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Notes on Nineveh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

M. Louise Scott  and
John MacGinnis
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Extract

The following article derives from field-work carried out by the authors at Nineveh from January to March 1987. This work would not have been possible without the kind permission of Dr. Muayyad Damirji, Director General of Antiquities, to whom we are most grateful. We would also like to extend our thanks to the many other Iraqi archaeologists who showed interest in our work and gave us assistance, in particular Dr. Abd as-Sattar Jabar al-Azawi, Muzahem Mahmoud Husein, Samir Dhahir Muhassin al-Saraf, Mohammed Ali Mustafa, Dr. Tariq Madhloom, Dr. Behnam Abu as-Soof, Hazim Abdul Hamid, Fadhil Abbas Ahmed and Salim Yunis Hosein; to Professor David Stronach for the opportunity of working on the University of California at Berkeley excavations at Nineveh in 1989 and for assistance in completing our earlier work; to Dr. Jeremy Black, Nicholas Postgate, Dr. Roger Matthews, Tony Wilkinson, Dr. Julian Reade, Dr. Trevor Watkins, Professor Anthony Snodgrass and Professor Malcolm Colledge for their academic and/or logistic support; to Dr. P. R. S. Moorey and the other participants in a seminar held in Oxford in October 1989 for their valuable discussion and comments; and to Jim Roberts for his translation of works in Arabic.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 52 , 1990 , pp. 63 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1990

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References

1 Abbreviations are the usual, plus ALN = Rassam, H., Ashur and the Land of Mimrod (1897, repr. 1971)Google Scholar; CBI = Walker, C. B. F., Cuneiform Brick Inscriptions in the British Museum… (1981)Google Scholar; CEN = Thompson, R. Campbell and Hutchinson, R. W., A Century of Excavations at Mineveh (1929)Google Scholar; M&M = Madhloom, Tariq and Mahdi, Ali Mohammed, Nineveh (1976 English edition based on the Arabic of.1972)Google Scholar; RD = (unpublished) dissertation of Julian Reade on the public buildings of the Assyrian capitals.

2 The operations of Botta, Layard, Rassam, Smith, Budge, King and Campbell Thompson are described in CEN; a complete account and bibliography will appear in the RIA under “Ninive.”

3 For an assessment of the archaeological and epigraphical information on Nebi Yunus, see Turner, , Iraq 30 (1972), 68–85Google Scholar.

4 Thompson, Campbell, Iraq 7 (1940), 92Google Scholar; Reade, , RA 72 (1978), 53Google Scholar; van Driel, , The Cult of Aššur (1969), 29–31Google Scholar; and the dictionaries.

5 Reade, , RA 72 (1978), 53Google Scholar; Thompson, Campbell, Iraq 7 (1940), 91–93Google Scholar.

6 Possibly due to the earlier interpretation of this site as a royal abode, this building is sometimes referred to in Mosul as the Dar Wila'im (lit. “Banqueting Hall”, apparently an Arabic translation of the Akkadian Bīt Akīti).

7 Cf. also Colledge, M. A. R., Parthian Art (1977) 84, Pl. 5Google Scholar.

8 An addendum to this will appear in the preliminary report to the 1989 season of the Berkeley excavations.

9 It is of course true that in the reliefs lamassu's may be seen transported in one piece, but the point is that these were only roughly cut to shape. It could easily be the case that a finished or nearly finished lamassu could not be hauled over long distances without damage to the fine detailing.

10 Note that in line 2 of this inscription “I built” is rendered an-dù in Sumerian, where we might have expected in-dù. It is possible that the /a/ vowel in the Sumerian prefix was chosen under the influence of the corresponding /a/ vowel in the Akkadian first person singular preterite, abni.