My report on the twelfth season of the Oxford-Field Museum Expedition at Kish is based upon the weekly reports of the Field Director, M. L. Ch. Watelin, supplemented by further study of the objects after their arrival in Oxford. I have been able to make use of Dr. Milne and Professor Margoliouth's report on the coins and of Mr. Harden's study of the pottery. The drawings and letterpress for the pottery are entirely Mr. Harden's work. He had meagre assistance from scientific works on the pottery of the Sassanian period, and we desired an accurate classification for this period, for which the abundance of the pottery recovered in the Sassanian site during the last two seasons provides sufficient material. The excavations at Kish have enabled him to classify pottery of the periods Neo-Babylonian, Old Persian, Seleucid, Parthian, and Sassanian.

Figs, 1 and 2 show a conspectus of the restorable pot-shapes of both plain and glazed ware found in the Sassanian buildings excavated at Kish in 1932-3. Almost all of them come from the SS 7 complex, at an average depth of 2 metres: a few are from SS 6 or SS 8, at a similar depth. They form a group that should prove most valuable for purposes of dating on less well documented sites in Iraq, for it seems most probable that this pottery belongs to the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. The latest coin found with the pots is one of Justinian I (A.D. 527-65).

A. Plain ware. The commonest shapes are the hemispherical and truncated conical bowls which often bear Aramaic incantations; jugs which have ovoid bodies and rounded or pointed bases; jugs with pinched lips and flat bases or base-rings; and large three-handled jars for storing liquids.

Many of the scenes on cylinders are evidently renderings of myths, but great uncertainty prevails as to their interpretation. This is partly due to the incompleteness of our knowledge of the contemporary literature and partly to our inability to grasp the allusions which must have been clear to the clients of the seal-cutters. Apart, however, from these inevitable handicaps, attempts at interpretation have suffered from a singular lack of method. For if it is true that our only hope of utilizing the information of the seals lies in a comparison of their scenes with the texts, it should be equally obvious that a haphazard interpretation of isolated scenes remains necessarily guess-work. If, for instance, a vanquished god is called ‘Kingu’ or a two-faced figure ‘Marduk’, such identifications do not carry conviction as long as we do not know precisely in which scenes these figures appear, which versions of each scene are extant, and what bearing the variants of any one scene have upon its interpretation. But, as is so often the case, the archaeological material has been denied the methodical treatment given, as a matter of course, to every text.

While excavating the Palace of Sargon at Khorsabad, for the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, we were called from our house one night (March 20th, 1930) by the sound of singing and the clapping of hands which accompanies the dances of that country-side. In front of our gate we found the villagers squatting and standing round an open space in which two figures performed. One was dressed as a woman, in a black garment, with anklets, bracelets, and veil. In her we recognized later one of our workmen. The other personage was wearing a high pointed basket as headgear, a goatskin round his shoulders, and a bell tied to his girdle; he carried a heavy stick, and both had their faces blackened.

It may be laid down as a general rule in regard to the dating of pottery that shape, technique, and fabric must all be taken into account, but the first is much the most important. Fabric or ware is dependent on local materials and consequently remains constant over long periods, and helps therefore very little for dating purposes. Nor is technique or surface-finish always a sure chronological guide, for it is controlled usually by the potters' whim, or by tribal custom, and not by the purchasing public, and is therefore liable to irregular or sudden changes. Shape, on the other hand, though dependent in part on the potters' skill and on the function of the pot, is far more dependent on the public taste, and is consequently more likely to evolve gradually and regularly. Nor do its changes take long in their evolution. It often needs but a few centuries, even in a conservative country like Mesopotamia, for pot-shapes to develop so markedly that the connexion between the first and last of a series would be unrecognizable without the guidance of the intermediate variants. Conversely, if in an extensive array of pottery a close connexion can be shown to exist between specimens from the earliest and latest levels, it is as likely as not that no long period of time need be postulated for the development from one to the other.

In 1913 the British Museum Expedition had excavated a Late Hittite cemetery at Yunus, just outside the walls of Carchemish, and as the work drew to a close and the graves on the outskirts of the cemetery became sparse and poor, my foreman Gregori Antoniou and I started to prospect for a fresh site in the neighbourhood. Beginning from the graveyard on which we were still employed we went inland towards the little village of Yunus (= Eminik), examining both the top of the plateau and the slope down to the mill-stream (see sketch-map, Carchemish, 11. 37); on the high ground about half-way to the village, which is cultivated ground, we noticed quantities of potsherds covering an area of about 100 metres by 50. Gregori, who found the first pieces, hailed them with joyful confidence as Mycenaean-joyful because in this strange land they brought memories of his native Cyprus, confidence because his fifty years and more of excavations in the eastern Mediterranean had given him a working knowledge of antiquities such as few possess. That Mycenaean wares should be found on the banks of the Euphrates sounded incredible, but when I looked at the sherds which Gregori held out to me and saw the smooth buff clay with its decoration of lines and curves in lustrous black and brown paint I was almost convinced, and it needed an examination of the back of the sherds and the recognition of the fact that they were of hand-made pottery to make me realize that we had to deal with a prehistoric and not an Aegean ware.

It is the purpose of this article to gather from a variety of places and publications the examples (known to me) of a particular form of game-board which was in use, at widely different periods, over a very large area of the ancient East, and to point out one historical fact which seems to have a clear connexion with it.

The game in question is that which has been called, for want of any other name, the Game of Fifty-eight Holes. In all cases but one the only requisites of the game which have survived are the boards upon which it was played, and these show in general a striking resemblance, not only in the arrangement of the holes, but in the shape of the whole object, which is roughly rectangular, but has one of the short sides straight while all of the other sides are curved, the long ones concave, the remaining short one convex. Despite individual variations this general form is common to all but a very few of the examples; it has been aptly compared with an axe-blade. As to the holes, there is always a line of these following the edges of the board and two straight lines down the middle. Occasionally the middle displays some pictorial device, a palm-tree, or a pair of eyes, so contrived that it marks out the end (?), or winning-point, of the game; but this feature is rare. The holes are arranged in groups so that, in all but one particular area, four ordinary holes occur between special holes which are always distinguished either by a mark, an inlay, or the end of certain lines connecting them with other holes of the same kind. In the middle of the curved short side is always a central hole of the special kind, generally marked in the same way as the others, but occasionally made larger, or even signalized by a sign of its own. In the particular area referred to, which is on the middle lines towards the straight end of the board, there is always a pair of groups of three special holes with only one ordinary hole dividing them.

Bei unserem Besuch der Ruinen am I. Jan. 1927 haben wir trotz der Kürze der Zeit versucht, die bisherigen Pläne (bei Rassam, Asshur and the Land of Nimrod, S. 407, und Zehnpfund, A.O. XII. 3-4, Plan I, nach Scheil in Mémoires Instit. orient, du Caire, tome I) zu vervollständigen. Das nebenstehende Plänchen, Abb. I, ist das Ergebnis jenes Versuchs. Sie beruhen auf einer rasch ausgeführten Triangulation, deren Hauptpunkt auf dem Zikkurrat-Hügel lag, und einer Abschreitung des Tempel-Plateaus. Von der im N. und O. wohlerhaltenen Stadtmauer haben wir nur ein kurzes Stück, sowie ihre Entfernung vom Tempel-Plateau abgeschritten. Das übrige Stadtgebiet konnten wir nicht besuchen.

The first of the two daggers I propose to discuss I bought from Mr. John Whitaker of Cambridge, who acquired it from Messrs. Sotheby's sale on December 10th, 1932. The type, the patina, and the date when it came into the market suggest the possibility that it may have been associated with the two similar daggers recently acquired by the British Museum and said to have been discovered in a cave near Kirmanshah in the Luristan province of Persia, and with another now in the Louvre in Paris.

The dagger in my possession belongs to a series of Late Bronze Age daggers and swords best characterized by their inlaid hilt. The inlay of wood, ivory, or some other material has usually vanished and the remaining part of the hilt consists of a flanged tang, frequently with one or more rivet-holes and with a tang or a flange to hold the pommel.

It is rarely that an outsider is privileged to see, far less handle, Mandaean books and rolls in Iraq, and the fact that I have been allowed, by degrees, so to do is a proof of the kindness and toleration which my Mandaean friends in Iraq have shown to me. At my request the box is usually opened, the precious manuscripts handed down from father to son are lifted out, the white cloth which wraps them is taken off, and they are opened for me to see. I have even had a Book of Souls written in my name, a compliment which, I am told, has never before been paid to one not a Mandaean.

When a priest brings in a holy book, all those present rise, and the priest kisses the book and puts it against his forehead before opening it. A sweet perfume clings to the manuscripts, for sandalwood or myrtle is often placed in the box in which they are kept. This latter is sometimes of iron. Stories are told of a holy book or books which have come through a conflagration uninjured, or merely scorched, and their preservation is thought to be miraculous. It is possible that while the reed hut flares up quickly and sinks into ashes, the box offers more resistance, and the manuscripts are rescued almost undamaged.

The craving for divine protection is so deeply inherent in human nature that a primitive society cannot long exist without creating for itself a god or gods, to whom are attributed the powers necessary for the preservation of mankind. Most of the great divine beings of the Babylonian pantheon were originally gods of the city-states, whose functions were multiplied according to the needs of their worshippers, until they became strongly marked personalities with very definite powers.

Secondary gods were much less clearly envisaged, and were often so nebulous that their characters sometimes changed completely in the course of ages, so that they became totally different from what they were primarily conceived to be. A god who was originally a mere phantom might, for political or other special reasons, acquire a position of some prominence, only to sink back again into the ranks when the particular circumstances which had called him forth ceased to exist.

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.

Nelle rovine delle antiche città della Valle dei Due Fiumi gli strati più recenti sogliono risalire al periodo persiano ossia all'epoca dei Parti e dei Sassanidi, quando la Mesopotamia faceva parte dell'impero partico o del regno sassanidico. In quasi tutti i luoghi dove gli scavatori hanno iniziato delle ricerche archeologiche essi si sono imbattuti anzitutto in rovine più o meno vaste e più o meno importanti di questi due periodi. Già il Loftus a Warkah, poi i Tedeschi a Babele, e più recentemente a Ctesifonte, gli Americani a Nippur e ora a Seleucia, gli Inglesi a Kish, i Tedeschi ad Ashshur, ed ancora in altri luoghi si sono trovate tracce più o meno cospicue della civiltà partica, vale a dire della civiltà mesopotamica del periodo partico.

Nineveh, enclosed within a rampart, representing, for the most part, Sennacherib's work, nearly eight miles in perimeter, consists of the two great mounds, Quyunjiq (more than half a mile long by a quarter broad) and Nebi Yūnus, the mound of the Prophet Jonah, considerably smaller in size, and the flats within the walls at the foot of these mounds, wherein dwelt the bulk of the people. To the east, the more exposed side, there is also another large rampart outside the complete encircling wall, which seems never to have been completed. Whether the Tigris washed the SW. flank in historic times is uncertain, although such a course for that river is possible.

The only description of this mosque that we possess is that given by al-Ḫaṭīb. It runs as follows:

‘Abū Ja'far al-Manṣūr had established the principal mosque of the city of al-Manṣūur, in contact with (mulāṣiq) his palace called Qaṣr adh-Dhahab—it is [what is now known as] the Old Court (aṣ-ṣaḥhn al-‘atīq)—he built it with sun-dried bricks (libn) and clay (ṭīn); its dimensions, according to Muḥammad ibn ‘Alī al-Warrāq and Aḥmad ibn ‘Alī al-Muḥtasib, were as follows: Muḥammad ibn Ḫalaf says: the dimensions of the palace of al-Manṣūr were 400 cubits by 400 cubits and those of the first mosque 200 by 200; and the columns of wood of the mosque—that is to say each column—consisted of two pieces bound (mu‘aqqab) together with sinews (‘aqab), glue and iron clamps, except five or six columns near the minaret. On each column were round composite capitals, of wood like the shaft.