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.

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).

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.

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.