The octagonal prism of Sennacherib BM 103000, today in the Middle East collection of the British Museum, is well-documented as a purchase made from the antiquities dealer Ibrahim Elias Gejou. However, the circumstances that brought this object to London from Iraq, as well as the trial this acquisition triggered in France have not been explored in scholarship. Yet, several documents survive and preserve this history. The letters that Ibrahim Elias Gejou sent about the prism to E.A. Wallis Budge, Keeper of Assyrian and Egyptian antiquities at the time, still exist today in the archive of the British Museum. While in France, records of the court case brought against Gejou by Benjamin Minassian who accused Gejou of having sold the prism without his knowledge, are to be found in the Archives de Paris. Read together, these documents narrate a chronology of events that begins with the appearance of the prism on the antiquities market and go much beyond a French court of law. To reconstruct this long-forgotten part of BM 103000's biography, this case study examines a dispute over the ownership of an artefact illegally removed from Iraq specifically to be sold to the British Museum, and how it impacted the parties who sold it.

This article presents a study of seventeen cylinder seals discovered in the city of the Eshnunna (Tell Asmar), which was one of the most important cities during the Old Babylonian period in Mesopotamia; these pieces are part of a large group of finds, statues, pottery, metal pieces, cuneiform texts, as well as group of cylinder seals, all of which were found in the private houses in the southern part of the city, by the Iraqi excavations at the site, more than twenty years ago. They showed the social status of these houses' residents, their loyalties and their religious beliefs. Thus the discoveries shed light on the importance of this city and the necessity of continuing excavation work there.

Examining the archaeological findings within the Mannaean kingdom, a significant association with Assyria emerges, highlighting these regions’ interconnectedness. The influence of both Urartian and Assyrian cultures on the Mannaean people becomes evident, indicating a shared cultural heritage or intimate exchanges among these cultures. Notably, the Kani Charmou graveyard in Mannaea serves as a compelling example, revealing a rich assortment of artifacts that parallel those discovered in Ziwiye, a renowned archaeological site in the region. These diverse grave goods unequivocally demonstrate the existence of a robust trade and exchange network between Mannaea and its neighbouring western counterpart, Assyria, and the profound impact of Assyrian culture on Mannaean society. This connection is also evident in religious practices, which show similarities. Through stylistic analysis and the identification of parallels in metal vessels, glazed jars, and a cylinder seal, the proposed dating of the Kani Charmou graveyard aligns with the Iron Age II period.

The article presents a philological edition of K.2727+K.6213, a fragmentary tablet from Nineveh that deals with a ritual for opening a canal. The paper discusses other references to this ritual, i.e. parallel sources for this type of ritual, the materials used, the gods addressed, and the specialists who performed the ritual actions.

Rabana-Merquly was a major regional centre of the Parthian era in the central Zagros highlands. This article explores the hypothesis that the Rabana intramural settlement was in part a ‘sanctuary’ devoted to the ancient Persian water goddess Anahita, based upon extensive architectural augmentations around an ephemeral waterfall, combined with the nearby construction of a probable fire altar. Two jar burials excavated in 2022 inside an adjacent building show this complex also functioned as a mausoleum. Carbon-14 dating of these cremation deposits supports occupation of the site during the second to first centuries B.C. Twin rock reliefs at the entrances to Rabana-Merquly indicate that the fortress was likely associated with the ruling dynasty of Adiabene, a vassal kingdom of the Parthian (or Arsacid) Empire in north-east Mesopotamia. A further link to Natounissarokerta/Natounia on the Kapros is suggested by the iconography of that city's coinage, which features an obverse image of a goddess, potentially a hybrid representation of Anahita-Tyche.

Edition with translation of three Sumerian liturgical fragments kept today in Birmingham City Museum. In themselves they are hardly significant, but once put back into their material context, i.e. joined to fragments kept in other museums, and once compared to their literary parallels, they start to become interpretable. The first fragment may come from Larsa, while the others belong to tablets kept in Berlin, partially published in 1913 by Zimmern in his Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler 2, whose origin is admittedly Sippir. The first fragment is part of a vast liturgy of the goddess Ninisina. The two following fragments are from two different tablets both containing a liturgy of Enlil which can now be almost entirely reconstructed. A further fragment is edited in a following article.

In 2019, three fragments of terracotta nails were discovered at the site of Amyan (Kurdistan region of Iraq, Duhok Governorate), probably dated to the second half of the second millennium B.C. Typologically unprecedented, they nonetheless belong to the well-known category of nails found throughout Mesopotamia and Susiana, dating from the fourth to first millennia B.C. This article publishes the nails from Amyan and also contextualises them by comparing them to other terracotta nails found in northern Mesopotamia and dated to the second half of the second millennium B.C. By doing so, I ultimately propose an initial typology of these objects.

The excavation of a large administrative building at the city of Tell Brak in northern Syria saw the recovery of a considerable quantity of charred cereals dated to the mid-third millennium B.C.E. This remarkable discovery provides a rare snapshot into the nature of agriculture in Upper Mesopotamia during the Early Bronze Age. The material has been studied using a combination of primary archaeobotanical analysis, crop stable isotope determinations, and functional weed ecology to deliver new insights into cultivation strategies at Tell Brak as well as to contribute to the wider debate regarding trade and crop importation in this region. Specific crop regime choices also reveal how the farmers of Tell Brak were able to reduce the overall risk of crop failure by careful water management, a vitally important factor in this semi-arid region, with potential implications for the analysis of other large-scale urban agro-economies in the Middle East and beyond.

In the early 1990s the two fragments of black stone making up the Tower of Babylon stele with pictures of the ziggurat in Babylon and the king Nebuchadnezzar II were found in the large open trench from the German excavations of Amran in 1900. The findspot was about 20 m north of the Esagil temple in Babylon, but the level where it was discovered is not Neo-Babylonian but later, possibly Parthian. The archaeological and historical background of the stele is discussed, and the image of the Ziggurat on the stele is considered. After 28 years in the Schøyen Collection Oslo, the stele is now in the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.

To Professor James Neely

In respect and admiration

Almost 50 years after landmark archaeological activities in the Deh Luran plain in southwestern Iran by Frank Hole, Kent Flannery, James Neely, and Henry Wright, the area was re-surveyed in 2016 and 2019 to assess the destruction of archaeological sites as a result of agricultural and expanded irrigation activities. During the surface survey on Tappeh Gārān two inscribed objects were found. The inscriptions yield some information on the economic and political importance of Tappeh Gārān in the Old Elamite Period. Textual evidence indicates that throughout the 3th to the 1st millennia BCE, Mesopotamian rulers frequently invaded Elam and seized its principal centres, especially Susa. As the main corridor between Elam and its western neighbors, the Deh Luran plain is a major route between the two, especially in regards to the acquisition of raw materials by the Mesopotamians, including different kinds of stone and bitumen. Further, the abundance of water and fertile soil made the Deh Luran plain a desirable target for Mesopotamian polities. The inscribed objects from Tappeh Gārān consist of writings in Akkadian and geometric patterns that we think illustrate the outline of an agricultural scheme.