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.

The entire volume of Iraq for the year 1969 is in honour of Professor Emeritus C. J. Gadd, a former Editor of this Journal and one of the most distinguished orientalists in this country. His 75th birthday which fell on 2nd July 1968 was celebrated by a small gathering of friends in London. The ensuing articles have been written by a number of colleagues, who have joined their contributions in token of the warm gratitute and friendship which they feel for one who has devoted a lifetime to oriental learning with signal success.

It will be seen from the bibliography that C. J. Gadd has a remarkable record of continuous publication over a period of forty-seven years. The long list of titles is impressive not only for the weight but for the variety of his learning, which embraces linguistics, philology, literature, religion, history, art and archaeology. His contributions, which reflect a remarkable erudition, have been enlivened by a lively, human touch and a pungent wit. Such qualities endear him to his fellow academicians all of whom have enjoyed his writing and benefited from the generosity with which he has always been ready to impart his knowledge to others.

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.

Dans Iraq 3 (1936), 87–96 + Pl. IV, C. J. Gadd a publié sous le titre de: “A Middle-Babylonian Chemical Text” une tablette (B.M. 120960), intéressante non seulement pour l'histoire des techniques, mais aussi pour l'histoire de la cryptographie cunéiforme. Le rédacteur de la tablette pour mieux protéger ses secrets de fabrication avait eu recours à un syllabaire artificiellement forgé qui rendait le texte difficile à lire, donc inutilisable. Il suffit de comparer la transcription qu'a donnée l'éditeur avec le texte cunéiforme pour se rendre compte de la liberté que les scribes prenaient parfois avec le syllabaire traditionnel. On ne peut qu'admirer d'autant plus l'aise, la pénétration et la sagacité dont a fait preuve le déchiffreur moderne pour venir à bout de tous ces “jeux d'esprit” voulus par les scribes anciens, qui en tiraient sûrement quelque fierté.

En souvenir de cette remarquable prouesse, je voudrais, en hommage à celui qui en fut l'auteur, signaler un exemple de l'esprit d'invention ou de fantaisie que manifestaient parfois les scribes anciens.

The object here published, no. 1931.128 in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, is a seven-sided prism measuring 17 cm. in height and 53 mm. in diameter. It was excavated at Tell Ingharra, Kisn, and Dr. P. R. S. Moorey has kindly provided me with the following note on its provenance:“ Its field reference is C 10 5(5), which means that it was found in area ‘C’, trench number 10, at five metres from the surface of the mound at a place where the surface is five metres above the plain, i.e. at plain level (see Iraq 28 (1966), 19–20 with Fig. 1, and 32–3). If my interpretation of the site is correct, these levels were part of an Akkad–Isin/Larsa religious centre, perhaps the well-known Temple of Ishtar (Ninlil) at Ehursagkalamma.” The script is at least as early as the Ur III period, probably earlier.

The text consists of a list of copper objects, each line ending with the sign urudu. Its main divisions are as follows: I 1 ff. vessels (šen); II 10 ff. chisels (bulug); IV 10 ff. daggers (gír); VI 8 ff. knives(?) (šum). A strange peculiarity of the text is that the lines run in pairs, each object being followed by the same object preceded by the sign AN. This rule is broken only in side IV lines 2–9, and possibly also in the damaged passage I 16–II 9, and it has made it possible to restore a large number of damaged lines with a high degree of probability. At first sight one is inclined to read these lines beginning with AN as the object in question deified, but this seems so improbable that it is safer to transliterate the sign as AN.

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.

In Plates II and III of this study three new pieces of the Etana legend are presented, and the beginning of Tablet II is described on the basis of a fragment published in another collection. The new texts are Sm 1839, 83–1–18, 489, and Sm 157 + 1134; the last-mentioned piece results from a recent join, Sm 157 by itself having been first published in R. Campbell Thompson, The Epic of Gilgamish, pl. 54. The texts are discussed in four sections, and are concluded with some general remarks on the composition. Attention may particularly be directed to the fourth section which significantly enlarges the Etana story.

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.

One of the most lucid, succinct, comprehensive assessments of Šulgi and his reign is that of C. J. Gadd in Chapter XXII of vol. I of the revised Cambridge Ancient History. Šulgi's remarkable achievements as ruler of Sumer were no doubt due to his intelligence, energy, courage, and dedication. So, at least the modern historian would surmise. He was also, they might add, lucky—the gods were with him. In this they would agree to some extent with the Sumerian theologians who had no doubt on the matter—Šulgi was a highly successful king, because all the high gods favoured him, and especially because he was the beloved spouse of Inanna. Thus we learn from a tablet in the Böhl Collection at Leiden, it was Inanna, who after tasting of his love, blessed Šulgi with victory in battle and acclaimed him as the king eligible for all the rights, prerogatives, and insignia of kingship (cf. now The Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Volume of the Jewish Quarterly Review (1967), 370–380). But what Sumer needed most was fertility of field, garden, and orchard. And this need, too, was fulfilled by Inanna as the lover of Šulgi. So, at least, we may conclude from the following poem inscribed on a Nippur tablet in the Istanbul Museum of the Ancient Orient, and copied by Muazzez Çıǧ (Ni. 4171; Plate IV).

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.

Le pays connu communément sous le nom de “Simaš” et qui désigne, en tout état de cause, une région voisine de l'Elam, est mentionné pour la première fois dans une inscription akkadienne que l'on peut lire sur une statue mutilée de Puzur-Inšušinak, retrouvée à Suse. Cette inscription rappelle la victoire de Puzur-Inšušinak, qui fut contemporain de Narâm-Sin et de Šarka-lišarri, sur Kimaš et le pays de urtum. Après avoir énuméré plus de soixante-dix villes que le souverain élamite aurait conquises, elle ajoute que le roi de Si-maš-giki vint saisir les pieds de Puzur-Inšušinak en signe de soumission.

Le nom réapparaît ensuite avec Indattu-Inšušinak, contemporain de Bilalama d'Ešnunna, qui se dit “roi de Si-ma-aš-ki et d'Elam”. A la période suivante, celle dite des sukkalmaḫ, le nom appartient désormais à la titulature officielle des souverains de l'Elam. On sait qu'un singulier système de partage du pouvoir prévalait alors dans ce pays, qui avait à sa tête une sorte de triumvirat, mais dont les membres formaient une hiérarchie à trois degrés. Au sommet, on trouve le sukkalmaḫ ou “régent suprême”; en second lieu vient le “régent d'Elam et de Simaš”. Ce dernier titre est attesté à plusieurs reprises. Une inscription de fondation de Temti-ḫalki le proclame “régent suprême, régent d'Elam, de Si-maš-ki et de Suse”. Une autre inscription le nomme “régent suprême d'Elam et de Si-maš-ki-im”.

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.