One of the most interesting discoveries of the French excavation conducted by Monsieur Parrot at Mari was the beautiful seated figure of Ur-nanshe, “the great singer”, She sits on a basketry seat or cushion smiling, her feet neatly crossed and her hands folded; by her office she recalls the scene on the famous so-called “Mosaic Standard” found by Sir Leonard Woolley at Ur, which Professor Mallowan has suggested is itself part of a musical instrument. In this scene a woman with long black hair, also with folded hands, stands singing behind the figure of a musician playing a large, bull-headed lyre with eleven strings. The musician wears a long garment and across his chest an ornamental band or baldric, which is continued on the lyre behind the bull's head. It seems likely that this band is a support for holding the lyre. The musician holds the lyre high and close to his shoulder and sweeps it with his fingers (Plate XII, a). This type of musical instrument was, of course, also well known at Mari, as a fragment of inlay found by Monsieur Parrot shows.

Die Gründungsurkunde Marduk-apal-iddina II. für den Ningišzida Tempel, die der Eroberer Uruks, Sargon II, in seine Residenz Nimrud gebracht hatte, wurde von Herrn Kollegen Gadd publiziert. Heute möchte ich ihm zu seinem 75. Geburtstag mit meinen herzlichsten Glückwünschen eine kleine Arbeit überreichen, die mit den Tempelbauten Marduk-apal-iddinas II. beginnt und mit den Neubauten Sargons II. beendet wird.

Sehr wahrscheinlich ist Uruk zusammengewachsen aus ursprünglich zwei verschiedenen Städten, Eanna und Kullab. Noch in frühdynastischer Zeit war das von einer Mauer umgebene Eanna wesentlich größer als in den sogenannten historischen Perioden. Wir kennen zwar die Gesamtausdehnung von Eanna für die hocharchaische Zeit nicht, können indessen mit Sicherheit sagen, daß die Ausdehnung auf der Nordwest-und Südwestseite sich beträchtlich weiter hinaus erstreckte als nach der dritten Dynastie von Ur. Erst in dieser Kulturperiode nahm Eanna die Gestalt an, die es bis in die achämenidische Zeit beibehalten hat.

The circular tripod vessel (Plate XXI) described below, the property of Mrs. J.Worth by whose kind permission it is here published, was acquired by her late husband, Colonel J. G. Worth, at Ur, while he was serving as A.D.C. (Lieutenant) to General Loch in Iraq. Some doubt might be thought to exist of the correctness of this provenance in view of the fact that Colonel Worth had previously served for some years in Aden, but Mrs. Worth positively states that the vessel came from Ur. The possibility of such a provenance makes it worth presenting here.

The vessel, ht. 5·6 × diam. 9·15 cm., stands on three stylised animal's feet, which have grooves filed in the outer edge to simulate four toes on each (part is chipped away on two of the feet). The bases of the feet have filed cross grooves, and the lower outside edge of the bowl has a filed tooth ornament. The inside of the bowl, depth 3·1 cm., has concentric striations from grinding. The outer wall of the bowl has two protruding ridges demarcating a band in which are incised the names ‘mkhl ḥm in the South Arabian alphabet (Fig. 1). The lower cross stroke of the ms is horizontal, and in the case of the first, coincides with, though it slightly deepens, the groove defining the upper edge of the lower bounding ridge.

The first season of excavations at Choga Mami began on December 2nd, 1967, and continued until February 26th, 1968. The work was sponsored by the British School of Archaeology and supported by generous grants from the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, and the American Philosophical Society. The staff consisted of Mr. David Oates (Field Director and architect), Miss Elizabeth Dowman (conservator and registrar), Miss Carolyn Prater (archaeologist), and Mr. and Mrs. Michael Jarman of the Early Agriculture Project, Cambridge University, in charge of faunal and floral material.1 During the first month we were assisted by Dr. and Mrs. Richard Ellis. We were also happy to welcome Dr. Nikolai Merbert and Dr. Nikolai Bader, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as our guests for a short stay. Sayyid Hazim Nejeifi and Sayyid Ghassan Azzawi gave invaluable help as Representatives of the Directorate-General of Antiquities. We must also thank government officials in Mandali for their courteous assistance and the Directorate-General in Baghdad, in particular the Director-General, Dr. Faisal al-Wailly, and Professor Fuad Safar, Inspector-General of Excavations, for the close and friendly co-operation which they and their staff invariably extend to us.

It is a task of never-ending fascination to search through the many thousands of small and yet smaller fragments of the tablets from Kuyunjik, looking for new “joins” or for even minute duplicates of the many series and individual tablets already published. Assyriologists have now spent a full century at this intriguing quest and some of us, at least, will never tire of it no matter what new collections comparable, in variety and number, to the libraries and archives of Nineveh may be discovered.

I can think of no more appropriate token of the esteem I feel for Professor Cyril J. Gadd than to dedicate to him, on this occasion, some gleanings from the Kuyunjik collection, to the care and publication of which he has given so many years of his life. The new fragments I am publishing here belong to the Assyrian Dream-book, and it was when I studied the tablets of that series in 1954 that for the first time I met Professor Gadd as the Keeper of the then “Department of Assyrian and Egyptian Antiquities” of the British Museum. He made me feel so welcome and so much at home in the “Students' Room” that it has since remained one of my favourite places to do Assyriological work.

The occasion of the seventy-fifth birthday of Professor Emeritus C. J. Gadd provides a welcome opportunity to add a humble footnote to one of the pages of his life's work.

In 1958 Professor Gadd published his model edition of the Harran inscriptions of Nabonidus, discovered in 1956 by the late Professor D. S. Rice whilst examining the ruined Great Mosque at Harran. Professor Gadd agreed with Rice and others that the find-place of the three stelae H 1 B, H 2 A and H 2 B disposed of any doubt which might ever have arisen, on the basis of Pognon's discovery of the related stela H 1 A at Eski Harran, as to the correctness of the traditional identification of Islamic Harran with the ancient city of that name.

Whilst the site of the ancient city of Harran is not seriously questioned, the position is otherwise with the site of the main temple associated with it, É.ḪÚL.ḪÚL. Although there is a tradition that the Great Mosque at Harran was built on the site of a pagan temple, it does not necessarily follow that it was built above É.ḪÚL.ḪÚL or its Sabian successor, since classical and Islamic reports indicate that there was more than one moon temple in the neighbourhood of Harran, in addition to other sacred buildings. Equally, there is more than one site in the neighbourhood of Harran for which there is archaeological evidence that the worship of the Moon-God was practised there in antiquity. Whilst Eski Harran may now be disregarded, Aşagi Yarimca and Sultan Tepe both have good claims to the possession of an Assyrian temple.

It is with great pleasure that I offer this short article in tribute to Professor Gadd who, among his many notable contributions to the history of the early Near East, has added much to our knowledge of the ancient city of Taima.

The following inscription from Taima was brought to my notice by Mr. J. E. Dayton; he generously provided me with a photograph that he had taken when he visited the site in 1965 (Plate XXXVII, a). Subsequently my colleague, Dr. A. K. Irvine, informed me that the inscription had already been edited and published by Dr. Ruth Stiehl in F. Altheim and Stiehl, Die Araber in der alten Welt V/i (1968), 74ff. Nevertheless, the text merits, I believe, reconsideration, for at important points both my decipherment and my interpretation differ radically from those of Dr. Stiehl. I am grateful to Dr. Irvine for his judicious comments on this article before its publication; but he is, of course, in no way responsible for the views expressed in it.

The interest shown by Professor Gadd in all aspects of Babylonian literature is sufficiently well-known to justify the publication in his honour of two pieces from a Šurpu-type litany which now completes one of a series of texts hitherto known only from other fragments (Plates XXXVIII–XL).

Among the tablets found in the Nabû temple at Nimrud in 1958 were two fragments (ND4389; 4405/77 = A) which, though physically touching are regrettably too broken at the juncture to provide a continuous text. This loss is, however, not serious since the intervening text (ll. 11′–30′; 80′–93′) is provided by a Šurpu-type text (AO 6775 = B) already published by Nougayrol. A further small fragment giving the left side of ten lines (K. 7164 = C), published by Reiner, was classified as Type I.2 and identified with that published by Nougayrol. To the 3 8 lines thus previously known can be added a further 56 lines from which it is clear that the deities with their entourages and shrines were first invoked to remove any curse (lipšur). These were followed by the months of the year and by the days of the month. The catchline on the reverse of ND 4405/77 (KUREnlil) indicates that at Kalḫu this text preceded that on which the mountains and rivers were invoked for the same purpose. Since ‘Mt. Sābu, the home of Enlil’ begins the latter tablet (Reiner Type I.1) it is probable that our present text (Reiner Type I.2) should be placed before it and that the Litany type numbers be re-arranged accordingly.