My report on the twelfth season of the Oxford-Field Museum Expedition at Kish is based upon the weekly reports of the Field Director, M. L. Ch. Watelin, supplemented by further study of the objects after their arrival in Oxford. I have been able to make use of Dr. Milne and Professor Margoliouth's report on the coins and of Mr. Harden's study of the pottery. The drawings and letterpress for the pottery are entirely Mr. Harden's work. He had meagre assistance from scientific works on the pottery of the Sassanian period, and we desired an accurate classification for this period, for which the abundance of the pottery recovered in the Sassanian site during the last two seasons provides sufficient material. The excavations at Kish have enabled him to classify pottery of the periods Neo-Babylonian, Old Persian, Seleucid, Parthian, and Sassanian.

Figs, 1 and 2 show a conspectus of the restorable pot-shapes of both plain and glazed ware found in the Sassanian buildings excavated at Kish in 1932-3. Almost all of them come from the SS 7 complex, at an average depth of 2 metres: a few are from SS 6 or SS 8, at a similar depth. They form a group that should prove most valuable for purposes of dating on less well documented sites in Iraq, for it seems most probable that this pottery belongs to the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. The latest coin found with the pots is one of Justinian I (A.D. 527-65).

A. Plain ware. The commonest shapes are the hemispherical and truncated conical bowls which often bear Aramaic incantations; jugs which have ovoid bodies and rounded or pointed bases; jugs with pinched lips and flat bases or base-rings; and large three-handled jars for storing liquids.

While excavating the Palace of Sargon at Khorsabad, for the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, we were called from our house one night (March 20th, 1930) by the sound of singing and the clapping of hands which accompanies the dances of that country-side. In front of our gate we found the villagers squatting and standing round an open space in which two figures performed. One was dressed as a woman, in a black garment, with anklets, bracelets, and veil. In her we recognized later one of our workmen. The other personage was wearing a high pointed basket as headgear, a goatskin round his shoulders, and a bell tied to his girdle; he carried a heavy stick, and both had their faces blackened.

In 1913 the British Museum Expedition had excavated a Late Hittite cemetery at Yunus, just outside the walls of Carchemish, and as the work drew to a close and the graves on the outskirts of the cemetery became sparse and poor, my foreman Gregori Antoniou and I started to prospect for a fresh site in the neighbourhood. Beginning from the graveyard on which we were still employed we went inland towards the little village of Yunus (= Eminik), examining both the top of the plateau and the slope down to the mill-stream (see sketch-map, Carchemish, 11. 37); on the high ground about half-way to the village, which is cultivated ground, we noticed quantities of potsherds covering an area of about 100 metres by 50. Gregori, who found the first pieces, hailed them with joyful confidence as Mycenaean-joyful because in this strange land they brought memories of his native Cyprus, confidence because his fifty years and more of excavations in the eastern Mediterranean had given him a working knowledge of antiquities such as few possess. That Mycenaean wares should be found on the banks of the Euphrates sounded incredible, but when I looked at the sherds which Gregori held out to me and saw the smooth buff clay with its decoration of lines and curves in lustrous black and brown paint I was almost convinced, and it needed an examination of the back of the sherds and the recognition of the fact that they were of hand-made pottery to make me realize that we had to deal with a prehistoric and not an Aegean ware.

The first of the two daggers I propose to discuss I bought from Mr. John Whitaker of Cambridge, who acquired it from Messrs. Sotheby's sale on December 10th, 1932. The type, the patina, and the date when it came into the market suggest the possibility that it may have been associated with the two similar daggers recently acquired by the British Museum and said to have been discovered in a cave near Kirmanshah in the Luristan province of Persia, and with another now in the Louvre in Paris.

The dagger in my possession belongs to a series of Late Bronze Age daggers and swords best characterized by their inlaid hilt. The inlay of wood, ivory, or some other material has usually vanished and the remaining part of the hilt consists of a flanged tang, frequently with one or more rivet-holes and with a tang or a flange to hold the pommel.

It is rarely that an outsider is privileged to see, far less handle, Mandaean books and rolls in Iraq, and the fact that I have been allowed, by degrees, so to do is a proof of the kindness and toleration which my Mandaean friends in Iraq have shown to me. At my request the box is usually opened, the precious manuscripts handed down from father to son are lifted out, the white cloth which wraps them is taken off, and they are opened for me to see. I have even had a Book of Souls written in my name, a compliment which, I am told, has never before been paid to one not a Mandaean.

When a priest brings in a holy book, all those present rise, and the priest kisses the book and puts it against his forehead before opening it. A sweet perfume clings to the manuscripts, for sandalwood or myrtle is often placed in the box in which they are kept. This latter is sometimes of iron. Stories are told of a holy book or books which have come through a conflagration uninjured, or merely scorched, and their preservation is thought to be miraculous. It is possible that while the reed hut flares up quickly and sinks into ashes, the box offers more resistance, and the manuscripts are rescued almost undamaged.

During the summer of 1931, in the interval between the departure of the first and the arrival of the second of the two distinguished scholars who have occupied the post of Director of Antiquities in Iraq since the death of Gertrude Bell, I was privileged to hold for a few months inexpert administrative charge of the Department. It was at this time that my friend Aḥmad Beg-i Taufiq Beg, Mutaṣarrif of Sulaimani, reported that he had discovered in the naḥiya of Surdash a rock carving which he believed to be ancient Persian. The news was surprising. From 1919 to 1922, when the liwa was under direct British administration, many political and military officers had scoured the district on duty or in search of sport; in the last seven years, since the re-establishment of regular administration, visitors, though not particularly numerous, had not been rare; I myself, with many Kurdish friends who know of my interest in these things, had been in the neighbourhood two or three times. Yet I had never heard any whisper of the existence of such a monument. There was, indeed, one cave near Awdalan that was frequently talked about, an immense hollow running deep into the mountain and holding, no doubt, much of interest to the student of primitive man; but it was not that. I made up my mind to visit the place myself as soon as possible. But for the next three years a perverse fate seemed to turn my footsteps consistently in the direction of the Syrian desert, away from the Kurdish hills; and it was not until April 1934 that the fortunate conjunction of the ‘Id-al-’Adhḥa holidays and Easter gave me my opportunity. Aḥmad Beg was kind enough to make all the preliminary arrangements with Shaikh ‘Abdul Karim of the Qadiri-darwish takya of Awdalan, and to accompany me himself.