The 22nd season of excavations at Tell Brak took place in April and May of 1998, with David Oates as Project Director and Geoff Emberling as Field Director. It is our pleasure to mention institutions and people who made the project such a success. This season was primarily funded by the Adelaide Milton de Groot Fund (in memory of the de Groot and Hawley families) of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of the University of Copenhagen, Dell Computer Corporation and the Museum of Anthropology of the University of Michigan also generously provided funds and equipment. We would like to thank Dr Sultan Muhesen, Director-General of Antiquities and Museums in Syria, for his encouragement and interest, as well as Dr Adnan Bounni, Director of Excavations, and our representative, Abd el Messih Baghdo. The excavation team this season was exceptionally enthusiastic and dedicated. Jack Cheng was registrar, a position that included designing an excavation database as well as photography and drawing; Tim Skuldboel and Torben Larsen were surveyors; Lisa Cooper, Zenia Hoeserich, Stine Rossel, Suanna Selby and Laura Tedesco were site supervisors; Michael Charles and Mette Marie Hald supervised the notation program; Jill Weber worked on faunal material; Jean-François de Lapérouse of the Metropolitan Museum was objects conservator; Henry Wright analysed samples of chipped stone; and Donald Hansen and Joan Oates gave crucial help in architecture, excavation and ceramic analysis. David Oates provided helpful advice and support. We thank them all for their many contributions to work in the field and to this report.

The British Archaeological Expedition to Kuwait was formed in the spring of 1998 as the result of a visit to Kuwait by Harriet Crawford in November 1997. This visit took place at the invitation of the Director of the National Museum, Dr Fahad al Wohaibi. Several possible projects were discussed and permission was later granted by the Secretary-General of the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters for a preliminary survey by the Expedition, to be carried out jointly with a team from the National Museum of Kuwait, of the area known as as-Sabiyah at the north end of Kuwait bay (Fig. 1). The area had already been the subject of a preliminary study by Dr Fahad, who had identified one well-preserved site (H3) with both painted and plain Ubaid pottery on the surface. It was also agreed that the team should undertake exploratory work at this site. Dr Fahad's generosity in inviting a British team to work with him in the area was matched only by the kindness with which the Expedition was received in Kuwait. The achievements of the first season are due in large measure to the support offered to us by our colleagues in the National Museum and in the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters.

The objectives of the first season, which lasted for five weeks in October and November 1998, were as follows: to begin a detailed archaeological survey of the Jazirat Dubaij, a promontory within the Sabiyah area; to conduct a preliminary examination of the geomorphology of the area in order to establish the configuration of the shoreline at a period contemporary with the Ubaid-related site now known as H3; to contour this site; to undertake a surface collection of artefacts at H3; to confirm the presence of structures at the site and to establish the depth of deposit present. All these objectives were achieved.

In the 1989 British Museum excavations at Nimrud four small glass plaques were found that were published in a recent volume of Iraq (Curtis, Collon and Green 1993: 15–16, Figs. 14: 5–6 and 16). They came from Room T20 in Fort Shalmaneser, and were found in a deposit that predated a reconstruction of the building probably in the reign of Esarhaddon. The plaques are almost square, measuring about 1·4 × 1·55 cm and 0·15 cm thick (Figs. 1–2). They are made of blue glass and have recessed designs showing six-petalled rosettes in glass of a different colour. Where this inlaid glass survives it is now white but may originally have been yellow. One of the plaques has a small hole right through the centre. It was suggested then that originally these glass plaques would have been mounted in bronze frames and would have been hammered on to various types of furniture as decoration. Further research, however, indicates that it may be possible to suggest a more specific use for these plaques.

A survey of glass plaques with rosettes reveals that there were two different types in circulation in the ancient Near East. First, there are large blue glass plaques where the rosette design is recessed into the surface and filled with what is now (where it survives) opaque white glass. A characteristic of plaques made in this way is that the inlaid rosettes are visible only from one side. Barag comments that “the petals were probably pressed into the blue matrix while both were in a viscous state” (1985: 72), but in the view of von Saldern (1966: 632–3) “the shallow depressions in the tiles to receive the white fillings were cut [my italics] into the blue glass.”

During six seasons between 1976 and 1982 the Mission Archéologique Française à Qatar, directed by Jacques Tixier, investigated a number of prehistoric, protohistoric and Islamic sites across the Qatar peninsula. The pre-Islamic archaeological investigations concentrated on the area of al Khor on the north-east coast, where various members of the team excavated several sites with ‘Ubaid pottery and a number of undated cairn burials (Tixier 1980, Inizan 1988, Midant-Reynes 1985). As part of this team the author investigated two second-millennium BC sites during the three winter seasons of 1980–2. This report gives an account of one of these sites; a separate article will consider issues arising from the other site.

The site is located on a small island at the margin of the intertidal zone within the lagoon of Khor Shaqiq, on the north-east coast of Qatar (Fig. 1). Under present conditions a mangrove swamp lies off the east and south-east end of the island, open tidal mud-flats extend around its northern shore, and the deeper water of the bay lies to the west and south-west. Outcrops of Eocene limestone form the island core, around which lie cemented mid-Holocene beach-deposits and uncemented Holocene beach-lags (Fig. 2 inset). The latter, formed as thin alternating beds of silicate and skeletal carbonate sands, provide broad and fairly level expanses between the island shoreline and the limestone outcrops; these flats are the favoured location of human occupation. Uncemented sands, forming a chenier spit, front the south side of the island. The island lacks a permanent source of water and supports a very thin cover of xerophytic species of the Chenopodiaceae, Boraginaceae, Plumbaginaceae and Gramineae families.

There is absolutely no doubt that D. T. Potts does not agree with the conclusions — based on long-term fieldwork in the al-Ḥajar region of south-eastern Arabia (Fig. 1) — that Gordon Stanger and I recently published in Iraq (Orchard and Stanger 1994, Orchard 1995), and he has said so most forcefully in a “Reply” also published in this journal (Potts 1997). Stanger and I have read Potts's article with considerable interest and, given that his arguments are not only flawed but also confused, and that he often places emphasis on the wrong things, such as on the calibration of carbon-14 dates rather than on the provenance of carbon-14 samples, and on architectural detail rather than on the location and layout of monuments, we have come to the conclusion that his piece requires an equally firm response. Stanger's comments on Potts's statements regarding the climate of the al-Ḥajar region form Part 2 of this article.

In Potts's “Reply” two attitudes predominantly govern his arguments. The first is high indignation that anyone should have the temerity to “challenge” what he regards as “the foundations of Arabian Prehistory”, an indignation that affects the entire tone of his article and culminates in a particularly hostile concluding statement (pp. 70–1), to which I shall return later. The second, and more regrettable, is a propensity to ignore the archaeological landscape, which is truly extraordinary given that Potts is discussing a region where landscape archaeology is of fundamental importance.

Although numerous publications on the archaeology of the Sultanate of Oman have appeared, what is still lacking is a readily accessible English summary of recent highlights that deals with the late pre-Islamic culture in Mazun/western Maka (cf. Kervran and Hiebert 1991: 337–48, Yule and Kazenwadel 1993: 251–77, Yule 1994: 519–577). Until the publication of the final report on the excavations of the German Archaeological Mission to the Sultanate of Oman appears, the present contribution is intended to summarize the state of research. The cursory terms “Parthian” and “Sasānian Oman” (Potts 1992 II: 292–300) reveal the political hegemony and the date, but fail to come to grips with the culture as it is known from illustrated preliminary reports. The same holds for “classical Oman”. Oman lies outside the Mediterranean and outside classical influence. It is not in itself classical in any sense. The publications which have appeared on late pre-Islamic Central Oman have been understood differently by members of archaeological special interest groups of different nations, isolated experts, and particularly archaeologists oriented towards the archaeology of the neighbouring United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Three main topics shed light on this final pre-Islamic Arabian culture: the location of Maka and of early historic Oman, early Arabic sources on Oman, and the Samad culture (post 300 BC–AD 900, Fig. 1). The newly recovered archaeological information combines with what is known about the historical geography. The following notes are a tribute to the cooperation between Omani and foreign scholars interested in this area of ancient Near Eastern history.

Among those impossible and unconfessed desires which man had in the past, and still has today, there is that of turning the tables of power, of dominating instead of being dominated. The tradition which holds that Sargon of Akkad was the steward of Ur-Zababa of Kiš before overthrowing him is a projection of such dreams. How, otherwise, is it possible to bridge the gap between a cupbearer and a king, a servant and his master?

A steward was, however, a privileged servant, for he was in direct contact with the king. In a palatial organization anyone having responsibilities at court could be given others relating to the running of the state. The Ebla texts show that, apart from overseeing the drinks, a steward or cupbearer in a royal court of the third millennium BC also had important diplomatic responsibilities.

A series of important studies and observations over the last few decades has resulted in an increasingly clear understanding of the nature and composition of the Sumerian school curriculum in the Old Babylonian period, especially at Nippur. The sequence of lexical texts has been subject to extensive study, Lipit-Eštar hymn B has been identified as probably the first literary text to be read in the schools, and a further ten texts almost certainly followed Li B in the same sequence as they are given in the curricular catalogues.

The purpose of this interim presentation is twofold. Firstly, to attempt to demonstrate that in addition to Li B there are three other core compositions, namely Iddin-Dagan hymn B, Enlilbani hymn A, and Nisaba hymn A, which are read early in schools and do not appear in the curricular catalogues. Secondly, to present an additional piece of evidence which bears directly on the observation that at least the first ten entries of the curricular catalogues give, in sequence, the next ten texts read in schools after the four elementary hymns.

The present article in the series of Tablets from the Sippar Library presents a tablet of omens from the gall-bladder. It belonged to (and no doubt was written by) an apprentice diviner called Šamaš-ēṭir, who was responsible for at least one other tablet of omens in the library. The text was read and identified as Tablet VI of the omen series Šumma martu from the photographs published here (Figs. 1–2). It has not been possible to collate the tablet in Baghdad and the copy has been prepared from the photographs (Figs. 3–4). The upper third of the obverse is to a large extent illegible, but the subsequent identification of four duplicates, three published and one unpublished, enables a good deal of the text of this composition to be recovered. The currently known manuscripts of Šumma martu VI can be tabulated as follows:

With the identification of the Sippar tablet and its duplicates as Tablet VI of Series 6 (martu, the gall-bladder) of the bārûtu, seven of the ten tablets of this series are now known:

Pending a future edition of the series we offer here transliterations of the previously unavailable sources only, beginning with the Sippar tablet, together with a full translation and notes.

This text, on a small white limestone tablet found at the Nergal Gate of Nineveh in 1992–3, concerns work on the Akītu (New Year's) house. There is a longer text of Sennacherib that concerns the building of an Akītu house outside the walls of Aššur. Most of the preserved obverse of the text published here has the titles and epithets of the king (obv. 1–13). Then the text begins to narrate work on the Akītu house just before it breaks off (obv. 14–15).

The preserved portion of the reverse seems to refer to the Nergal Gate (rev. 2′) and then describes in general terms the annual celebrations in the Akītu house. The text concludes with a date (690 BC).

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.

The events of 1990 and conditions since that time have resulted in a diminution of archaeological activity in Iraq. Many foreign expeditions have ceased to operate. Nevertheless our Iraqi colleagues have continued to do much valuable work in difficult conditions and in the last few years some foreign expeditions have returned and recommenced work. This report has been compiled by Helen McDonald and St John Simpson from information supplied by the excavators to whom, as always, we are especially indebted and whose indulgence we seek for any mistakes contained herein. We would particularly like to thank Dr Muayyad Sa͑id Damerji, Dr Donny George Youkanna and Dr Ahmad Kamil for information on the excavations carried out by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and Heritage. The information collected by St John Simpson relates to those rescue sites dug in the Saddam Dam Salvage Project that have not yet appeared in print.