The small moulded terracotta plaques made in Mesopotamia in the first three or four centuries of the second millennium B.C. provide a unique, if often enigmatic, corpus of evidence for the popular iconography of the period. They embrace scenes of myth, ritual and daily life unmatched in glyptic save during the Akkadian period, and then only on artefacts which their quality suggests were common currency only among the upper classes. Three major studies have so far been devoted to these plaques, the most recent, that by Barrelet, still in progress. Single volumes have covered the terracottas of Nippur and Uruk, whilst those found in excavations at many other sites are scattered through the literature. Barrelet has provided an excellent, fully illustrated survey of the terracottas from de Genouillac's excavations at Kish in 1912 now in the Louvre (the majority of those which he preserved), but the extensive collection recorded by the Oxford—Field Museum (Chicago) Expedition (O.F.M.E.) of 1923–33 remains largely unpublished and is now divided between Baghdad, Chicago and Oxford. This paper seeks to publish as economically as possible the repertory of motifs found at Kish, paying particular attention to recorded findspots and the popularity of the motif elsewhere. This information seems particularly important in any attempt to unravel the social significance of these objects, to which no explicit documentary references are yet known. The links between the religious iconography of these plaques and Old Babylonian glyptic has long been apparent; but in addition to the stereotyped combinations of deities and their attributes, which are common to the two, the plaques offer a quite fresh range of scenes.

The purpose of the building called the giparu, built and rebuilt from possibly as early as Early Dynastic times down to the Neo-Babylonian period, was to serve as the official dwelling of the entu-priestess. This is clearly stated by the entu Enanedu herself. She describes herself as “patroness who had the giparu built for its entu office on the sacred site “, and speaks of the giparu as “my abode of the entu-ship”. King Nabonidus who rebuilt the giparu for the last time records on bricks that, “for Sin, my lord, I built the giparu-temple, the house of the entu-priestess.”

The entu living in the giparu was a priestess of the highest order, elected by the god Nanna and revealed to the country through omens. So important was the office that the priestess was always of royal blood, the daughter or sister of the king. Ninmetabarri, daughter of AN.BU, king of Mari, whose inscribed calcite cup was found at Ur, may be the first entu of Nanna who has left any written record of herself. Enanedu spoke of herself as daughter of Kudur-Mabuk, sister of Warad-Sin; and Nabonidus, who revived the office of entu after hundreds of years of oblivion, established his daughter Ennigaldi-Nanna as entu in Ur after learning through lengthy divination that she was Nanna's choice. The importance of the office of entu is further stressed by the evidence that the kings occasionally named their regnal years after the appointment and the installation of the entus.

It is usually possible to date an inscribed Assyrian sculpture without hesitation to the reign of a specific king, but there are two, both found about the same time in the centre of ancient Nineveh, which have aroused considerable controversy. One of them, the Broken Obelisk, after various adventures, now seems to have settled down in the reign of Aššur-bel-kala. The other is BM 118807, the White Obelisk (hereafter WO).

Pinches originally ascribed the WO to the reign of Aššurnaṣirpal II, and this view seems to have prevailed until Unger, in a 1928 lecture and afterwards in the first full publication of the monument, opted for Aššurnaṣirpal I. Forrer accepted this, but Assyriologists generally were not convinced: while Gadd reserved judgement, Landsberger came out firmly for Aššurnaṣirpal II; he was followed by Borger and, more tentatively, by Guterbock and Schramm. Most archaeologists with an interest in iconography, however, including Hrouda, Nagel, Moortgat, Boehmer, and Madhloom, while not necessarily insisting on the ascription to Assurnasirpal I in person, refused to accept that a king as late as Aššurnaṣirpal II could possibly have been responsible for it. Of those who were willing to follow Landsberger, only Frankfort, who probably would not have claimed any great familiarity with Assyrian work, did so without reservation. Akurgal admitted to doubts, and Mallowan argued that the WO might have been produced by a distinctively old-fashioned school of sculptors at Nineveh, not otherwise attested. I myself attempted to reconcile the conflicting parties by suggesting that the sculptures were considerably older than the inscription, and I am told that the same idea had occurred independently to Calmeyer. Other scholars, both Assyriologists and archaeologists, doubtless expressed their opinions here and there, before 1974, and will forgive me for failing to mention them.

Students of the history of Urartu and its art encounter some difficulty in associating the surviving Urartian artefacts with the chronology as known from the epigraphic record. The collections of cuneiform inscriptions of König and Melikishvili which serve as a basis for the chronology are in need of some revision and up-dating, while the Hieroglyphic script occasionally employed, to which Barnett has recently drawn attention, in the absence of a decipherment affords no assistance. In recent years archaeologists conducting research into Urartian civilization have begun a series of scientific excavations in the area, and it is to be hoped that these will result in a considerable expansion of knowledge on this subject. In the meantime any additional information in the shape of inscribed objects is to be welcomed.

The excavation of a group of tablets, regrettably mainly broken, from the Ezida temple of the Nabû complex of buildings at Kalhu (Nimrud) has been described with evidence of their provenance by the excavator M. E. L. Mallowan. In a summary of the then identified texts given by me in 1968 one of these fragments was seen to be “a Gilgamesh epic type” text. The text ND 4405/4, now in the Iraq Museum (IM.67577), has subsequently been cleaned and a new copy made and collated (Plate XXXVII; with a photograph on Plate XXXVIII). During a recent seminar on the series ša naqba īmuru this tablet was identified as providing the missing section of the Epic of Gilgamesh tablet I, column i, fines 17–52 with traces of the beginning of I ii, ll. 40–44, 49–50, iii 1–3. There is sufficient overlap with the already known text of Gilgamesh I, i. 17–20, which lines are repeated at the end of the epic (XI, 304–307), for the location of this new part to be made with certainty and thus for the development of the opening of the epic to be traced despite the unfortunate break in the left side of the tablet. Since the new text provides twenty-five additional lines it justifies publication without further delay.