Ernest Mackay's excavations on behalf of the Oxford(Weld)-Field Museum Expedition to Mesopotamia on mound A at Kish (1923–25) were published with exemplary speed and in considerable detail, though the author made clear in his account the very real difficulties involved in establishing the integrity of the grave-groups he was reporting. Unfortunately the publication of the cemetery, in two successive parts, is not consistent. Mackay chose to assemble his finds, both pottery and minor objects, on plates in a typological series; but even these are selective not comprehensive. In the case of graves 1–38, which appeared in the first half of the cemetery report, he included a chart from which it is possible, using it in conjunction with the plates on which the location of each object is marked, to reconstruct the grave-groups, though without the field numbers which were never published. In the second half of the cemetery report, which covered graves 39–154, Mackay adopted a system of illustration on plates similar to that used in the first report but with the addition of field numbers for each object. But this time he did not include a chart tabulating the grave-groups. Once again it is possible to reconstruct certain grave-groups from the plates, with assiduous attention to the detailed notes on various types of object given in the main text, though rarely with complete accuracy as by far the greater number of grave-groups were incompletely illustrated. As Mackay's carefully annotated field-cards have survived it is possible to reconstruct all the recorded grave-groups in full, though descriptions of individual objects are at times very cryptic. Even a cursory glance through the catalogue of graves reveals the disturbed condition of a great many of them. As the report intimates, and the field-cards confirm, there were many more graves whose contents had been scattered by human or natural activity. A great many objects, exactly comparable to those reported from grave-groups, were recorded without context from the upper levels of mound A.

In a sense the present article continues the work of the Rev. C. H. W. Johns in publishing the neo-Assyrian legal and administrative texts from Nineveh. The majority of the new texts come from the excavations of R. Campbell Thompson at Nineveh, but in addition to these I have copied some small fragments from the older K texts, and a few pieces from the excavations of 1904 and 1905. Further, by the kindness of the authorities of the Ashmolean Museum, I have been able to include a single text, which is probably not from Nineveh (No. 1).

No one would maintain that these texts, many of which are ‘useless’ fragments, are of great importance. None the less, I have copied every piece, since there is always the chance of a join to a larger published text, and since publication of even the smallest fragment saves later scholars the trouble of establishing its unimportance on the original. I have given transliterations of almost every one, and translations of most, in the hope that this will make them more accessible to the non-specialist, and prompt the specialist to study the texts more deeply in taking issue with my own interpretations. This journal has seen the publication of many similar texts from Nimrud over the past 20 years, and it is equally fitting that texts excavated by Campbell Thompson should find a place in Iraq, with which he was so closely associated.

The fifth season of excavations at Tell al Rimah lasted from March 9th to June 9th, 1968. The work was sponsored by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq and supported by contributions from the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Cambridge, the Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, Brussels, and the British Academy. The staff included Mrs. Joan Oates, who undertook part of the conservation work and shared the recording of the pottery with Miss Carolyn Prater (now Mrs. Postgate) who has subsequently been engaged in the preparation of a pottery corpus; Miss Barbara Parker, epigraphist and photographer; Miss Elizabeth Dowman, in her third season as conservator and registrar; Mr. Christopher Walker, epigraphist; Mr. Edward Blandy, photographer and assistant surveyor, and Mr. Roger Whitney, draughtsman, who also helped with the recording of the pottery. Dr. and Mrs. Richard Ellis assisted us during the first part of the season, and Mr. Julian Reade, who was principally engaged in a study of material from Tell Taya, gave valuable help at the end. The Representative of the Directorate General of Antiquities was Sayyid Manhl Jabr, whose energy and local knowledge were of the greatest value to us. I must acknowledge my debt to all my colleagues, and to the staff of the Directorate General of Antiquities, especially the Director General, Dr. Faisal al Wailly, and the Inspector General of Excavations, Professor Fuad Safar.

iṣkakku kap-ta-ru-ú mu-ḫa-šu ù it i-ši-is-sú-ú ḫurâṣa(m) uḫ-ḫu-uZ mu-uḫ-ḫa-šu ta-am-liabanuknê(m)

‘A weapon of Caphtor with pommel and base overlaid with gold and pommel inlaid with lapis lazuli.’

A Fragmentary fresco from the Palace of Zimri-Lim at Mari of a flange-hilted dagger or dirk with pointed shoulders (or ‘horns’) provides a possible illustration of a type of weapon described in the inventory and merits attention when Levantine-Cretan-Mycenean connections are discussed. In 1961, N. K. Sandars drew attention to this text, convincingly traced the ancestry of the Mycenean flanged daggers and swords (her type B, with rudimentary ‘horns’) to the Asiatic mainland, and suggested that the wealth of weapons in Graves IV and V at Mycenae could be explained as ‘loot from foreign arsenals’. The Mari fresco (which must have been painted before Hammurabi destroyed the palace in his 33rd year in 1759 B.C.) together with the contents of tomb 22 at Jericho reinforces this conclusion and therefore precludes identifying the weapon on the fresco as an import from Crete, although the inventory phrase kap-ta-ru-ú can be interpreted from a technical point of view (see below).

The most interesting epigraphical discovery made in the course of the 1968 season of excavations at Tell al Rimah under the direction of Mr. David Oates was a circular plaque of baked clay, TR.5708, maximum diameter 12·5 cms., found in the Palace area, site C. The plaque was buried in a repaired section of a wall in a building of level 5, the level above that in which Old Babylonian archives had appeared in 1967. The level is tentatively dated by Mr. Oates to about the 16th century B.C., but it was perfectly clear that the plaque was not in its original position. The brick-work at the base of the wall had apparently been eroded by water-action, and the gap had been filled up with a packing of earth, in which was the plaque, and faced by a single row of bricks placed slanting against the wall. The back of the plaque is quite smooth, but two small lumps of libn adhere to it, suggesting that it was originally plastered on to the face of a wall.

The slightly convex face of the plaque is inscribed with a six-line inscription written in a clear Old Babylonian script, of which a copy appears as Fig. 1.

Tr. 4001, which forms the subject of this note, was found in 1967 in late Assyrian fill above the north-eastern corner of the earlier temple; it lay above the line of that temple's north façade, just to the north of room II (see the plan in Iraq 30 (1968), Plate XXVIII). The tablet was therefore found fairly close to the neo-Assyrian shrine, but above it, and the late Assyrian terracing of the temple-zigurrat mound suggests that there may have been building on its summit, which would constitute an equally plausible provenance for our tablet.

A Number of the historical texts excavated by R. Campbell Thompson at Nineveh belong to the period of the Middle Assyrian kingdom, or to the first two centuries of the first millennium B.C. They attest the activity of successive Assyrian rulers in structural works on the mound of Kouyunjik, although the buildings themselves have been demolished, or remain undiscovered. Moreover, they add information on the history of that age, known mainly from texts unearthed at Ashur. All the pieces studied here are catalogued in the Second Supplement to the Catalogue of Cuneiform Tablets in the Kouyunjik Collection of the British Museum (1968) where details of provenance and physical appearance are given. They are published by permission of the Trustees.

The series of clay knobs (‘bosses’) recording the history of the Temple of Ishtar was edited by R. Campbell Thompson and he had a presentation of some other texts in hand at the time of his death, in 1941. His notes and copies were made available by courtesy of the Keeper of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities, but the tablets have been baked and cleaned recently, so new copies have been drawn. One of the texts, an important tablet of Tiglath-pileser I, has been edited by E. F. Weidner (see below, n.2), the remaining fragments of historical content are given now, and some related pieces added for the information they add in this respect. Although these are but scraps, and many are unidentified, they merit publication as records of a poorly documented era.

The problems involved in any attempt to elucidate the earliest history of the domesticated horse in the Near East are notorious; an enormous literature already bears witness as much to the popularity as to the complexity of the subject. After over a century's research and argument there is still no certainty, nor even a general agreement, about where and when the animal first appeared in the area, who brought it and what it was first used for. The three main categories of evidence—osteological, philological and pictorial—are of uneven significance. Thorough scientific examination of osteological evidence is fundamental in any attempt to establish indisputably the presence of the domesticated horse at any specific time on any particular site. This was clearly demonstrated by the re-examination of the equid bones from Anau, Sialk II and Shah Tepe II/III in Iran which showed them to those of asses or half-asses not horses as had previously been supposed. Although a certain amount is now known about the onager (a half-ass) from the ninth millennium onwards in Syria and Iraq through osteological evidence, horse bones have yet to be identified in a Near Eastern archaeological context before the later third millennium B.C. Despite uncertainties of translation in the earliest texts from Iraq philological evidence is of the greatest importance and has been the most fruitful source of fresh historical information in recent years. Pictorial evidence is severely compromised by the difficulty of distinguishing with confidence between various types of ass and the horse when portrayed by ancient artists, often working on a very small scale. This has inevitably led to widely ranging discussions of equids of uncertain identity.

As was first observed by Gordon Loud, one of the more distinctive features of Late Assyrian architecture is the striking similarity to be seen in the plans of all palaces of this period, both in their general layout and in the arrangement of the various component parts and individual suites of rooms contained therein. Loud's study was based on buildings excavated at Khorsabad, but the architectural formula which he discovered to govern the planning of both the royal palaces and private residences at this site, are equally applicable to palaces found at other sites of this period and, furthermore, can now be enlarged upon in many details. In the present article a brief resumé is first given of the general characteristics of Late Assyrian palace planning, and this is followed by a comparative analysis of the various types of ‘state apartments’ to be found in such buildings.

In his book Zur Datierung des Königsfriedhofes von Ur (Rudolf Haibert Verlag Bonn, 1966) Nissen has re-examined the sequence dating of the Royal Cemetery of Ur and attempted to relate it to history. The archaeological analysis is necessarily based on the two great volumes written by the late Sir Leonard Woolley in 1934. This is not the first attempt of the kind, for another, unsuccessful one was made by Pallis many years ago. The fact is that the stratigraphic evidence of many critical points is defective and the major problems cannot be solved by using the internal evidence alone.

Nissen's new assessment of the situation depends largely on one important observation, namely: that Woolley made an error in the orientation of the Neo-Babylonian Temenos Wall which measures 103° on all plans except on pl. 274 where it is 98°. The discovery of this error has led Nissen to re-draw the cemetery plan with the wall aligned at the correct angle and to re-orientate many graves which during certain seasons Woolley specifically states were plotted with reference to that base line.

The Sumerian šu-il-la is an Emesal composition which,like the balag and ér-šèm-ma, was utilized in public worship. Forty-seven šu-íl-la incipits are listed in the kalûtu catalogue IVR 53 + RA 18 (1921), 158f., but the broken state of the catalogue and the poor state of preservation of the majority of Emesal texts makes it impossible to identify most of the catalogue entries. Only three surviving texts can be identified with certainty—by their colophon or presence in the catalogue or both—as Sumerian šu-íl-la's:

A. Sjöberg Mondgott 166ff. Sin; incipit IVR 53 iii 48

F. H. Weissbach Misc. pl. 13F. and duplicates Marduk; incipit IVR 53 iii 54 (edited below).

RAcc. 70f. and 108ff. An; the beginning is broken, so that it cannot be ascertained whether this is the šu - í l - la to An whose incipit is listed in IVR 53 iii 44

The last two contain subscripts specifying the cult occasions upon which they were to be recited. Four additional fragments can probably be classified as šu-íl-la's because of their extensive parallels to the Sin and Marduk šu-íl-la's (see below).

Unlike the balag and ér-šèm-ma, the šu-íl-la was never organized into long liturgical compositions, but the individual šu-íl-la's collected in Ashurbanipal's library were arranged within the library in a fixed order, corresponding to the order in which they were listed in the catalogue IVR 53. This can be shown by the fact that the catch line of the Sin šu-íl-la (as preserved in IVR 9) is identical to the incipit which follows the incipit of that Sin šu-íl-l a in the kalûtu catalogue.

For many centuries Tell Nebi Yūnus, the smaller mound of Nineveh, has been revered as the burial place of the prophet Jonah. This shrine, at one time part of a Christian monastery but now contained within a mosque, and the surrounding village, now a suburb of Mosul, have hitherto restricted archaeological activities on this site. A brief summary is given below of the few discoveries so far made, but the main subject of this article is a comparative study of the inscriptions of Sennacherib (704–681 B.C.) and of his son Esarhaddon (680–669 B.C.), which describe the ekal māšarti or arsenal they built here. These, when considered together, provide a more detailed picture of the general layout and aspect of this building than is usually to be found in such texts, and it is hoped that this study may prove to be of some guidance in the event of this site ever being more fully investigated in the future.