Any one who has visited the Tall Ḫalaf Museum knows that the excavation s carried out by Max, Freiherr von Oppenheim, have produced a rich variety of material which would all repay detailed study. It is to the generosity of Baron von Oppenheim that I am indebted for permission to publish the object which is here discussed.

It is of white marble, height 14·5 cm., greatest width 7·7 cm., thickness 4 cm. (Plate VI, 1). One half is almost square in shape, the other half is a narrower prolongation with a rounded end. Where the transition from the square to the elongated part occurs there is a double moulding which is not alike on both sides (ib. 2). The square end is hollow to a depth of 5 cm., and two round holes are bored diagonally from the side with the more pronounced moulding as far as the roof of the cavity. Another hole is pierced diagonally from the top of the. rounded end to the upper part of the back. The back and sides are smoothed, and on them designs are scratched in summary fashion. On one side the forepart of a wild bull can be seen, on the other a stag; between them, on the upper part of the back surface, are two men in a light, two-wheeled chariot. It seems to be a hunting scene, and from the outline of the men's hair and beards the drawing might be dated in the Early Assyrian period. The chariot wheel seems to have eight spokes, and Professor Unger has pointed out that it is not until the time of Aššurnasirpal II that there are representations of Ghariots with eight-spoked wheels. But these rough sketches may have been added when the object had been long in use (Fig. 1). The front face is adorned with twenty sunken rectangles.

The small collection of ancient Near Eastern seals in the school museum at Charterhouse was called to our attention by the kindness of Mr. Ian Blake. It was assembled in the nineteenth century through two gifts, that of D. G. Prinsep in 1876 (eight cylinders) and that of Leonard Marshall in 1896 (sixteen cylinders and five Sassanian stamp seals). No information has survived about the exact source of these seals, though, as will be seen, they might well all come from sites in southern Iraq. We are most grateful to the Governors and Headmaster of Charterhouse for allowing these seals to be taken to Oxford for study and photography. The School authorities also subsidized the cost of photography, which was done by Mr. R. L. Wilkins of the Institute of Archaeology in Oxford. In the following concise catalogue Professor O. R. Gurney is responsible for the seal inscriptions (save for a single Sassanian one kindly read by Dr. A. D. H. Bivar), and Dr. P. R. S. Moorey for the classification, description and discussion of the designs. We gratefully acknowledge advice on various points from Mr. Briggs Buchanan and Professor W. Lambert, who bear no responsibility for any persisting errors. For the abbreviations used in the catalogue see pp. 80–1. Measurements given are in millimetres (height × width); figures such as 1–1956–2 are the Charterhouse registry numbers.

On the morning of April 27th last I was delighted and astonished to discover in the National Museum of Wales at Cardiff a tile inscribed in Neo-Punic letters. I published a summary account of the graffito in The Illustrated London News on August 12th, 1939. Here I should like to say a little more about the inscription, not so much to amplify the short account in The Illustrated London News as to leave a permanent record in an archaeological journal of a discovery which is unique in the annals of British archaeology.

Arabia has given Britain one inscription: as long ago as 1878, a fine Roman altar, inscribed in Latin and Palmyrene characters, was discovered in the Roman camp near South Shields, and is now to be seen in the Free Library at that place. But this is the first time that an inscription from the hand of a descendant of the old Phoenician branch of the Semitic race has been found in Britain (or rather, recognized as such, for the tile was found during the excavation of Holt in the years 1907–15).

Khirbet Karhasan was excavated by the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq, as part of the Saddam Dam Salvage Project. The excavations brought to light a hoard of Middle Assyrian faience ornaments, which formed a coherent assemblage. Collections of similar ornaments are known from Assur and Nimrud where they have been variously interpreted as decorating the rich garments for a god, a divine image, and even the walls of temples. In the absence of any other persuasive view a hypothesis is advanced based on the evidence of archaeological context, iconographic associations and a viable reconstruction, that the ornaments are equally adaptable to the decoration of ceremonial horse-harness.

The tell of Khirbet Karhasan is situated on the right bank of the Tigris approximately 75 km north-west of Mosul. The site on the edge of a prominent terrace overlooks a broad floodplain. In 1986, prior to the flooding of the site, the Tigris channel was 3 km north of the tell. The tell was sheltered by low hills which formed the western slope of the valley some 500 m to the south of the site. The hills rose some 40 m above the tell to approximately 50 m above the floodplain.

Four samples from Tell Brak were analysed for radiocarbon content at the British Museum Research Laboratory in 1987, with the results given below (Ambers et al., 1989). All results are quoted in the form recommended by Stuiver and Polach (1977) in uncalibrated years BP (before 1950) and corrected for measured δ13C variation. Calibrations are given based on 1σ error terms, following the curves of Pearson and Stuiver (1986) and Pearson et al. (1986), using Method A of revision 2.0 of the University of Washington Quaternary Laboratory Radiocarbon Calibration Program (Stuiver and Reimer 1986), and are quoted in the form recommended in Mook (1986); the end points of the calibrated date ranges have been rounded to the nearest five years.

Three of the samples (BM-2554, -2555, -2556), all of charcoal, were treated with dilute acid and alkali to remove contamination. A single grain sample from context CH 450 was separated into humic and humin fractions, which were measured independently. All samples were analysed by conventional liquid scintillation counting. Errors quoted are the counting error for the sample combined with an estimate of the errors contributed by the modern and background samples. This estimate includes both counting and non-counting errors, the latter being computed from differences in the overall count-rates observed among the individual backgrounds and moderns.

Work on my publication of the University of Pennsylvania's 1931 soundings at Fara prompted me to look again at the material from the Early Dynastic cemetery at al-‘Ubaid. This study resulted. It attempts to re-define the relative dates of the graves within the al-‘Ubaid cemetery. It also reviews the evidence for the dating of the cemetery as a whole in an effort to establish its position within the Early Dynastic period.

There is an extended discussion of the pottery types found in Sumer in ED II and IIIa. The neglect of this material has recently been highlighted by Professor Adams' survey of the Sumerian “heartland”. One of the most striking problems to emerge from his study is the difficulty of identifying pottery and sites of this period.

The story of how Sir Max Mallowan, accompanied by Professor Jørgen Laessøe, discovered the site of Fort Shalmaneser, and how soon after he decided to begin excavations there is one that is well known to readers of this journal. Also well known is that as work progressed from 1957 to 1963 several rooms were encountered within the fortress which were filled, sometimes to the incredible depth of several feet, with broken and mutilated ivory-work. What is not so well known, or if well known is not so well appreciated, is that these “Ivory Rooms”, as we of the Expedition used to call them, frequently contained many other categories of object as well, which, though subsequently overshadowed by the ivories, were nevertheless more deserving of attention than their present state of publication would suggest. One such category is the series of miniature painted glass plaques which is our subject here, for not only are they attractive and interesting in themselves, but they must be counted amongst the earliest examples of painted glass that have survived from antiquity. It is with the aim, therefore, of more fully acquainting both archaeologists and historians of glass with the details of these plaques that Dr. Robert H. Brill and I have prepared our present studies.

This study presents the career of late-nineteenth-century Assyriologist William St. Chad Boscawen (1855–1913) as a case study in recovering contributions to knowledge-making by low-status, marginal actors. Boscawen took Assyriological knowledge and expertise, gained at the British Museum, into a new disciplinary setting: a private museum of history of medicine, owned by pharmaceuticals entrepreneur Henry Wellcome (1853–1936). Yet his relocation was only partially successful, and his contributions to knowledge were transient. I employ a sociological framework to explore how social factors, as much as academic ones, influenced Boscawen's career trajectory. In doing so, I argue that studying marginal figures offers a richer understanding of past Assyriological practices and the wider research community in which the most prominent figures operated.

In the course of the excavation of a building which has become known as Fort Shalmaneser, a well preserved slab of greenish alabaster with an inscription from Shalmaneser III was discovered in a doorway leading into the room F.S., S. 4, where it served as a threshold. The slab measures 146 cms. in width (length) and 62 cms. in height (width); brickwork and bitumen covering which extended c. 10 cms. at either edge of the slab concealed the beginning and end of each line of the inscription. A rectangular socket hole near the upper edge of the slab was designed to receive a vertically sliding bar. There is a crack in the stone running from the upper to the lower edge; a natural flaw in the surface is responsible for the circumstance that the sign KUR, in line 5, was incised to a smaller scale than the other signs of the inscription. Part of the surface at the upper edge of the slab is worn; for this reason part of the first line of the inscription is lost.

The inscription is framed, and the individual lines of inscription are separated by ruled lines. The inscription continues beyond its frame at the end of the second line. The width of the inscribed panel is 141 cms., its height 53 cms. The distance between each ruled line is 5 cms. A copy of the inscription is shown in Plate XII. The following is a transliteration and translation of the text.

The bēt ḫilāni is one of the most famous features of Assyria's royal palaces as well as one of its most elusive. The term is mostly known from Assyrian royal inscriptions, which describe it as an architectural feature inspired by the architecture of Syro-Anatolia. Such explicit references to the architecture of other cultures is exceptional and provides a rare glimpse into the valuations of Assyria's architects.

Modern attempts to identify the bēt ḫilāni archaeologically are almost as old as the field of ancient Near Eastern Studies. Unfortunately, the discourse has become more convoluted over time through the integration of disparate architectural features into a single bēt ḫilāni discourse and a narrow view of how architectural exchanges occur. Past research has generally assumed a morphological correspondence between the Assyrian bēt ḫilāni and the external porticoes that typify Syro-Anatolian architecture. This article will argue that Assyrian architects had a different set of ideals and interests which led them to change the external Syro-Anatolian portico into an interior feature used to add monumentality and ornamentation to the rooms of Assyria's palaces. This changes the bēt ḫilāni from a morphological category into a decorative one and contextualises it within the architectural traditions of Assyria.

A statuette of a woman dating from the Second Dynasty of Lagash features exceptional gold, silver and copper bracelets that have been recently restored and analysed. The statue is remarkable for its refined dress, to date known only from a small number of female figures, almost all linked to the court of Lagash's Second Dynasty. Examination of the statuette and comparable pieces has revealed possible traces of polychromy, although these vestiges are particularly difficult to identify with any certainty. This paper presents these results within the larger corpus of female depictions from the Second Dynasty of Lagash, together with other very similar examples, to better understand the meaning of the specific costume they wear and the possible identity of the women wearing it.

Besides their significance in administrative procedures, cylinder seals also played an important role as amulets in ancient Mesopotamia. There are many references to them being used in medical and magical procedures, which sometimes determine their features of magical potential. Thus not only the imagery and inscription of cylinder seals but also the raw material of which they were made contributed to their medico-magical usage (cf. Collon 1987: 119; 1997: 19–20). This paper deals with the last-mentioned feature of cylinder seals, that is their raw material, which is treated in a short series known from BAM 194 viii’ 9’–14’, as well as from another three tablets published here for the first time.

Qasr Serij lies near an old route running along the southern foot of the Jabal al-Qusayr between Mosul and Nisibis (cf. Wilkinson, 1990: 50–51, Route B; Wilkinson, 1993: 552). As the name suggests, the site comprises the partly standing remains of a church originally dedicated to St Sergius, a popular eastern saint (Fiey, 1961). It has been identified as the stone church said to have been founded between 559–75 by one Mar Ahudemmeh at a spot known as Ain Qenoye or Ain Qena (‘Spring of Reeds’) in the vicinity of Balad (Eski Mosul) (Fiey, 1958). Preliminary descriptions, accompanied by the first known photographs of the ruins, were made by Gerald Reitlinger (1938: 148–49) and Aurel Stein (finally published in 1985: i, 105–107, Pl. 31c) following their respective surveys of medieval and Roman sites in the Jazira during the wet spring of 1938 (see also Lloyd, 1938: 136, No. 15; Ibrahim, 1986: 74, Site 211). In his subsequent study of the still-unexcavated ruins, David Oates (1962; 1968: 106–17, Pl. XIII) drew architectural parallels with fifth century and later churches in North Syria. Recently, in a series of important articles on early church architecture, Okada (1990; 1991; 1992) has drawn attention to the contrast in plan and fittings of these basilica-type churches with Sasanian and Early Islamic churches in southern Mesopotamia, the Iraqi Western Desert and the Gulf.

Babylon has been associated with incantation bowls since the first discoveries in the mid-nineteenth century. The “Rawlinson” collection of eight incantation bowls (seven were written in Aramaic and one in Mandaic) was accessioned on 9 October 1851 by the British Museum and, according to Trustees Minutes, had been “found in a tomb at Babylon”. Austin Henry Layard does not seem to have been privy to this provenance information when three of these incantation bowls were transcribed and translated in his book, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. Instead he claimed that the bowls from the “Rawlinson” collection were “obtained at Baghdad, where they are sometimes offered for sale by the Arabs; but it is not known from what sites they were brought.” This misinformation has been perpetuated and no further information has come to light on the unusual findspot.

Amongst the vast collections of the Iraq Museum are numerous incantation bowls from Babylon, to which IM 9726 can now be added (Fig. 1). The entry in the Register of the Iraq Museum, dated 1927/1928, is scant, not even mentioning the script of the bowl: “Bowl with Incantation Text. Baked clay 12.5 × 6.5 [cm]. Presented by Mey Marian”. Thirteen years later, Cyrus Gordon included IM 9726 in his resumé of international collections of incantation bowls that appeared in the 1941 issue of Orientalia. It was one of the eleven incantation bowls Gordon recorded from the Iraq Museum collection, which he noted “has increased considerably since my last visit to Baghdad in 1935” and which he correctly predicted “should eventually become the largest and the best”. However, Gordon, who noted that IM 9726 had nine lines of Aramaic, only presented excerpts of its text. He did not supply any photograph or drawing of this incantation bowl nor any other information.

Leonard Woolley directed the dig at Ur for twelve seasons which began in 1922 and ended in 1934. During that time he had many assistants on his staff which only once amounted to more than five in all, an astonishingly small number for the control of a labour force which often consisted of between 200 and 250 men who were unearthing not only substantial architectural remains, but also large numbers of small objects—about 20,000 of them were entered in the Expedition's catalogue. Woolley himself served on every one of those twelve expeditions and only his quickness and prodigious industry, supported by a well-trained family of Syrian foremen from Jerablus, enabled him to carry through tasks for which the more elaborately organised expeditions of today would require at least three times the number of supervisors. It is my privilege to have served Woolley for six years—1925–1930—longer than any other of his assistants, and it has therefore fallen to me on this occasion to recall memories of the man and the kind of life we led at Ur. I must also mention, very briefly, some aspects of the work at Ur, which are now the subject of active investigation and controversy, as well as others which are in danger of being forgotten, but still offer tempting rewards for research.

Among the discoveries made by Sir Leonard Woolley at Ur during the 1930–1 season were four public chapels of the Larsa period. Since city temples and domestic shrines were familiar from his earlier excavations, these wayside shrines marked a new discovery of which, however, little note seems to have been made in subsequent discussions of Babylonian religion. The most discussed, perhaps because of its better preservation, is the building (A H House 3 = No. 1 Church Lane) at the corner of Church Lane and Straight Street, fronting on Carfax, with the main door into Church Lane (Fig. 1), called by its discoverer the ‘Chapel of Pa-sag’. The sanctuary proper bore signs of destruction which had preserved the contents in situ, thus enabling a reconstruction to be given of the arrangement of the main furnishings in the Larsa period.

In the centre of the sanctuary, blocking the visual access into a smaller inner room in a direct line with the street doorway, stood a low brick construction (Plate XXIa). This was coated with bitumen in the same way as were two plinths standing behind it on either side of the doorway leading into the inner room, so that this may also have been the pedestal for a statue rather than an altar. It is possible that the limestone figure of a goddess (Plate XXIIc) had been broken in its fall from this commanding position.

Moortgat here gives an account of the fourth campaign at Tell Chuēra, an important site situated on the frontier of North Central Syria, between the Ḫabur and the Balikh, about equidistant from Ras el ‘Ain and Tell Abiadh, in steppe country studded with ancient settlements. The work was conducted under the auspices of the Max-Freiherr-von-Oppenheim Institute and the Deutsches Forschungsgemeinschaft, and is a pendant to the campaign instituted at Tell Halaf on the Upper Ḫabur by Oppenheim in 1911–1912. The results obtained at Chuēra also have a significant relation to the discoveries made by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, in 1934–1938, at Chazar Bazar, Brak and elsewhere in the eastern Habur-Jaghjagha District, and are therefore peculiarly appropriate to discussion in this Journal which published accounts of these excavations about thirty years ago. Thus investigations spread over a period of more than 50 years are gradually placing this part of Northern Syria in a perspective which has become more clearly intelligible through the foreground of Babylonia.

The main mound of Chuēra is of large dimensions and spans a distance of over 1,000 metres from north to south. Winter rains are apt to be heavy, and water is available from a wadi of the same name. Buildings have appeared in several sectors of the mound, both of undressed stone, Steinbau I & III, and of mud-brick.

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.

It is appropriate to dedicate this article to Sidney Smith, on the occasion of his seventy-seventh birthday, for like many scholars primarily concerned with the ancient history and archaeology of Western Asia, his interests were frequently drawn to the distant field of South Arabia where so much enigmatic material reminiscent of the northern, urban monuments of Syria, Mesopotamia and Babylonia has been found.

The boldly carved, large alabaster head here illustrated on Plates XXIV–XXV is as good a specimen of its kind as I have ever seen, and can be confidently authenticated, not only because of its assured style and antique condition, but also on account of the circumstances of discovery.

This head, which is at present privately owned, was found by a young officer, in 1962, when his regiment was stationed in Aden. On a long distance patrol he visited the ancient city of Timna‘ which he noted as situated on the Yemen-Aden Protectorate border, about two days drive by armoured car, west of ‘Ataq. He described the site as ‘ now reduced by nature to cover a square mile of rubble, often covered with high sand-dunes. There is no water now and only a few Beduin live there’. He also observed that this appeared to be the site of an ancient capital city, that broken pillars and other architectural remains were lying around and that walls and gates could still be traced.

The ancient Semitic poem here presented is inscribed in alphabetical cuneiform on clay tablets unearthed at Ras Shamra (ancient Ugarit) on the north coast of Syria. The tablets themselves date approximately in the fifteenth century B.C., but their contents were, no doubt, traditional and therefore older still.

2. The poem belongs to a cycle, several portions of which have already been published, which deals principally with the contest of two gods, Ba'al and Mōt, for dominion over the earth. Each in turn defeats his rival and assumes the sovereignty.

In reality, this is a nature-myth pure and simple, for Ba'al is none other than the Lord of the Rain (cp. Arabic ba'l) and Mōt that of the Drought (cf. Arabic mawuth). The alternate victory and defeat of each thus symbolizes the regular alternation of the seasons in the Syrian year. The reign of Mōt, or Drought, covers the weary and rainless months of summer, while that of Ba'al, or Rain, begins in late September and ends some time in March or April.