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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2014
Three cuneiform inscriptions, two on clay and one on stone, were discovered during the 1985 season of excavations at Tell Brak, and each is published in the present note.
No. 9 (TB 7037); see Fig. 1
No. 1 is a fragment of an unbaked Old Akkadian administrative document, a thin flake from near the right edge of what is probably the reverse. It measures 2·7 × 2·4 × 0·4 cm (at maximum), and is evidently a ration list or something similar. Each entry is separated from the following one by two deep rulings, the upper sweeping up to the right. Numerals are clear in lines 1′ and 3′, while line 2′ is probably the end of a personal name. The traces after the numeral in line 1′ are apparently an erasure.
1 For the previous cuneiform material from Tell Brak see Iraq 47 (1985), 187–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with references. Professor Karlheinz Deller has pointed to many improvements in the readings of the names in TB6001; see NABU 2 (1987)Google Scholar. He has moreover offered much help with the interpretation of TB 7035 below, as acknowledged in the notes. The opportunity is taken to express warm thanks. Tablets in this and the following article are numbered consecutively to those of the 1984 season, thus beginning here with no. 9.
2 See Iraq 47, 192Google Scholar.
3 No trace of the inscribed part of this tablet was found, but the break was certainly an ancient one.
4 Small, drilled-style seals in hard stones are common in the 14th century B.C. throughout northern Mesopotamia and, particularly, Syria (see Collon, D., The Alalakh cylinder seals (BAR S.132; Oxford, 1982), 108–9 for details)Google Scholar. Antithetically placed griffins, drill holes and bucrania are frequently depicted on these seals but an unusual feature is the windblown hair of the winged figure, for which see Porada, E. in Akkadica 13 (1979), 3 ffGoogle Scholar. The zigzag border is paralleled on a seal in the Seyrig collection (Syria 37 (1960)Google Scholar, pl. IB), and a border broken by the design does occasionally occur (e.g. Collon, D., First Impressions (London, 1987)Google Scholar, no. 273). (Ed).
