The fourth season of excavations at Tell al Rimah, from March 3rd to June 3rd, 1967, was sponsored by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, assisted by contributions from the University Museum, Philadelphia, the Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, Brussels, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and the British Academy. The staff included Mr. J. E. Reade (Assistant Director), Miss Stephanie Page (epigraphist and registrar) Mr. Christopher Dalley (surveyor and photographer) and Mr. Jonathan Hodgkin (draughtsman). We were assisted for considerable periods by Mrs. Joan Oates, who undertook conservation and the recording of a large part of the pottery, Mr. Peter Dorrell, an expert photographer who took many of the photographs published here, and Mr. David Hawkins who gave very valuable help with the cleaning and study of the tablets and drew the seals and seal impressions. Mr. Reade was in charge of the excavations at Tell Taya, on which a separate report is published in this Journal. The Representative of the Directorate General of Antiquities was Sayyid Majid Abdullah, who was always ready to help with our problems. I must express my gratitude to all my colleagues, and our joint thanks to Dr. Faisal al Wailly, Director General of Antiquities, Professor Fuad Safar, Inspector General of Excavations, and their staff for their kindness and cooperation.

A Stela of Adad-nirari III was found during the eventful season of Spring 1967 at Tell al Rimah. It stood in position inside the cella of a Late Assyrian shrine, set beside the podium, a placing that is unparalleled among the find spots of other royal stelae. It was inscribed on the face with twenty-one lines, of which nine had been deliberately erased in antiquity; the writing ran across the skirt of the king, who was sculptured upon it slightly less than life-size, but not over the frame or sides of the stone (see Plate XXXVIII). The stela is 1·30 m. high and measures 0·69 m. in width at the base; it is parabolic in shape. It is made from a single slab of hard grey, crystalline “Mosul marble”, in an excellent state of preservation. No traces of paint were visible on the surface as it was unearthed.

During the 1965 season of excavation at Tell al Rimah, Middle Assyrian tablets and fragments amounting to 115 registration numbers were discovered. Of those included, however, almost half are minor fragments which, entered in the excavation catalogue in view of the possibility of their supplying joins, have no independent value as epigraphic material. A number of joins have been made subsequently, and the tablets and larger fragments bearing sufficient consecutive text to provide some information (in some cases only personal names) now amount to 56. With the exception of four, which in view of problems arising from the preliminary study of my copies are left to await collation, all these are published herewith, together with a few minor fragments which either bear the name of a limu, or might be placeable as joins.

The great majority of the tablets come from Phase I level of the courtyard on the south side of the temple. Of the others, TR. 2903 and TR. 2913 are from site A, Shrine, Phase I, whilst TR. 2904 to TR. 2912 inclusive are from site A, Trench Ab, Courtyard, Phase I. It may be noted that the legible documents amongst TR. 2903 to TR. 2913 appear to have belonged to the same group of families as the tablets of the main archive.

At the beginning of the 1966 season of excavations at Tell al Rimah work was continued in Site A, Trench Ab of the Temple courtyard (Level Ib). It was from this same provenance that a number of tablets had been cleared at the end of the previous season, but of the forty tablets and fragments found only a few appear to relate to the Abu-ṭāb archive discovered in that year. Some tablets were sufficiently legible to be treated, read and copied immediately; others, despite laboratory treatment, are unlikely to yield much further information that can be given in the brief notes in the Register (Appendix D) or in the copies presented in Plates LVII-LXVI.

Date. Twenty-one of the texts are dated by eponyms which, compared with Middle Assyrian tablets previously known, indicate a period of at least twenty-five years predominantly to the end of the reign of Shalmaneser I (1274–1245 B.C.), with some to the early years of Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244–1208) i.e. c. 1260–1230 B.C. Limmu-officials otherwise unattested and now to be placed within this period are Ištu-dAuma (TR. 3001, 3002), Ṣiili-Adad (3007), Adad-šum-lišir (3016) and some broken names. The month names follow the accepted M. Assyrian practice as at Aššur and Bilia. Three texts are written in a skilled hand on a fine reddish clay, reminiscent of the Neo-Assyrian libraries and are to be dated somewhat later. These are a census of storerooms, stables and other large buildings round the temple controlled by individuals (3017); a list of tenants or owners of plots of land between 33–60 iku (3020); TR. 3024 lists names of persons.

En 1964, pendant la première campagne de fouille entreprise en Iraq, à Tell al Rimah, par les archéologues de la Joint Expedition of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq and the University Museum, Philadelphia, ceux-ci découvrirent un orthostate en marbre de Mossoul en procédant au dégagement de la façade d'un temple correspondant au niveau II. Ce bloc de pierre, qui se trouvait dans un renfoncement jouxtant la porte de l'antichambre, était là en évident réemploi puisqu'il portait, sculpté en relief sur un de ses côtés, et brisé, la moitié seulement d'un visage grimaçant interprété conventionnellement, dans l'iconographie mésopotamienne, comme étant celui du géant Humbaba auquel Gilgameš se mesura victorieusement (Epopée de Gilgameš, II, 3 ss.). D. Oates, rendant compte de cette trouvaille, la commentait ainsi: “… the other half of the face had disappeared … this damage preceded its re-use in the position in which it was found for the plaster of the revetment covered both the scar and the surviving part of the mask. It is possible that the orthostat had formed part of the decoration of the original building and it may have occupied the same recess at a lower level, where the demon Humbaba might have served as guardian of the gate”.

In Revue de Musicologie XLIX (1963), 3–17 (henceforth cited as RM XLIX), and again in Studies in Honor of Benno Landsberger (= Assyriological Studies No. 16, Chicago (1965), 268–272, henceforth cited as AS 16), Mme. Duchesne-Guillemin has put forward a theory for the tuning of the Babylonian harp, based on a tablet from Ur, U.3011, and another tablet of unstated provenance in the University Museum, Philadelphia, CBS 10996. The CBS tablet contains a list of intervals with their names, repeated twice over, while the Ur tablet gives the names of the nine strings, presumably of the harp, followed by part of a similar list of intervals (extremely fragmentary). Starting from the observation that the third string has the name “thin string”, Mme. Duchesne-Guillemin infers that the semitone occurred between the third and fourth strings, so that the harp would have been tuned to a scale equivalent to our C major, running from C to the D in the octave above (using, as throughout this article, names of notes and scales in a relative not absolute sense). Observing further that the list of intervals contains three rising fifths followed by four descending fourths, she suggests that the list is a tuning cycle, in which the inclusion of thirds and sixths is explained by the principle that “c'est la superposition des gestes sur les mêmes cordes, pour les regler et les corriger, qui constitue l'accord” (her italics; see RM XLIX, 15), though this view is modified in RM LII. The inclusion of the tritone—an impossible tuning interval—she can only explain by the necessity for completeness (ibid). She remarks incidentally that the fourth string, named “Ea made it”, is to be identified with the Greek μέση.

In recent years the discovery of two Late Babylonian tablets listing the names of the nine strings of the harp, and of musical intervals, and the interpretation of these tablets in a series of articles by Mme. Duchesne-Guillemin and Mrs. Draffkorn Kilmer, have brought the subject of Babylonian music into the forefront of discussion. My own responsibility for the publication of one of the tablets and my interest in the subject led me to consult a musicologist, Mr. David Wulstan of Magdalen College, Oxford, and as a result of our discussions Mr. Wulstan decided to propose a new interpretation of the two tablets. His article was already written and had been submitted for publication, when Dr. Edmond Sollberger discovered among the tablets from Ur still awaiting publication in the British Museum an Old Babylonian fragment of a musical treatise of a rather different kind. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Sollberger for generously ceding to me the right to publish this important tablet. It provides welcome confirmation of most of the conclusions already reached by Mr. Wulstan, and his article, as published in this volume, has needed very little revision.

The fragment, numbered U.7/80, is a flake measuring 100 × 89 mm. and containing parts of two columns of text. The surface is very slightly curved, but not enough to make it certain that it is from the reverse of the tablet. The terms used for the strings and intervals are (as far as they are preserved) identical with those already known from the two tablets mentioned above.

Work at Tell Taya began on March 16th, 1967, and ended at the beginning of June. The excavations, on behalf of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, were concurrent with those directed by Mr. David Oates at Tell al Rimah a few miles away, and the staff, house, and facilities were shared as convenient. Most members of the joint expedition helped at both sites, but I am especially indebted to Mr. Christopher J. Dalley, whose aid with the surveying, photography, and site-supervision was invaluable, and to Mr. Jonathan Hodgkin, who drew much of the pottery; Mr. David Hawkins took charge of one area of the excavations, as well as collaborating with Miss Stephanie Page in the registration of objects. The Directorate-General of Antiquities was represented by Sd. Majid Abdullah who, with other officials of the Iraq government in Tell 'Afar and Baghdad, gave us vital and unfailing assistance. The labour-force consisted of Arab and Turkoman workmen, with Muhammad Khalaf Musla as foreman. The excavations were financed by a generous anonymous donation to the British School for third-millennium research, and I am happy to acknowledge that my own work on this period has been made possible by a grant from the Gerald Averay Wainwright Fund of Oxford University.