Excavations at Chagar Bazar by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq team continued in 2001 and 2002 in Areas A and G (Fig. 1). In both areas, the final occupation of the site, datable to ca 1800–1650 BC, was investigated. Cuneiform tablets from Max Mallowan's 1930s excavations testify to the key position held by Chagar Bazar at the beginning of this period. His work had exposed large areas of domestic and administrative structures, but stratigraphic and relational uncertainties remained which merited further investigation. The archaeological situation at the fringes of Shamshi-Addu's Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia are still somewhat enigmatic, and the aftermath of its collapse has not been intensively explored.

The orthostats from the North-West Palace of Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BC) at Nimrud are among the most outstanding works of art from the Ancient Near East. Today they are to be found in museums all over the world and are looked at every day by thousands of visitors. Numerous books and articles have been written about their style, their meaning and their reconstruction. Thus one would think that nothing could have escaped the eye of observers. Nevertheless, some details have been largely overlooked by researchers. Among these is the incised decoration on the edges of the garments of some of the figures depicted, showing a wide range of simple geometric and floral designs as well as complex mythical and narrative scenes. It thus forms a valuable part of the repertoire of Neo-Assyrian artistic motifs and can help us understand the essence and meaning of Neo-Assyrian political art. The evidence of these incised decorations is not only of importance for the history of art but is also fundamental to the understanding of the significance of the clothes and of the figures wearing them, forming an integral and essential part of the mythical symbolic character of the figures.

The invention of writing in southern Mesopotamia at the end of the fourth millennium BC had many and long-lasting consequences. As far as the Early Bronze Age is concerned, one of the most remarkable of these consequences is that the cuneiform writing system that gradually emerged in southern Iraq during the first part of the Early Dynastic period spread to northern Syria around the mid-third millennium BC. A flourishing scribal tradition was already firmly established throughout the Syrian Jezirah and inner Syria by the advent of the Akkadian period.

It is difficult to establish the reasons and mechanisms that led the elites of northern Syria to borrow the practice of writing from their counterparts in southern Iraq. The steps in this process are even more unclear. Hence the aim of this paper is to gather material evidence that may help us shed light on those questions. As an archaeologist, I will not discuss here the content of epigraphical finds, but only their context and chronological attribution according to the chronological divisions in northern and southern Mesopotamia respectively.

The economic relationship between Mesopotamia and the Gulf is a long one which spans millennia, rather than just a few centuries, and which took many forms. Indeed, it can be suggested that the changing nature of this relationship reflects the economic and social changes taking place in southern Iraq and of the related changes in Dilmun. There was an increasing demand by Mesopotamia for both raw materials and exotica from the sixth millennium, when we have the earliest evidence for a relationship, until the annexation of Dilmun by the Kassites in the mid-second millennium. This increasing demand seems to reflect the growing complexity in social organisation in the region. The emergence of an elite group within society in southern Sumer, first seen in the late Uruk phase, and then notably in the mid-third millennium when the group expanded, encouraged an increased demand for status goods and materials (Van De Mieroop 2002). Such goods are used initially to enhance the power and prestige of the group itself, both by display and by gift-giving, because gift-giving binds both men and gods, through offerings, ever more closely into the group. In Mesopotamia such exotic materials also played a role in the birth of what Baines and Yoffee have called “high culture” in these newly emergent complex societies. Baines and Yoffee define this high culture as “the production and consumption of aesthetic items under the control, and for the benefit of, the inner elite of a civilization” (Baines and Yoffee 1998: 235). High culture becomes a vital part of the identity of any civilization. Maintaining a supply of luxuries thus becomes a political necessity, rather than an indulgence, as it helps the essential identity of the group to survive.

The media coverage of the severe weather patterns of 1982–3 and 1997–8 has reasserted for the study of history the possible influence of abrupt climate change at transitional periods. Modern theories on the fall of Ur have already looked beyond the Elamite invasion to the evidence of food shortage and failing water supply as preconditions of the event. The present study seeks to enlarge upon this theme, and will suggest that, following a period of storm and flood, a sustained drought brought an unprecedented loss of life to the city of Ur and across Sumer. The paper will finally suggest a modern and scientific explanation of the ud-šu-bala, or “weather change”, of the period.

The Sumerian epic of Lugalbanda in Hurrumkurra has not yet been edited in its entirety, but important contributions have been made in particular by CI. Wilcke and W. W. Hallo (Wilcke 1969, Hallo 1983, cf. Wilcke 1987). There now exist two complete translations: one by J. A. Black from 1998 (1998: 176–84), virtually identical with the translation accessible on the website of the University of Oxford's Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL) from about 1999; and a more recent translation with an eclectic text reconstruction by H. Vanstiphout (2003: 97–131). It is there entitled Lugalbanda in the Wilderness. Although many points have been clarified, not least thanks to the Yale source published by W. W. Hallo, especially the end of the text remains largely unintelligible and, in Vanstiphout's words, “needs more study” (2003: 162 n. 60).