The start of the fourth and final season at Umm Dabaghiyah was seriously delayed by yet another variation in the Iraq weather pattern. In this case torrential and long-lasting late spring rains not only caused wide-spread flooding throughout the country, but also brought down the bridges across Wadi Tharthar, a phenomenon that meant we could not reach the site, or even Hatra, until both rains and floods subsided and a temporary sandbag bridge had been erected. Two attempts were made to reach the site during late March and early April; both were abortive. During the second attempt preparations for making a temporary bridge were in hand, so over a month late ours were the first vehicles across the new bridge. Once the camp was established the weather relented and we were able to work almost without interruption. The delay did mean that we had to work in ever-increasing heat. Let it suffice to say that the June shade temperatures, taken under a tent flap as no shade is available at the site, kept steadily in the upper 40°s C with a maximum of 49°C (c. 126°F). It may be worth recording while memory is fresh that during this hot period the flies, of which we had over-many, simply lay still on the tent floors apparently incapable of flying.

In 1958 A. L. Oppenheim, in discussion with C. J. Gadd, whose assistant at the School of Oriental and African Studies I then was, kindly suggested that I should undertake a new edition of the historical texts of Sargon II; subsequently Professor Oppenheim sent me some notes (not copies) by Dr. Geers on Sargon texts. I undertook a considerable amount of work on this project, copying all unpublished fragments of relevant texts which I could discover in the British Museum, and re-copying some others where I felt able to improve substantially on the published version. Unfortunately, after this initial part of the work had been completed, other commitments mounted, severely limiting the time I could apply to my new edition. Thus my promised new edition, though in an advanced stage, had still not reached completion when I heard that a younger scholar was also applying himself to this project.

In these circumstances it seems that my most satisfactory course would be to leave the new edition to one who may have less commitments of other kinds, and to publish forthwith, as my own contribution, such copies and re-copies as would seem to assist in the elucidation of the history of the reign of Sargon II. The present article is an initial contribution in this direction.

This is a catalogue of the cylinder seals and jar sealings from the excavations at Tell al Rimah during the years 1964–1971. Theresa Carter is publishing a complete catalogue of the small finds, in which the few early stamp seals will be included. The seal impressions on the Middle Assyrian business economic archive published by H. W. F. Saggs and D. J. Wiseman in Iraq 30 (1968) will be published later in one group, as there are too many for this article.

The majority of the cylinder seals in the catalogue are representative of the main historical levels which were excavated; these are: (1) Old Babylonian from about the time of Šamši-Adad, Phase 3 in the Temple (Area A) and Level 6 in the Palace mound (Area C); (2) Mitannian, Phase 2 in the Temple, and Level 5 in the Palace mound, (house levels overlying the O.B. Palace); (3) Middle Assyrian, Phase 1 in the Temple and Levels 2–4 in the house levels of the Palace mound. There is a meagre Late Assyrian occupation on the Temple mound, on the Palace mound below, and Area D, but the only considerable structure was the shrine built on to the north side of the Ziggurat, from which most of the Late Assyrian seals came. The only seals from Area D came from a tomb of the Mitannian period.

Students of comparative religion and historians of historiography have for some time now been debating the value, or even the validity, of an “historical outlook”. Within the swamps of this impossibly large debate, one of the few points of seeming bedrock is that the historical outlook which is characteristic of Western civilization was alien to the peoples of the ancient Near East, the Hebrews possibly excepted. One awkward fact which this consensus must leave out of account is that in first-millennium Babylon there was something which looks like historical writing—the chronicles. So far as I know, they have been completely ignored in this debate.

On the other hand, the chronicles have occasionally been singled out for high praise. Students of ancient historiography who, like myself, must depend on translations of the cuneiform texts, have generally supposed that of the many genres represented by these texts the most “historiographic” are the chronicles. One historian concluded that “the great Neo-Babylonian Chronicle” was indeed “the apogee of ancient Near Eastern historiography (exclusive of the Old Testament) and deserves to rank in importance with such milestones as the histories of Thucydides, Orosius and Ranke. Secular history as we know it today here first appeared”.

The reports given below cover excavation work in Iraq from June 1973 to December 1974. The information on each site has been kindly provided by the director of the excavations, unless otherwise specified, and the final version checked by him wherever possible. The sites are arranged in alphabetical order, according to their best known name. For a variety of reasons the collection of reports is not quite complete on this occasion: recently renewed excavations at Warka and Larsa were too late to be included, and work by the Directorate General of Antiquities at Hatra, Samarra, and in one or two Parthian or Seleucid sites on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad could not be covered. Reports on the work at Hatra, where Building b in the north-west corner of the Temple Enclosure yielded very interesting results, and at Samarra where work began at Qubbat al-Suleibiyah near Qasr al-Ashiq and was continued on the Friday Mosque, will be found in the forthcoming issue of Sumer, and we hope to include reports on all these excavations in our next annual report.

The material for this report was assembled by Mr. J. N. Postgate, and the Editors are glad to acknowledge his efforts. They join with him in expressing their gratitude to all those colleagues who have so willingly contributed information on their work, and especially to Dr. Isa Salman, the Director General of Antiquities in Iraq, for his generous co-operation which alone has made the compilation possible.

BM 91452 is a piece of an inscribed lapis lazuli mace head. It is about 7 cm high; approximately two-thirds of the circumference is missing so that the beginnings and ends of the seven inscribed lines are not preserved. The inscription has never been copied or fully edited and I am grateful to the Trustees of the British Museum for permission to do so. The object comes from Nimrud and the inscription is probably to be assigned to Aššurnaṣirpal II.

The mace head is of special interest because its ancient name actually appears in the inscription. This is the word NA4ḫal-tap-pa in line 6. An instrument called ḫaltappû/ḫultuppû, associated with the god Ea, is known in connection with the exorcist (āšipu) and the casting out of evil demons. The present inscription now identifies the instrument, which had previously been called a “whipping rod0, as a mace head. The fact that ḫaltappaû/ḫultuppû is commonly preceded by the determinative for wood (GIŠ) whereas in this text it is preceded by the determinative for stone (NA4) presents no difficulty, GIŠ could refer to the wooden shaft while NA4 could refer to the stone head; or, under varying circumstances of time and place, there may have been completely wooden ḫaltappû/ḫulluppû. In any event, this lapis lazuli mace head is part of a cult object connected with exorcism and associated with Ea; the association with Ea being supported by the divine epithets preserved at the beginning of the text (the divine name is missing in the lacuna).

A stone weight with a cuneiform inscription was discovered during the 1974 season of excavations at Tell Sweyhat in Syria. Tell Sweyhat is located on the left bank of the Euphrates River approximately 64 km. south of Carchemish. The British excavations at Sweyhat are sponsored by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, as part of the international campaign launched by the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums to rescue those sites threatened by the completion of the Tabqa Dam and the formation of Lake Al-Assad.

The object under discussion (Fig. 1), Sweyhat registration number 585, is now on permanent display in the special Euphrates Valley Exhibition which opened on 16th November 1974 at the National Museum, Aleppo. It is a smooth, barrel-shaped weight ground from grey limestone which measures 12.5 cm. in length and 4 · 5 cm. in diameter and weighs 472 · 2 grammes. Its original weight would have been slightly higher, since it is worn and chipped at both ends, perhaps through use as a pounder or grinder. The three cuneiform signs inscribed along the main axis of the weight measure 3 cm. in total length. The first sign, a triangular incision with its apex to the right, clearly represents the numeral I, and the following two signs read MA.NA, i.e. maneh or mina, the well-known Near Eastern unit of weight. I am indebted to Dr. Edmond Sollberger for advice on the inscription, which he dates approximately to the end of the third millennium B.C., and for calling my attention to comparable weights in the British Museum. The date is confirmed by the associated pottery, which has close parallels among Mallowan's “Late Sargonid” material from Brak and in Jidle Level 5.