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Inscriptions from Tell al-Hawa 1987–88

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

A. R. George
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Extract

In 1987 and 1988 the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq conducted two further seasons of excavations at Tell al-Hawa in the north Jezirah. The inscribed objects recovered during these excavations were an Old Babylonian tablet, an inscribed Neo-Assyrian potsherd, fragments of inscribed cones of Shalmaneser III, and a piece of stamped brick. They are published here as texts nos. 1–4.

No. 1. IM 113547 (HW 236). Fig. 1

No. 1 is the very damaged top half of an Old Babylonian administrative tablet picked up in 1988 in a canal cutting away from the main mound, in the “Lower Town Area” (mound D, area ND 11; dimensions 46 × 41 × 21 mm). The fragmentary text lists amounts of, probably, grain in volume measure (homer and seah), but for what purpose the goods were being issued or, more likely, received it is not possible to determine. The real interest of the piece lies in the mention, in the last lines of the reverse, of the toponyms Hadnum and Shuruzi. Hadnum is perhaps the same as Hadna, which is known as a north Mesopotamian locality of the Old Babylonian period from the archives of Mari (ARM II 50, 5: ma-a-at ḫa-ad-naki) and Tell al-Rimah (OBT Tell Rimah 202, 4: ḫa-ad-naki), though nothing can be said about its exact location. Shuruzi also appears in a letter from Mari, as Shuruzim (Bottéro, Habiru = CRRAI 4, p. 19, no. 20, 59: šu-ru-zi-imki). This is generally accepted to be the same place as Shurushim, known from another letter from Mari (ARM II 135, 18: šu-ru-ši-imki) to have been located on the eastern route from Shubat-Enlil to Eshnunna—so presumably somewhere between Tell Leilan and the Tigris. Although this road would almost certainly have passed Tell al-Hawa, there can be no suggestion on the available evidence that Tell al-Hawa was called Shuruzi(m)—or, for that matter, Hadnum—in the early second millennium, but the presence in this document of the two toponyms does at least confirm the site as being in the orbit of the known centres.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 52 , 1990 , pp. 41 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1990

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References

1 For the location and topography of Tell al-Hawa, and the excavations at the site, see Ball, Warwickel al., Iraq 51 (1989), pp. 1–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and idem, “The Tell al-Hawa Project: the Second and Third Seasons of Excavations at Tell al-Hawa, 1987–1988”, Mediterranean Archaeology 3 (1990, in press), where further bibliography is given.

2 On the identification of Tell Leilan with Shubat-Enlil see recently Weiss, H., “Tell Leilan and Shubat Enlil”, MARI 4, pp. 269–92Google Scholar; and Charpin, , “Šubat-Enlil et le pays d'Apum”, MARI 5, 129–40Google Scholar. According to the letter ARM II 135Google Scholar one road from Shubat-Enlil to Eshnunna passed through Ashnakkim, on the Habur west of Shubat-Enlil, whence the route presumably turned south to the Euphrates and Mari. The alternative itinerary through Shuruzi or Shurushim would thus be the more direct eastern route, crossing the upper Jezirah plain to the north of Jebel Sinjar, and so reaching the Tigris.

3 Iraq 51 (1989), pp. 44–7Google Scholar (OB tablet and three cone fragments, HW 43, 44 and 45). For a brief survey of Assyrian wall cones, see further Donbaz, —Grayson, , Royal Inscriptions on Clay Cones from Ashur (RIMS 1), pp. 1–4Google Scholar.

4 See Seux, , RA 59 (1965), p. 104 ff.Google Scholar; Epithètes, p. 114. His explanation of the development of iššakku into nešakku (n u. è š) by way of a posited intermediate writing NI(ì)-šak-ku receives support from our text where, as we read it, just this orthography appears for the first time.

5 This intrusion is not normal in cone inscriptions of Shalmaneser III, but compare the phrase šarrāni (20)meš-niabbē(a d)meš-ia {ad.meš-ia} a-lik maḫ-ri-ia in his inscription on the statue of the divine guardian Kidudu from Asshur (Craig, , Hebraica 2 (1885/1886), p. 140Google Scholar, ii 7 = Delitzsch, , BA VI/1, p. 152, 22Google Scholar; on the statue see Reade, , Bagh. Mitt. 17 (1986), p. 299 f.Google Scholar).

6 In this regard note that uninscribed cone fragments were also found in both area AB and area AC: HW 264, 310, 355, 356, 382, 409, 431 (all from AB) and two others from AC, as reported by Warwick Ball, loc. cit.