Le Musée du Louvre a acquis en 1951 sur le marché parisien des antiquités, deux pièces appartenant toutes deux et depuis de longues années à des collections privées. Il nous parait intéressant de les faire connaître ici puisque leur origine mésopotamienne ne peut faire de doute, alors même que nous n'ayions pu obtenir aucun renseignement sur leur provenance exacte. Les ressemblances indéniables avec le matériel retrouvé dans la région de la Diyala, permettent toutefois et de les authentiquer et de les replacer dans leur horizon géographique et leur milieu historique. Nous remercions vivement notre collègue et ami, le professeur M.EX. Mallowan qui nous donne cette occasion.

The Expedition began its third consecutive season at Nimrud on March 7th, 1951, and continued until the end of April. On an average approximately 200 workmen were employed, considerably more than in the two previous seasons, and this greater effort was correspondingly rewarded. The larger scale on which we were enabled to work was due to the support of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and we wish to take this opportunity of thanking the Trustees for their generosity and the Director, Mr. Francis Henry Taylor, for the interest which he has taken in the Expedition. We are similarly indebted to the friendly co-operation of Mr. Charles Wilkinson who discussed the project with us in England in 1950. The Trustees approved the suggestion that Mr. Kelly Simpson of the Egyptian Department should join us on the dig; we welcomed him as a friend no less than as a valued member of our staff. This association with our American colleagues has thus proved to be a most happy and successful venture.

It was not only in temples and upon tables of offerings that sacrifices were performed in early times in Mesopotamia, for certain detached areas were hallowed, and in them sacrifices were offered, constantly repeated on precisely the same spot. The ritual directions for the preparation for these ceremonies must have been both explicit and stringent, for the evidence reveals a scrupulous adherence to every detail, perpetually repeated every time the place was used. These particular places of sacrifice are known as “Opferstätten”, the designation given them by the excavators at Uruk-Warka, who were the first to interpret the evidence correctly; it is, indeed, to Dr. Lenzen's perspicuity and detailed observations that we owe most of the information we possess concerning them.

A Fortunate and rare discovery has given us a new and complete inscribed stela of the well-known Assyrian king Aššur-naṣir-pal II (Pls. II-VI). This monument was found in its original position within a few feet of the excavations of his palace made by Layard and Rassam. The sandstone block had been erected near the doorway (Fig. 1) leading to the throne-room, and was inscribed with details of the ceremonies and festivities celebrating the formal opening of the palace in the year 879 B.C. The discovery itself occurred in April, 1951, during last season's work at Nimrud; as a result we are now able to write additional details into the history of the ancient Assyrian military capital. The new text is of especial interest because it also gives us for the first time a complete list of trees planted in the royal orchards set out near the city, and what may well prove to be the oldest extant Assyrian menu. A detailed account is given of the food prepared for the entertainment of 69,574 persons during the ten days' festivities. This information, together with many other particulars not hitherto available from the records of this reign, gives this text an unusual significance. Our interest in the Assyrian monarchy is heightened by the insight now given into the peaceful and far-sighted activities of this ruler whose reign is known mostly, but unfortunately, from its display of military might and “frightfulness.”

As is well known, al-Fārābī formulated his political philosophy on more than one occasion. The most comprehensive statements of his political views are to be found in two texts which engaged the attention of the German orientalist Dieterici and whose Arabic titles may conveniently be rendered the Ideal State and the Political Philosophy. It is apparently these two works which are mentioned together in terms of the highest praise by the Qāḍī Ṣā'id of Toledo (died 462/1070). The general position developed in both works is the same, but the relation between them remains quite obscure. As certain topics receive greater development in the Political Philosophy it is natural to think of it as later in date than the Ideal State, which is said to have been begun at Baghdad in 330/941 and completed at Damascus in the following year. If this is correct, the Political Philosophy, like Plato's Laws, was produced in the last years of its author's lifetime. (Al-Fārābī died in 339/950.)

The most important of the rich and varied pieces of carved ivory discovered at Nimrud during 1949 and 1950 have already been illustrated and discussed in previous numbers of this Journal. The photographs which accompany this article, Plates XII-XVIII, illustrate the remainder of what still needed to be published from those two seasons: anything omitted is probably too much mutilated or fragmentary to be worth describing.

I am indebted to Mr. C. J. Gadd and Dr. Naji al Aṣil for permission to publish these two axe-heads. (Copyright with the Directorate General of Antiquities, Baghdad, and British Museum, London).

Plate XXXI, 1 is in the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum, No. 26948, and measures 19.5 cms. in length. It was bought with a collection of tablets in 1898 and has no known provenance. Plate XXXI, 2, 3 is in the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, No. IM 11494, and is said to have been found at Khafajah. This axe measures 20 cms. and bears an inscription along its upper edge which Mr. Gadd has kindly read as follows:—

The sockets of both these axes are remarkably similar and the heavy moulding round the edge of the shaft-hole is characteristic of many Iranian axes from Luristan. (See my Western Asiatic Shaft-hole Axes, Iraq XI, 1, pl. XXXVIII, 3 and introduction to Types 11 and 12). But while the Luristan examples have only a swelling or boss behind the socket, the British Museum and Baghdad axes have a definite hook which may have been used if the hafting was strengthened by binding which would have passed round the hook and the shaft of the axe. A similar socket with moulding and hook is found on the axe found by Professor M. E. L. Mallowan at Chagar Bazar which has an engraved scroll pattern round the border of the socket and the hook. (See Iraq IV, 2, pl. XV, and p. 152 and Iraq XI, 1 and p. 103).

This well-preserved cylinder, illustrated on Plate XIX, is reported to have been found by a ploughman about I mile west of the tall, not far from the east bank of the river Tigris and close to the modern village of Nimrud at a point where the ground bears traces of Assyrian debris. It is hoped later on that it may be possible to examine this ground in order to determine whether or no this inscription is likely to have originated there. The cylinder was brought by shaikh Abdullah Nejaifi to Miss B. Parker, the secretary-librarian of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, in the spring of 1951. Miss Parker made a preliminary study of the text, and prepared a transliteration and translation of it. During the course of the season, while Miss Parker was fully occupied as photographer and assistant epigraphist, I was asked to prepare a final version and copy (Plates XX-XXI) for publication.

The inscriptions found at Nimrud (Kalḫu) during the last season were notable for their variety and historical interest rather than for their quantity. The largest and most important discovery was a stela of Aššur-naṣir-pal II located in a recess to the left of the doorway leading into the throne-room of the North-West Palace, the construction and dedication of which it records. This has given many new details, especially concerning the royal hunt, the lay-out of the city park and the lavish ten-day entertainment given to 69,574 guests when the reconstruction of Kalḫu had been completed in 879 B.C. This text has been published in full on pages 29-39, and illustrated on Plates VII-XI. Two other inscriptions of the same king found this season were already known from the earlier excavations of Layard in the throne-room (1845-7). These were the large two-stepped throne base inscribed with the usual standard inscription of Aššur-naṣir-pal but giving additional details of his expedition to the Mediterranean (ND. 1122) and a stone tablet with the common “Inscription from the Wall of Calah” (ND. 1121) of which duplicates have been found in previous seasons.

The subject of this article is a type of palace known in North Syria from the ninth to the seventh century B.C. There is no proof that the ancients called it bît hilani, but it is probable that the Assyrians, when using the term, had such a palace in mind. However, whether or not the designation is justified, we shall be dealing with concrete architectural forms. For the purpose of this article the bît hilani is a palace with two long narrow rooms, both with their main axis parallel to the façade. The first is a portico with from one to three columns, often placed at the top of a low flight of steps. Stairs to the upper storey are set to one side of the portico.

The most important contribution to the subject of Urartian archaeology is the publication in 1950 of a preliminary report on the excavations at Karmir-Blur. This (Karmir Blur, I) is a short work of 97 pages accompanied by 16 half-tone illustrations and 64 text figures by B. B. Piotrovsky (Akademii Nauk Armyanskoy S.S.R.., Erivan, 1950). Its importance lies in the fact, first, that it is the first controlled excavation of any importance which has taken place in Urartian territory, and second, in the nature of the material discovered and described. The care with which the excavation was evidently conducted further adds to its importance. As copies of this work outside the “Iron Curtain” must be exceedingly rare, we have thought fit to present a detailed and illustrated summary for the benefit of Western students. The book, too, may be condensed with some profit, as it repeats itself in different chapters yet lacks enough cross-references.