In Vol. XII (1950) of Iraq I published as much as was then available of the results of Rassam and Clayton's excavations at Toprak Kale. I also summarily described the material from the excavations of Lehmann-Haupt and others at the same site. Since then, some items missing in 1950 have come to light in the British Museum, while others not then fit for publication have been cleaned and repaired. In addition, I have now obtained access to Russian publications, with which I was then unacquainted, dealing with the subject.

A Few miles inland from Rapperswil on Lake Zürich, at Buhnhof, by Hombrechtikon in Canton Zürich, the charming country home of Herr Gottfried Schaerer, erected in 1945–6, there has been built into the interior wall of one of the public rooms an inscribed and decorated stone which is reproduced in Plate IV and which is here published by the kind permission of the owner.

Regarding the provenance of the stone Herr Schaerer has supplied the following information: “So long ago as 1911 I was resident as a twenty-year-old business man in Hodeida, which at that time belonged to Turkey. I had to leave that port in the same year, because the Italians on November 11th, 1911, on the outbreak of the war against Tripoli, bombarded Hodeida from warships and thereafter imposed a commercial blockade on the coast. In 1913 I went back there and, in addition to my business activities, I was U.S.A. Consular Agent. Under the capitulations which then prevailed in Turkey such an office afforded various privileges and prestige. Since I had a working knowledge of the Arabic vernacular I was attracted by the desire to visit Sanaa, which could be reached by mule in six days' journey, though permission was given but rarely. However, the sojourn in Hodeida of the Vali, whose headquarters were at Sanaa, enabled me to procure an invitation to go there. So on July 25th I set off with an escort for Sanaa. Arriving in Menakha on the fourth day I was hospitably received by my good friend the garrison commander of Menakha in his house. This gave me an opportunity to stroll about in this picturesque hill fort, and naturally I wandered through the bazaar and the caravan area.

The 62 tablets described in the catalogue which follows were excavated during the 1952 season at Nimrud. All except one come from a small complex of rooms numbered 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17, on the Ziggurat terrace (site Z.T.), situated between the North West Palace and the Ziggurat; Z.T., as it now appears, actually abutted on to the north side of the palace and was founded at the same time by Aššur-naṣir-pal. The tablets were associated with a late floor level and when the building was burnt, probably at the end of Aššur-bani-pal's reign, they were baked, to a greater or lesser degree, in situ.

Eponyms are preserved on 52 of the tablets and 22 bear dated limmu of the Eponym canon, between 687 and 650 B.C.; 30 of the tablets have limmu dating after 648 B.C., comprising 18 limmu in all. Only one, Dadi, belongs after the reign of Aššur-bani-pal, and this tablet was found out of position (N.D. 2076).

The Expedition to Nimrud sponsored by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq began its fifth successive season on March 5th, 1953, and was in the field for a period of two months until the end of the first week in May. The opening of the dig was preceded by a week of violent rain and the spring was exceptionally wet, but so effective is the drainage on an ancient mound that there was but little interruption to the work. Once again, on an average, more than two hundred workmen were employed and we made every effort to dig as much ground as we could, for this was to be our last campaign before publishing the results of what had been achieved since 1949. It is therefore intended that the report of our latest Expedition shall be followed by a book incorporating the general account of what has been done at Nimrud in the past five years. The plan of our campaign was thus directed with this end in view, and we aimed especially at assembling as much fresh information as possible about the main chronological sequence of the different periods of occupation in the city from the beginning of the ninth, until the end of the seventh century B.C.