The story of how Sir Max Mallowan, accompanied by Professor Jørgen Laessøe, discovered the site of Fort Shalmaneser, and how soon after he decided to begin excavations there is one that is well known to readers of this journal. Also well known is that as work progressed from 1957 to 1963 several rooms were encountered within the fortress which were filled, sometimes to the incredible depth of several feet, with broken and mutilated ivory-work. What is not so well known, or if well known is not so well appreciated, is that these “Ivory Rooms”, as we of the Expedition used to call them, frequently contained many other categories of object as well, which, though subsequently overshadowed by the ivories, were nevertheless more deserving of attention than their present state of publication would suggest. One such category is the series of miniature painted glass plaques which is our subject here, for not only are they attractive and interesting in themselves, but they must be counted amongst the earliest examples of painted glass that have survived from antiquity. It is with the aim, therefore, of more fully acquainting both archaeologists and historians of glass with the details of these plaques that Dr. Robert H. Brill and I have prepared our present studies.

As part of a long-term research project consisting of scientific investigations of the various types of glasses excavated at Nimrud, the author of this report undertook a study of three of the nine painted glass plaques included among the finds at Fort Shalmaneser. This research is being conducted in co-operation with Mr. J. J. Orchard who, in Part I of this paper, has illustrated the plaques and discussed them in detail. As is the case with so many Mesopotamian glasses, the objects involved here are very heavily weathered, which complicated matters greatly. Such objects are not only extremely fragile and difficult to handle, but also the original glass— where any remains—is completely obscured by decomposition products. Moreover, in this instance, because so few of these plaques have been found, it was not possible to remove samples for all of the experiments which might be expected to yield useful information. Nevertheless, despite these limitations, several interesting findings have come out of our experiments.

At his death in December 1976 Briggs W. Buchanan had been working on the collection of ancient Near Eastern seals in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, for the best part of thirty years. Illness had prevented any visits after the summer of 1974. The first fruits of his labours appeared in 1966 as a Catalogue of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in the Ashmolean Museum, I. Cylinder Seals. By early in the 1970's he had prepared a manuscript of the long-planned complementary stamp seal catalogue. A variety of problems hindered the final stages of revision and it will sadly be some years yet before a manuscript and illustrations suitable for publication can be made available. Buchanan had also drafted a concise handlist of all the cylinder seals acquired by the Ashmolean Museum after his first volume went to press in 1963, including a few seal impressions from Tell Brak and Kish overlooked in earlier years. He intended this to be an appendix to his second volume. As this volume is already of considerable size and treats a distinct aspect of ancient glyptic, it has been decided that a revised and extended version of this appendix should appear independently, so that it may more easily be used in conjunction with the cylinder seal catalogue. Virtually all the cylinder seals described here were acquired when Briggs Buchanan was not in Oxford; but his comments on them were always eagerly awaited, and readily given, when he arrived for his almost annual summer visits between 1963 and 1974.

Among the ancient Near Eastern objects in the Newell Bequest collection at Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts, is the gypsum stand published herewith. On the basis of its dedicatory inscription, which will be discussed in detail below, the object's provenance can be established as the sanctuary of Ningizzida and Geštinanna at Girsu (Telloh). The piece was probably found when the sanctuary was plundered by illegal diggers in August, 1924. At that time at least seven statues of Gudea and two of Ur-Ningirsu were discovered, all reportedly found together in one room. The Gudea statues are remarkable for their inherent artistic merit and because some of them show Gudea as a youth, while others depict him as a mature man.

Other furnishings from this sanctuary include a Gudea statue found by Cros and a steatite vase with interlacing serpents and dragons. The sanctuary was excavated by Genouillac in his 1929 and 1930–31 seasons. His finds included inscribed bricks and door stones; a grey marble dish dedicated to Ningizzida by Gudea; a mace-head dedicated to the same deity by Nammah, a scribe; fragments of a stele with a presentation scene; part of a blue steatite lamp showing intertwined serpents; and numerous pieces of boxes and lids of baked clay, many with representations of serpents. The architecture of the sanctuary could not be reconstructed because of the illicit digging and the inability of Genouillac's workers to trace its mudbrick walls.

Since its publication, AT 401—a delivery-note of copper—has been considered as an important piece of evidence for the reconstruction of the weight system at Alalah (Level IV). The interest of this text lies in the fact that consignments of copper are reckoned in talents and shekels, and that the total, also reckoned in talents and shekels, is provided. Consequently, we may have a clue for establishing the amount of shekels comprising the talent at Alalah. The various interpretations so far suggested have—in my opinion—failed to offer a convincing explanation of the text itself, with the result that the metrological value of the talent at Alalah is still far from established.

With increasing interest in the economic aspects of Mesopotamian history, precise determinations of the metrology in use at different times and places are becoming ever more urgent. Measures of capacity are particularly badly served, and the position for the Old Babylonian period is well described by M. Bottéro when he writes: “Quant à la métrologie absolue (ou plus exactement: ajustée à notre propre système métrique), aucune donnée ne nous permet jusqu'à ce jour de la connaître, et nous sommes contraints, si nous voulons en avoir une idée, de faire fond sur les calculs effectués autour des mesures proprement babyloniennes ou assyriennes, sans nous dissimuler que les mêmes mots pouvaient impliquer des valeurs différentes…” (ARMT VII, 347). The brief note which follows is therefore intended to convey the essential information about an Old Babylonian jar from Tell al Rimah with a note of its capacity inscribed on it. The accuracy of the determination leaves much to be desired, but in the absence of any more accurate data any such clues seem worth following up.