middle Assyrian period are rare in the collections of the British Museum, principally because the German excavations at Aššur, from which most come, were plainly more carefully controlled than many early excavations. Thus it is a pleasure to place this article, which presents three Middle Assyrian tablets, in a volume celebrating Lady Mallowan and Prof. D. J. Wiseman, to both of whom Assyriology is grateful for the edition of many documents from a younger Assyrian capital, Nimrud. The three pieces published here are a fragment of edicts, a document listing personnel, and a collection of omens.

En 1976, Ismaïl Hijara reprenait le chantier préhistorique de Tell Arpachiyah, dans la banlieue de Mosul, pour une ultime campagne. Ce site avait été exploré dans les années 30 par Max Mallowan et avait livré les premiers niveaux stratifiés de l'époque de Halaf. Cinquante ans après la fouille, ces résultats servaient encore de référence pour la périodisation halafienne, mais ne pouvaient donner de réponse à de nombreuses questions. La principale concernait la chronologie et le développement de la phase “Halaf ancien”. C'est en souhaitant y répondre qu'I. Hijara relança la fouille du site en ouvrant trois tranchées sur la butte principale. Une succession de niveaux architecturaux fut mise en évidence. Au cours de leur dégagement, plusieurs tombes apparurent dont trois, localisées aux abords de la tholos TT 8, firent l'objet d'une publication séparée. Un vase trouvé dans l'une de ces tombes nous retiendra plus particulièrement.

Il s'agit d'une céramique provenant de la tombe G2. Celle-ci est décrite comme une inhumation collective appartenant au niveau VII (Halaf ancien ou moyen). Quatre crânes y étaient placés séparément dans des céramiques (trois dans des vases ouverts, le quatrième dans une jarre). Une série de six autres céramiques et un vase en pierre accompagnaient ces inhumations. Un de ces vases porte un décor peint iconographié que nous reproduisons Fig. 1 tel qu'il a été publié. On ignore toutefois si ce vase contenait un des crânes ou s'il faisait partie du dépôt funéraire.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a further investigation into the method of manufacture of an important eighth–seventh century B.C. glass vase (Plates Ia, IIa) from Syria or Assyria now in the Corning Museum collection. It is somewhat similar to the well known Sargon vase in the British Museum. In our initial study we focused on methods used to finish this cast glass vessel, particularly the drilled handles, the interior walls, the profiled bands and polished outer surface. In the present study we have again focused on the drilled handles in order to determine the type of drill bit, the type of drill, abrasive and lubricant. The reason for this particular emphasis was that several important questions in our initial study were left unresolved. In addition, a serendipitous finding and subsequent research in the field of ancient Egyptian lapidary offered new insights and working hypotheses.

The archaic tablet made available in the present note is now in a private collection in Belgium.

The well preserved proto-cuneiform tablet, measuring 73 × 69 × 18 mm (height × width × thickness), was copied from photographs in the early spring of 1989, and subsequently collated with the original in May of the same year in London. Although the exact provenience of the tablet, which came to Europe some decades ago via the antiquities market, is not secure, format, contents and personal designations point to its probable origin at Uruk/Warka.