The tenth season of excavations at Nimrud, sponsored by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, began on March 2nd and ended on May 5 th, 1960. The success of the expedition was largely due to the energetic and competent staff, with whom it was a privilege, and a pleasure to work. Miss Barbara Parker, in her ninth season on the site, acted as photographer and epigraphist, and her flair and experience were, as ever, invaluable in the organisation of the expedition. Mr. David Stronach again played an important part in supervising the excavations, took many of the dig photographs and dealt with the metal objects. We were particularly fortunate in obtaining the services of three experienced archaeologists who joined us for the first time this year. Mr. H. S. Smith, Fellow of Christ's College and Lecturer in Egyptology at Cambridge University, adapted himself most energetically to the Assyrian way of life, and his specialised knowledge was of particular value in dealing with the ivories. Mr. J. J. Orchard, of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, was responsible for a great part of the catalogue and, with Mr. D. French, for the extraction, cleaning and conservation of the ivories, a most exacting and laborious task; Mr. French also recorded the pottery. We were glad to have the experienced help of Professor J. Laessøe for the latter part of the season, in site supervision, photography and the typing of the catalogue; and Miss Ann Searight, who came as a volunteer, gave valuable aid with the cleaning and treatment of the finds. To all my colleagues I must express my gratitude for hard work and good company. I am sure they would wish to join me in thanking the Director General of Antiquities, Sayid Taha Baqir, and his staff, and Sayid Fuad Safar, Inspector General of Excavations, for the generous assistance and friendly co-operation which makes our work in Iraq a pleasure; and in recording our appreciation of the help given to us by Sayid Selim al-Jelili, the representative of the Directorate General with the expedition, and Sayid Behnam Abo al-Soof, then Inspector of Antiquities in Mosul Liwa.

The group of tablets here published was excavated at Nimrud in 1952 in the administrative wing of the North-West palace, an area given the site name of ZT. Six tablets come from ZT.14, 16, and 17, and were found with tablets of a commercial nature dating to the later half of the 7th century B.C. The rest of the group was found in ZT.4 with the Nimrud letters. This room ceased to be used at some date not precisely determined and was filled up with earth containing tablets dated to the period from Tiglath-pileser III to Sargon. The dated tablets, among those from ZT.4 described below, are from the reign of Sargon, with one exception which mentions a limmu hitherto unknown. ZT.14, 16 and 17, continued to be used until the final destruction of Nimrud and the tablets were lying on the floor in a deep pile of burnt debris.

The main group from ZT.4 are typical products of the Assyrian civil service, whose scribes are shown on the monuments laboriously noting down loot and captives on the field of battle. A list of treasure; vessels and utensils in gold, silver, copper and iron (ND. 2490) could be of this category, and there is a whole group of lists dealing with captives and subject people which are an echo of the extensive transportation and resettlement schemes for which the Assyrians were first notorious. ND. 2497 gives a register of people according to their profession or age; ND. 2485 is a list of people which gives the number missing, no doubt on the road to Calah, and ND. 2443 is a list of captives with the names of their captors or masters. Two other tablets of this kind can be connected with historical episodes; ND. 2619 is a list of horsemen and chariot drivers recruited mostly in Babylonian towns and amongst the Aramean tribes in the area. This points to the end of Sargon's thirteenth campaign, when his annals relate that chariotry, cavalry and footsoldiers from Bit-Iakin were drafted into the Assyrian army. ND. 2646 is only a fragment, but mentions Hamath people, as well as other nationals, being allocated to various commands, and could be connected with Sargon's reduction of Hamath, after which contingents of Hamathite troops were incorporated into the Assyrian army.

Tell Rifa‘at, in the ‘Azaz Casa, is situated in the midst of the village of the same name, thirty-five kilometres to the north of Aleppo in the Syrian Region of the United Arab Republic.

The modern village, with a population of 5–6,000, is the seat of a Mudir Nahir; it lies five kilometres east of the Aleppo-‘Azaz road, close to the Turkish border, and is on the railway line from Aleppo to Istanbul. Trial excavations were made on this site by the Czech philologist Hrozny in 1924, but after three months’ work he abandoned his investigations; no detailed report on this work has so far been published, and apart from a few fragments in the Aleppo Museum no material from the excavation appears to be extant.

My attention was drawn to Tell Rifa‘at in 1953 in the course of a survey of sites on either side of the Syro-Turkish frontier; but it was not until 1956 that under the auspices of the Institute of Archaeology, University of London and with the assistance of a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and from the Australian Institute of Archaeology, Melbourne, a preliminary investigation of the site was undertaken. A further season had been planned for 1957, but owing to the political situation it was not possible to resume work until the summer of 1960, when a two-month season was carried out with the support of funds from the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and the C. H. W. Johns Memorial Fund of Cambridge University, the Ashmolean Museum, the Australian Institute of Archaeology, Melbourne, the Russell Trust, and the City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham.

Dans un récent fascicule d'Iraq, P. Hulin a publié une très jolie plaquette de Nimrud, ND 5545, qui énumère les interdits, alimentaires ou autres, auxquels il importait de se conformer durant les sept premiers jours du mois de Tešrit, période de pénitence que terminait, le lendemain, une journée de liesse et de purification.

L'intérêt principal de ce texte est de nous confirmer l'importance qu'avait, dans la vie magique et religieuse des Akkadiens, ce prélude au second semestre de l'année.

De cet ensemble de prescriptions rituelles nous possédions en effet déjà trois témoignages. Le premier, KAR 147, fait l'objet, tout comme ND 5545, d'une tablette particulière. Les deux autres ont été insérés par les scribes assyriens dans leur compilation générale des hémérologies. Il y est d'ailleurs précisé que l'une des versions était d'origine assyrienne, et l'autre, la simple copie d'un original d'Akkad.

C'est donc désormais par trois sources différentes que nous est attestée la tradition assyrienne en la matière. La tradition babylonienne au contraire ne nous est connue qu'indirectement, par la copie KAR 177, rev. II, 48, I, 44 dont le modèle ne nous est pas parvenu.

The prehistoric site of Ras al ‘Amiya is situated about five miles north of Kish, at a point midway between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates (Fig. 1). The whole settlement lies under the present surface of the alluvium and it only came to light some four years ago when a series of canals were cut through the area in connection with the Greater Musseyib Drainage Project.

Attention was first drawn to the site when it was discovered that sherds of the richly painted Hajji Muhammad variety, such as those shown in Plates XLIV, 5, XLVII, 10, XLVIII, 2, XLIX, 7 and LVI, 1–5, were associated with others of a more standard ‘Ubaid type (Plates XLIV, 2 and 7–9, XLV, 1, 2 and 9 and XLVI, 2, 5 and 6). The association of the two wares at once suggested that the settlement might have an important bearing on certain problems connected with the evolution of ‘Ubaid pottery and that excavations might produce useful results. At the same time the impending use of the canals in the area seemed to call for an early start to any such field work. With these considerations in view the British School of Archaeology in Iraq decided to support a small sounding at the site in the early summer of last year.

The mound of Yanik Tepe is situated about twenty miles south-west of Tabriz, in north-west Iran, in the central district of the administrative province of east Azerbaijan (see Fig. 1). It stands three miles west of the small town of Khosrowshah, close to the railway from Teheran. This mound is one of at least fifty round the shores of Lake Urmia (now Lake Rezaieh) which were found during a survey of sites carried out by the writer in 1958–9. Most of these sites are round Rezaieh, on the west side of the lake, but there is a number of mounds at intervals along the east side and two or three on the north. The Solduz plain, just south of the lake, where Hasanlu is situated, has been thoroughly surveyed by the American expedition. Yanik Tepe itself is quite a large mound, covering an area of about twenty acres, and with a maximum height of 16.50 metres. It has gently sloping sides, is virtually without vegetation and—a great practical advantage to the archaeologist—is entirely uncultivated, since only irrigated land in this district will grow crops. Presumably, however, there were springs or streams in the vicinity during the Bronze Age. The present village of Tazekand, close to Yanik Tepe, depends for its livelihood principally on fruit-growing rather than cereals.

This curious composition, translated here for the first time, has a certain number of unusual features not found elsewhere in Mesopotamian literature. The poem is a monologue by a deity, in all probability Nanše (see commentary on line 153) who, as “mother of the fish,” has built a new house for them, and invites all of them to come and spend the night there, where they will find a comfortable place of rest and will be safe and secure from all the animals which usually prey on them. It is always difficult to place works of Mesopotamian literature in the categories devised by classical rhetoricians. The anthropomorphic descriptions place our composition close to the fable, but it cannot be considered as such, because the classical definition of a fable always includes some kind of action, and no action at all is involved in our text. In some other respects we may consider our poem as lyrical: it is based on the author's sentiments evoked by the multiple aspects of aquatic life, and on the emotional appeal of a “sweet home.” Other secondary themes interwoven with this are the “naming of the fish”—to be compared perhaps with Adam naming all living creatures in the Garden of Eden or, more probably, it is simply a display of erudition—and the attempt to explain how water birds prey on fish, in spite of the fact that both of them are under Nanše's protection.

Fragments of four inscribed clay cylinders were found during the 1958 season of excavations at Fort Shalmaneser. Their provenance, the quarters of the rab-ekalli, has already been described by D. Oates in Iraq. The texts are in the main identical with the complete cylinder of Esarhaddon published by D. J. Wiseman in 1952, recording the reconstruction of the ekal-mašarti of Kalḫu in 672 B.C.

The four cylinders bear similar texts except for a few minor points of orthography. One fragment (ND. 7100) is dated 21st. Ab 676 B.C. and two others to the 10th. Elul of the same year (ND. 7097, 7098) while the date is missing from the fourth fragment (ND. 7099). The text of ll. 36–44 is copied below (Fig. 1) from ND. 7100 which furnishes the most complete example of the short building inscription concluding all four cylinders; variants and restorations being given from ND. 7097, 7098.