The mixed collection of ivory objets d'art called the Nimrud Ivories, for want of a better name, was part of the earliest fruit of those excavations which first set the Mesopotamian branch of archaeology on its course of brilliant achievement. Their ultimate publication by the British Museum is now projected. Towards this end the present essay is designed as a tentative study and provisional report.

The obscurity which has surrounded them has been due to the exceptional difficulties attending their sorting and repair, since, in fact, they consisted of an enormous and jumbled mass of calcined and brittle fragments. After many months' work the mass of several thousand fragments, many quite formless, has now been sorted out; about a thousand joins have been found, but the results turn out meagre and disappointing, although there is still much to be done. Hardly a single completed object results. But how comes it, after all, that there are so many pieces? The lapse of time has completely obscured their history. It seems to have passed unnoticed by all that much more was exhibited in the Museum than Layard was ever known to have found at Nimrud. It was noticed recently that the Nimrud Ivories are not a homogeneous collection in point of style, most being an uncertain element, but some being normal Assyrian work; we may now add further, not all were from the same building and not all are even from Nimrud. It is the case, as Goldsmith says, that there is something so attractive about riches that the greater heap collects from the smaller, and by this strange law of gravity several pieces from other sites have been attracted into the orbit of the greater mass from Nimrud. Lastly, not all those from Nimrud are from the same spot, but mainly are from two separate deposits. With those few pieces, however, not from Nimrud, or those which are simply of native Assyrian style, we shall not deal here except for occasional use as incidental evidence.

Many years ago Professor J. L. Myres published a very suggestive paper on ‘The Early Pot-Fabrics of Asia Minor’, defining the areas characterized by black or red or white slip ware and endeavouring to correlate them with climatic conditions.

Much water, both clear and muddy, has flowed under the bridge since 1903 and we can now form some idea of Anatolian cultures in the third millennium B.C. We can recognize a Troadic area in the west, a group of pre-Hittite sites in the centre, a rather shadowy Cilician culture in the south, an equally vague culture in the Van district, and a very important group of sites in the Upper Euphrates valley and its tributary vales, a country populated in historic times by Subaraeans and other less important peoples.

One of the most recent contributions to the prehistory of Anatolia is provided by certain passages in Dr. Frankfort's Archaeology and the Sumerian Question, a most valuable and stimulating book; if I criticize one section of it I trust that it will be realized that I differ from him chiefly on certain emphases and stresses, and admire the treatise in general as much as any of his readers.

In the spring of 1904 the German excavators at Babylon unearthed the remains of a group of buildings on the mound Hornera in the east of the city (Fig. 1). The northern part is a Greek theatre, constructed principally of crude brick, though brick rubble laid with gypsum mortar is used in some special places.

‘An das Bühnengebäude schliesst südlich ein grosses Peristyl mit anliegenden, meist ziemlich gleichwertigen Zimmern an. Die südliche Reihe dieser Zimmer ist grösstenteils vernichtet. Vom Peristyl liegen noch die Bruchziegel-Fundamente soweit, dass nach ihnen die Hauptmasse genommen werden konnten. Die umlaufende Halle war im Süden zweischiffig, wie das bei Palaestra-Peristylen häufig ist. Von den Säulen, die auf diesen Fundamenten standen, haben sich ziemlich zahlreiche Reste in der Form kreisförmig zugehackter Barnsteine, von denen einige roh gehauene, sicher einst feiner verputzte Profile trugen, erhalten. Im Osten öffnete sich, ebenfalls in Säulenstellung, gegen die Halle des Peristyls eine langgestreckte Exedra.’