The Russian excavations at Karmir-Blur, conducted since 1939 jointly by the Institute of History of the Armenian Republic and the Hermitage Museum, are the only excavations of an Urartian site of any importance as yet made under scientific conditions. A summary of the first part of their publication was published in this Journal in 1952, and it is in keeping with the importance of this excavation that a further summary, covering the seasons 1949 to 1953, should be made available to English readers.

Part II describes the seasons 1949–1950, during which the expedition continued work on the citadel and a sector of the town of , especially on its domestic quarters, and showed that this city was one of the principal administrative centres of Trans-Caucasia (Fig. 1). Particularly important was the discovery of two great storerooms, numbered 25 and 28, used for storing wine in vast pithoi (jars), the total content of which is estimated to have been about 150,000 litres of wine, apparently the equivalent of 600 akarki—the Urartian unit of liquid measure. It is pointed out, however, that King speaks of building even greater wine cellars, capable of holding 900 akarki. Remains of grape pips point to the cultivation of grapes of the type of Voskeat (Chardji), Mschali, Ararat (Hachabash) and also some black grapes.

This catalogue of ancient Near Eastern seals is published and the photographs are reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The term “ancient Near East” is here used to cover the period from the prehistoric age until the end of the Achaemenid Empire. The majority of the seals in the Collection are Mesopotamian in origin but Achaemenid art is well represented and there are a few examples of Syrian, Anatolian and Phoenician glyptic; Egyptian seals have not been included. None of the seals was obtained through excavation and in only a few cases is it known where they were acquired. In consequence their classification has had to be based entirely on stylistic grounds. No attempt has been made in this article to give a general history of the development of Near Eastern glyptic art since this has been treated in a number of publications, notably H. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, A. Moortgat, Vorderasiatische Rollsiegel, E. Porada, Corpus of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in North American Collections, vol. I, H. H. von der Osten, Altorientalische Siegelsteine der Sammlung Mans Silbius von Auloch (Studia Ethnographica Upsaliensis, vol. XIII).

The seals have been classified according to form into three groups: I, cylinder seals; II, seal-amulets; III, stamp seals. Groups I and III have been subdivided according to region, but so far as possible a chronological arrangement has been followed in order to give a continuous presentation of the development of glyptic art.

In the course of the excavation of a building which has become known as Fort Shalmaneser, a well preserved slab of greenish alabaster with an inscription from Shalmaneser III was discovered in a doorway leading into the room F.S., S. 4, where it served as a threshold. The slab measures 146 cms. in width (length) and 62 cms. in height (width); brickwork and bitumen covering which extended c. 10 cms. at either edge of the slab concealed the beginning and end of each line of the inscription. A rectangular socket hole near the upper edge of the slab was designed to receive a vertically sliding bar. There is a crack in the stone running from the upper to the lower edge; a natural flaw in the surface is responsible for the circumstance that the sign KUR, in line 5, was incised to a smaller scale than the other signs of the inscription. Part of the surface at the upper edge of the slab is worn; for this reason part of the first line of the inscription is lost.

The inscription is framed, and the individual lines of inscription are separated by ruled lines. The inscription continues beyond its frame at the end of the second line. The width of the inscribed panel is 141 cms., its height 53 cms. The distance between each ruled line is 5 cms. A copy of the inscription is shown in Plate XII. The following is a transliteration and translation of the text.

The major cities of Babylonia possessed, at least by the end of the fourteenth century B.C., hemerologies which indicated, for each month of the year, which days in that month were regarded as propitious. In the time of Nazimaruttash, king of Babylon, whose reign covered the turn of that century, the versions of Sippar, Nippur, Babylon, Ur, Larsa, Uruk, and Eridu were collated and excerpted to produce a single version, which was presumably regarded thenceforward as the standard version for Babylonia.

This standard version (preceded by a longer text of a rather different kind, which indicated which months of the year were regarded as favourable for the performance of various specified actions, such as founding a palace, changing one's occupation, or falling from a roof) was later—perhaps some two centuries later—set out on a large tablet since found in the remains of the city of Ashur, and was followed on the tablet by a further version, by no means in complete agreement with the standard version, and identified on the tablet as the Ashur version.

To these two versions of the short summary hemerology for the whole year, however, the tablet adds two sets of special very detailed instructions for the first eight days of the seventh month of the year, Tashritu; the first set (to which are prefixed short instructions for certain days of the first month, Nisanu) is described on the tablet as the Ashur version, while the second (a shorter set, differing extensively in detail from the Ashur version, and without prefixed instructions for Nisanu, but including, additionally, special instructions for the ninth day of Tashritu) is marked as the Akkad version.

The Nimrud tablet ND.5577 was discovered by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq Expedition in the 1956 campaign. It was found in the ruins of the Ezida Temple, in a pit in N.T. 12. The tablet measures 25 × 10.5 cms. When found it was unburnt. The obverse is much defaced and its upper part almost destroyed by fire. No traces of a colophon are preserved.

The text of N.D.5577 consists of three bilingual incantations of which the first and the second according to their subscriptions are incantations of the type n a m. e r í m b ú r. r u. d a. No. 1 (obv. 1–26) was composed for a ritual against cattle-disease. The greater part of the text is destroyed. No. 2 (obv. 27–43) and No. 3 (obv. 44–rev. 48) are incantations against human diseases. In their style and phraseology they offer strong resemblance to the texts of the series Utukkē limnūti of which No. 3, at least, may be an excerpt.

Copies of the text are given on Plates XVI-XIX.

Cypriot pottery of the Iron Age can now be dated much more closely through sites which have been published from north Palestine, notably Megiddo, Samaria and Hazor, and also from trial excavations which have been undertaken in Syria. Yet further east the excavations at Nimrud help to fill the picture. These sites again throw light on the early levels at Al Mina, for though Professor Gjerstad inspected the Cypriot material, no specific report was made upon it.

In this paper, the Cypriot and Syrian pottery will be examined in detail with special reference to the collection of sherds which were handed over to the University of London, Institute of Archaeology, by the British Museum at Sir Leonard Woolley's behest. The writer is indebted to him for making it available. In the light of the comparative material, an endeavour will be made to clarify the position of the early levels at Al Mina with regard to other sites in the Near East and also to establish a chronological sequence, and to determine its bearing on the dating of the Greek pottery.

When Sir Leonard Woolley published his reports in 1935–36 on the excavations at Al Mina (J.H.S., LVIII (1938), 1–30, 133–70; A.J., XVII (1937), 1ff.), he stressed the importance of the Cypriot pottery from the occupation of Levels VIII–VI. In subsequent studies (J.H.S., LIX, 1ff.; LX, 1ff.; Boardman B.S.A. 52 (1957) 1ff.) only the Greek pottery was examined.