The two tablets published here for the first time, BM 45642 and BM 28825, are edited together for good reason, for the historical background of both texts is very probably the same episode in King Ashurbanipal's drive to acquire scribal learning. Where BM 28825 concerns the reception of the Assyrian king's demand for tablets among the citizens of Babylon, BM 45642 deals with the reaction of scholars of nearby Borsippa to a similar royal message. BM 45642 is the better preserved of the two tablets, and allows a fuller understanding of both texts' formal characteristics and of the contextual background. Consequently we present it first.

The text inscribed on BM 45642 (81-7-6, 35) is a letter, though not a typical one. It begins with an extremely deferential address to Ashurbanipal (11. 1–4). Following a series of standard royal epithets, the address pays homage to the Assyrian king as the divinely appointed suzerain of Assyria and Babylonia. It goes on to record Nabû's patronage of the king, and to acknowledge his skill in Nabû's special field of writing, an expertise already well known from Ashurbanipal's own inscriptions. These clauses are chosen with care, for the writer is evidently a scholar from Borsippa, Nabû's cult-centre. With them he invokes a certain feeling of mutual fellowship. The name of the sender is expected at the end of the address, but although the end of 1. 4 is broken there does not seem to be a name there, and we have restored instead nilt[apra umma] “we send word as follows”. In this the text departs from normal Neo-Babylonian usage, perhaps because it is not a regular letter but, as becomes clear, a formal and collective communication on behalf of all the scholars of Borsippa.

The mound of Kuyunjik contains the longest known archaeological sequence of occupation in Mesopotamia, spanning all periods from the sixth millennium BC until at least the thirteenth century AD. The prehistoric periods have been comprehensively studied by Gut (1995, 2002) and the general sequence of excavation, occupation and principal architectural finds reviewed by Reade (2000), yet despite a few exceptions (Curtis 1976, 1995; Reade 1998, 1999, 2001; Simpson 1996), the pottery and other finds from the Seleucid period onwards have thus far attracted surprisingly little study. For these periods though, the material culture is characterised by a strong mixture of Classical and Oriental traditions; thus, first-century AD graves contained gold face-coverings and the remains of diadems, both hinting at the eastern extension of practices more commonly found in the eastern Roman provinces, but Western lamps, glassware, ceramics and even a Roman military badge also occur at the site. Some of these betray direct political and military control, whereas others reflect a mixture of imports and local imitations; an appreciation of this rich cultural mix is important for the clearer understanding of Nineveh in Late Antiquity.

Nineveh almost certainly held a Roman garrison at the extreme eastern limit of its empire but following the humiliation of the apostate Julian's Mesopotamian campaign of 363, it must have been ceded as part of the handover of five trans-Tigridian Roman provinces containing Nisibis, Singara, Castra Maurorum and fifteen unnamed forts to Shapur II (309–379). Thereafter the material culture from Nineveh finally acquires an Iranian character and, until its capture in 637/38 or 641/42 by an Arab army generally believed to have been commanded by ‘Utba bin Farqad, it flourished as a Sasanian town, bridgehead and fortress on the east bank of the Tigris (cf. Robinson 2000, 36–7). The datable finds of this period include four hoards of silver and bronze coins (Simpson 1996, 95–6); several personal seals, bullae and elaborate cutlery of Sasanian type (Simpson 1996, 97–8; 2003, 362–3, Fig. 3); a range of plain, mould-blown and cut glass (Simpson 2005); and four helmets, the latter hinting at the military component of the settlement referred to in the Arab sources (Simpson forthcoming, b).

The University of California Expedition to Nineveh excavated at the Halzi Gate in 1989 and 1990. The gate proved to be one of Nineveh's larger defensive gates and a scene of chaos and destruction. Tower 4 to the south of the gate was of irregular masonry, having been hastily rebuilt. The juxtaposition of a rough tower directly beside the fine ashlar masonry of the rest of the curtain wall of the gate appears to reflect a political instability that prevailed during the declining years of Assyrian rule. The late reconstruction of Tower 4 contrasts with the earlier attention to detail seen in building work of Sennacherib's reign (704–681 BC), when smoothly dressed orthostats lined the lower walls of the gate's large inner court and sophisticated waterproof membranes of bitumen-soaked reeds protected the mud-brick superstructures. Buried beneath the pavement in the corners of the court were apotropaic foundation figurines. Within the only partially excavated outer entrance passage at least twelve individuals died, perhaps while defending the city or trying to escape from it, as a stallion and a rider lay at the eastern limit of the gate passage. Within the reduced width of the gate passage were eight adult males, four adolescents and four children including one infant. Weaponry was found throughout the area and the scattered bodies lay where they had fallen. The associated small finds, which had not been looted, included silver jewelry, bronze personal items, stamp seals and a composite necklace.

Excavations at Chagar Bazar by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq team continued in 2001 and 2002 in Areas A and G (Fig. 1). In both areas, the final occupation of the site, datable to ca 1800–1650 BC, was investigated. Cuneiform tablets from Max Mallowan's 1930s excavations testify to the key position held by Chagar Bazar at the beginning of this period. His work had exposed large areas of domestic and administrative structures, but stratigraphic and relational uncertainties remained which merited further investigation. The archaeological situation at the fringes of Shamshi-Addu's Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia are still somewhat enigmatic, and the aftermath of its collapse has not been intensively explored.

In discussions of the agricultural economies of ancient Mesopotamia, scholars commonly make a sharp distinction between intensive irrigation in the south and extensive rain-fed farming in the north (Weiss 1986; Bagg 2000: 283). In popular as well as academic publications Babylonia is strongly associated with canals, and when one thinks of large state-sponsored initiatives the massive integrated network of canals built by the Sasanian rulers of southern Mesopotamia (Adams 1978) normally springs to mind first. However, since the mid-nineteenth century archaeology and epigraphy have documented the great irrigation schemes of the Neo-Assyrian kings. The inscriptions of Sennacherib in particular refer proudly to his great network of canals, and often describe them in the context of luxurious gardens and parks. The inscriptions make mention of the waters' use for vegetable garden plots and, less frequently, for grain fields above and below Nineveh.

Nineveh, like modern Mosul of which it is now a suburb, lay at the heart of a prosperous agricultural region with many interregional connections, and the temple of Ishtar of Nineveh dominated the vast mound of Kuyunjik (Fig. 1). Trenches dug on behalf of the British Museum, mainly by Christian Rassam in 1851–2, Hormuzd Rassam in 1852–4 and 1878–80, George Smith in 1873–4, and Leonard King and Reginald Campbell Thompson in 1903–5, impinged on the site. The main temple was almost completely cleared, together with an area to the north-west, by Thompson and colleagues in four seasons between 1927 and 1932 (Figs. 2–3). Many original King and Thompson records are kept in the Department of the Ancient Near East at the British Museum; some photographic negatives are at the Royal Asiatic Society in London. The numerous objects from Thompson's excavations are now divided between the Iraq Museum, the British Museum (where they are registered in the 1929-10-12, 1930-5-8, 1932-12-10 and 1932-12-12 collections, mostly corresponding to the four successive seasons), the Birmingham City Museum, the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge; some were given to other institutions, and to individuals who had contributed to the excavation costs.

The orthostats from the North-West Palace of Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BC) at Nimrud are among the most outstanding works of art from the Ancient Near East. Today they are to be found in museums all over the world and are looked at every day by thousands of visitors. Numerous books and articles have been written about their style, their meaning and their reconstruction. Thus one would think that nothing could have escaped the eye of observers. Nevertheless, some details have been largely overlooked by researchers. Among these is the incised decoration on the edges of the garments of some of the figures depicted, showing a wide range of simple geometric and floral designs as well as complex mythical and narrative scenes. It thus forms a valuable part of the repertoire of Neo-Assyrian artistic motifs and can help us understand the essence and meaning of Neo-Assyrian political art. The evidence of these incised decorations is not only of importance for the history of art but is also fundamental to the understanding of the significance of the clothes and of the figures wearing them, forming an integral and essential part of the mythical symbolic character of the figures.

The invention of writing in southern Mesopotamia at the end of the fourth millennium BC had many and long-lasting consequences. As far as the Early Bronze Age is concerned, one of the most remarkable of these consequences is that the cuneiform writing system that gradually emerged in southern Iraq during the first part of the Early Dynastic period spread to northern Syria around the mid-third millennium BC. A flourishing scribal tradition was already firmly established throughout the Syrian Jezirah and inner Syria by the advent of the Akkadian period.

It is difficult to establish the reasons and mechanisms that led the elites of northern Syria to borrow the practice of writing from their counterparts in southern Iraq. The steps in this process are even more unclear. Hence the aim of this paper is to gather material evidence that may help us shed light on those questions. As an archaeologist, I will not discuss here the content of epigraphical finds, but only their context and chronological attribution according to the chronological divisions in northern and southern Mesopotamia respectively.

In 1930 to 1931, the British Museum expedition to Nineveh included among its activities there a stratigraphical sounding which resulted in the establishment of a sequence of prehistoric and early historic remains in northern Mesopotamia over a considerable chronological period (on the deep sounding of Nineveh see now Gut 1995; Gut 2002, esp. pp. 17–22, and also Gut 1999). This sequence, comprising five broadly defined phases, extends from the Neolithic (Ninevite 1) to the early third millennium BC (Ninevite 5).

In 1989 I had the opportunity to study archaeological materials deposited in the British Museum in London. I was interested in the earliest Mesopotamian sealings — those of Tell Arpachiyah and Nineveh — and was provided not only with Ninevite 2–3 sealings which I had requested, but also with those of Ninevite 5, so I documented the latter as well. After publishing the Ninevite 2–3 items (Charvát 1994), I had no opportunity to publish the remainder.

However, in 2001 Dominique Collon published an analysis of the seal impressions found in the Ninevite 5 archaeological strata documented by the Thompson and Mallowan expedition (Collon 2001; see also Collon 2003). When “Nineveh” was announced as the theme of the 49e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, I decided to present a paper on the detailed information I had recorded for a number of the backs of the sealings studied by Collon. My work builds upon Collon's art-historical analysis of the obverse of the sealings, but here I am concentrating on the “hidden faces” of the seal impressions in order to extend my study of the character of socially engineered exchange practices in the protohistorical period of early Mesopotamia.

The economic relationship between Mesopotamia and the Gulf is a long one which spans millennia, rather than just a few centuries, and which took many forms. Indeed, it can be suggested that the changing nature of this relationship reflects the economic and social changes taking place in southern Iraq and of the related changes in Dilmun. There was an increasing demand by Mesopotamia for both raw materials and exotica from the sixth millennium, when we have the earliest evidence for a relationship, until the annexation of Dilmun by the Kassites in the mid-second millennium. This increasing demand seems to reflect the growing complexity in social organisation in the region. The emergence of an elite group within society in southern Sumer, first seen in the late Uruk phase, and then notably in the mid-third millennium when the group expanded, encouraged an increased demand for status goods and materials (Van De Mieroop 2002). Such goods are used initially to enhance the power and prestige of the group itself, both by display and by gift-giving, because gift-giving binds both men and gods, through offerings, ever more closely into the group. In Mesopotamia such exotic materials also played a role in the birth of what Baines and Yoffee have called “high culture” in these newly emergent complex societies. Baines and Yoffee define this high culture as “the production and consumption of aesthetic items under the control, and for the benefit of, the inner elite of a civilization” (Baines and Yoffee 1998: 235). High culture becomes a vital part of the identity of any civilization. Maintaining a supply of luxuries thus becomes a political necessity, rather than an indulgence, as it helps the essential identity of the group to survive.

Wandgliederungen durch Pfeiler und Nischen bilden in der durch die Lehmziegelbauweise geprägten Architektur des Alten Orients seit dem sechsten Jt. v. Chr. ein weit verbreitetes Phänomen. In meinem Beitrag möchte ich stellvertretend für viele andere einige Beispiele früher Pfeiler-Nischen-Architektur aus Tepe Gawra und Telul eth-Thalathat erörtern, zwei wichtigen prähistorischen Siedlungen im Umland von Ninive. Tepe Gawra liegt rund 20 km nordöstlich von Ninive in einer Ebene zwischen dem Tigris und der Fußzone des Zagros, Telul eth-Thalathat dagegen etwa 60 km weiter westlich in der Sinjar-Ebene. Die im folgenden vorzustellenden Architekturbefunde überspannen einen Zeitraum von der Ubaid- bis zur Ninive V-Periode. Insbesondere die lange Schichtensequenz von Tepe Gawra ist dabei hinsichtlich der Genese der frühen Pfeiler-Nischen-Architektur in Nordmesopotamien von hoher Aussagekraft, da sie nicht bloß einige wenige Gebäude, sondern eine auf größerer Fläche ergrabene Siedlung umfaßt.

Die Schichten XX–XV des Tepe Gawra datieren in die ausgehende Halaf- und die Ubaid-3-Zeit. Mehrere Rundbauten aus den Schichten XX und XVII (Abb. 1) zeigen zungenartige Vorsprünge an den Mauerinnenseiten, die offenbar bautechnisch zu erklären sind.3 Die Vorsprünge dürften als Stützen der Wand- und Dachkonstruktion, sowie teilweise vielleicht auch als Raumteiler gedient haben. Ähnliche Gliederungen an Rundbauten kennt man ebenfalls aus Telul eth-Thalathat. Dort begegnen sie auf Tell II an der Circular Construction H-R. 1 und im Bereich des Locus E-R. 1 (Abb. 2). Beide Belege aus Telul eth-Thalathat datieren in die Phase Ubaid 3, entstammen also der gleichen Zeit wie die Gliederungen aus Tepe Gawra.

Few subjects in the field of biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies have elicited as much attention in recent decades as the origin and development of Israelite-biblical monotheism. One needs more than the fingers of both hands to list the many collections of articles and individual monographs that treat this threshold in the history of religions. Attention shifts in the search for precursors from ancient Egypt to Mesopotamia, and in the West Semitic sphere, to Ugarit and the Middle Euphrates. It will be the burden of the present discussion, while providing requisite background, to focus on the Neo-Assyrian factor in the ongoing development of Israelite monotheism, rather than on the search for its ultimate origin, which may be beyond reach in the present state of knowledge.

More precisely, I will propose that the policies and campaigns of the Sargonids, especially of Sennacherib, who made Nineveh his political capital, elicited an Israelite response that directly impacted the God-idea. That response is most immediately expressed in the prophecies of First Isaiah of Jerusalem, Sennacherib's contemporary. It was the threat to the survival of Judah and Jerusalem, emanating from Assyria, which called forth an enhanced God-idea. That idea evolved into universal monotheism, and in effect, enabled the people of Israel to survive exile and domination by successive world empires. In such terms, universal monotheism is to be seen as a religious response to empire, an enduring world-view founded on the proposition that all power exercised by humans, no matter how grandiose, is transient, and ultimately subservient to a divine plan for the whole earth, for all nations.

The media coverage of the severe weather patterns of 1982–3 and 1997–8 has reasserted for the study of history the possible influence of abrupt climate change at transitional periods. Modern theories on the fall of Ur have already looked beyond the Elamite invasion to the evidence of food shortage and failing water supply as preconditions of the event. The present study seeks to enlarge upon this theme, and will suggest that, following a period of storm and flood, a sustained drought brought an unprecedented loss of life to the city of Ur and across Sumer. The paper will finally suggest a modern and scientific explanation of the ud-šu-bala, or “weather change”, of the period.

The Sumerian epic of Lugalbanda in Hurrumkurra has not yet been edited in its entirety, but important contributions have been made in particular by CI. Wilcke and W. W. Hallo (Wilcke 1969, Hallo 1983, cf. Wilcke 1987). There now exist two complete translations: one by J. A. Black from 1998 (1998: 176–84), virtually identical with the translation accessible on the website of the University of Oxford's Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL) from about 1999; and a more recent translation with an eclectic text reconstruction by H. Vanstiphout (2003: 97–131). It is there entitled Lugalbanda in the Wilderness. Although many points have been clarified, not least thanks to the Yale source published by W. W. Hallo, especially the end of the text remains largely unintelligible and, in Vanstiphout's words, “needs more study” (2003: 162 n. 60).