The drawings discussed below, which show a number of sculptures, now mostly lost, from Ashurbanipal's palace at Niniveh, have for over a century been preserved in the collection of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Though until recently they were themselves also believed lost, their whereabouts was in fact recorded by Loftus in a footnote to page 180 of his Travels and Researches in Chaldæa and Susiana, and with the help of Miss Nielsen, the Society's assistant librarian, I had no difficulty in locating them. I am greatly indebted to the President and Council of the Royal Asiatic Society for permission to publish them here. I am also grateful to Dr. R. D. Barnett and the Trustees of the British Museum for allowing their photographs of the drawings to be used for the Plates, and to Mr. David Oates for some considerable assistance. It should be added that this article could not have been written without continual reference to The Stones of Assyria by Professor C. J. Gadd.

During the last decade hydrographers, geographers, and geologists have applied their specialised knowledge to the geophysical systems which condition the life of man in the Mesopotamian plain. While their various contributions have directly and indirectly focused attention on the authenticity of the Flood, some historical data which are relevant to it have also been discovered. It therefore seems opportune for an archaeologist to reopen a discussion which now has an easy approach through two excellent monographs by Alexander Heidel and André Parrot. The former elucidates the relationship of the accounts in the Book of Genesis to the earlier cuneiform sources from which the Old Testament story was only indirectly derived; the latter has discussed the historicity of the Flood on more general grounds, and believes that the Old Testament account was derived from the cuneiform by the Patriarchs some time after the eighteenth century B.C. when they sojourned in Mesopotamia.

Study of the political history of Babylonia in the seventh century B.C. depends largely on records from Assyria, the dominant power for most of that time. A presentation of events from a Babylonian viewpoint is consequently of some importance, and that is provided by the texts generally known as Chronicles. Apart from the unique information they convey, these often act as a counterpart to the Assyrian Annals. They are concise accounts of happenings in Babylonia, or relative to it, year by year. All the known examples were abstracted from more detailed records and composed in differing forms for reasons not stated and now obscure. The briefest type of text has been called the ‘Extract Chronicles’. In this each entry is usually very short and no attempt is made to account for every year between the first date on the tablet and the last. A new representative of the class is presented here and covers the period of Shamash-shum-ukin's rule at Babylon (668–648 B.C.) after a single line concerning the sixth year of Ashur-nadin-shumi (694–3 B.C). The facts recounted by this Babylonian source can be linked with another Extract Chronicle and with allusions in the Nineveh correspondence, divination reports, and royal inscriptions, and so add to our knowledge of the relationship between Shamash-shum-ukin of Babylon and his brother, Ashurbanipal, the king of Assyria. More light is shed upon the compilation of this and similar Chronicles by the colophon, naming the source of the text and the scribe, a man whose identity and date can be established with reasonable certainty from other documents.

In the main publication of excavations by the ‘Weld-Field Expedition to Mesopotamia’ at Tell Uhaimir little attention was paid to work in area ‘P’. In his account of the 1923–4 season's work Langdon published the headless statue found on the site and referred briefly to the ‘Old Sumerian Palace’ where it had been excavated. Later Mackay recorded that two buildings were examined in the area, one as large as palace ‘A’, but probably earlier. Much of the plan could be traced on the ground and the walls, of plano-convex brick, survived to about thirty centimetres above foundation levels. At the time the importance of this building in area ‘P’ was overshadowed by richer excavation in area ‘A’, where a directly comparable group of buildings was found with a greater variety of furnishings. The remains in ‘P’ were not so extensive, less well preserved and not so easily interpreted. Seen in perspective the site gains considerably in interest. Despite extensive excavations on Early Dynastic sites in South Mesopotamia only three structures have been found which might reasonably be described as palaces, though evidence for temple development in this period is now well illustrated by finds at a number of sites. Were it not for the necessarily restricted scope of excavations on the very large areas embraced by ancient Mesopotamian cities, this might be taken to suggest that still, even by the end of the Early Dynastic period, the city ruler's residence was an indistinguishable part of the temple complex, except in the most politically developed cities.

The story of the encounters of Gilgamesh with the ‘Ale-wife’ and with Ur-shanabi the ferry-man, in his quest for the secret of immortality, is partly preserved on tablets from the Nineveh libraries and from Babylon, and partly on a fragment of Old Babylonian date. This last was purchased, from among a group of tablets said to come from Sippar (Abu Habba), by Bruno Meissner, for the Berlin Museum in 1902. It provided the first tangible evidence of the existence of a text earlier than the ‘canonical’ Assyrian and, by overlapping part of the story already known, revealed something of the literary changes which had taken place during the intervening centuries. More recent discoveries have shown that there were several Old Babylonian text-types.

The Meissner Fragment is the lower part of a tablet with four columns, two on either face, containing fifteen and fourteen lines of the obverse and fifteen and fourteen of the reverse. Translations of the text may be found in the late Alexander Heidel's book and in A.N.E.T. The first column narrates the care of Shamash for Gilgamesh, probably included in Tablet IX of the ‘canonical’ version. In columns two and three the hero explains his search to the Ale-wife, who attempts to dissuade him with her famous carpe diem speech, a speech not inappropriate to one of that profession.

Full discussions have taken place in the pages of this journal of the distribution and chronological significance of gold and silver tubular beads with spiral ends in W. Asia and Greece. They were fully treated by Professor M. Mallowan, who recorded finds from Tell Brak, Alaca Hüyük, Troy IIg, Veri in the Caucasus, the shaft graves at Mycenae and Mari on the Euphrates. Spiral-end pendant ornaments from Hissar II and Ur III were connected by Mallowan with the style of these beads.

Mrs. Maxwell-Hyslop added the reference to the beads of this type in the Poliochni treasure of Lemnos with its well-established Troy Ilg connexions. The occurrence of a necklace of twenty beads in the Dorak treasure provides a further link between Alaca and Troy. Whilst admitting that beads of this type lasted over a long period, both authors agree that they made their first appearance in late third millennium contexts (2300–2000 B.C.), where they serve as a loose but valuable evidence of cultural contact in the latest phases of the Early Bronze Age, the Mycenae, Mari and Veri examples appearing to constitute a second group in the 1600–1300 B.C. bracket.

The dagger (Plate X, 1; Fig. 1), now in private possession, was purchased in Teheran in 1960, and like most objects from dealers at that time was reported to have come from Resht on the Caspian Sea. Since the hilt had broken in antiquity and the recently soldered joint (Fig. 1) could be taken apart easily, the writers decided to submit the dagger to an extensive metallurgical examination by cutting from it small unobtrusive specimens. The compositions of the metallic parts were determined by spectrographic and chemical analyses and these results can be compared to other analyses of Luristan bronzes published recently elsewhere. In addition, the non-metallic core material within the hilt (Fig. 2) was also analysed.

Almost all modern writers agree on the list of the stations on the caravan road linking Mosul to Nisibin, as it was known to the Arab geographers of the classical age (ninth–eleventh centuries) and their successors of the Middle Ages. Starting from Mosul it includes: Balad, Bâ’aynâtha, Barqa’îd, Adhrama, Tell Farrâsha and Nisibin.

The first station, Balad, does not raise any problem; its identification with Eski-Mosul fixes it firmly on the map, on the Tigris, at a distance of 40 kilometres to the north-west of Mosul (see Fig. 1).

After Balad, questions begin to arise, and it may not be impossible that some of the proposed localisations could be revised.

These localisations are well known:

For Bâ’aynâtha, de Goeje proposed Abû Wadjnah, in Iraq, near the ’Ain Zâlah airfield of the Mosul Petroleum Company, and Dussaud suggested Tell al ’Uwaynât, also in Iraq, to-day on the railway line Mosul-Syria.

Barqa’îd was pushed back by de Goeje and Von Oppenheim beyond the Syrian border, to Tell Rumailân (or Rumaileh) near Tell Hâdi, with, as a corollary, the localisation of its replacement, Bashazza, at Tshilagha, 25 kilometres to the West of Qubûr al bîdh, also in Syria.

In 1962 the authors published a photograph of a dagger from Iran (of unknown provenance) in the United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution, at the same time pointing out that this was an example of the application of the technique of ‘casting on’. Since then we have received a radiograph of this dagger, kindly taken by the United States Naval Ordnance Laboratory, and this clearly shows the junction between the tang of the blade and the cast-on hilt. (Plate XII, 1, 2 and Fig. 1, 7.)

The technique of casting on can be fairly simply explained by reference to this particular dagger. The blade and tang were first cast and the casting was then trimmed, hammered and polished. Subsequently a mould was prepared around the upper part of the blade and the tang, into which was poured the molten metal which would provide the handle of the dagger. After this second mould had been removed the handle would then be trimmed and polished. Had the work been carried out with very great care indeed there would be complete metallic bonding between the blade and handle, but in practice this is very difficult to achieve and there is almost inevitably some oxidation of the blade and tang with the result that a thin film of metallic oxide separates the two parts. Although technically a weakness, from our point of view this is fortunate since the oxide being less dense to X-rays it allows us to see the line of junction very clearly.

A Number of small fragments of tablets found in the Nabu Temple excavations at Nimrud (Kalḫu) bear parts of Neo-Assyrian historical texts. In a few instances these inscriptions join texts already published or supplement known texts, while some, though duplicating well-known records, are worthy of note as indicating building activity or the presence of the king at Kalḫu. Copies of these fragments, some made during the excavations, are presented here (Plates XXVI–XXVII). It will be remembered that the ‘vassal-treaties’ of Esarhaddon came from this same building.

A fragment of a large tablet (ND.4369; Plate XXVI) is inscribed in the large square script characteristic of the Middle Assyrian hand and imitated and developed for the neo-Assyrian monumental writing. This tablet may have been a draft for the mason inscribing an account of the events in the accession and first years of Shalmaneser III (859/8 B.C.). The text is similar to that of the royal annals from Assur, the obverse describing the march from Aridi to Hubushkia (S.E. of L. Urmia) and the reverse the campaign in Amurru, where a statue of the king was set up on Mt. Lallar, and the attack on Aḫuni of Adini.

The third and final season of excavations at Yanik Tepe, near Tabriz, was carried out from 10th August until 5th October, 1962. The work was made possible by the following contributions, which are gratefully acknowledged: the University of Manchester (£600); the University Museum, Cambridge (£250); the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (£250); the Russell Trust (£200); the British Academy (£150); the City Museum, Liverpool (£100); the City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham (£50). This amounted to a total for the 1962 season of £1,600. The total sum of contributions for the three seasons of work at Yanik Tepe is £3,350. The staff during the 1962 season comprised the following: the Director and his wife, who was responsible for the register of finds, the greater part of the object-drawing and the house-keeping; Mr. Edward Keall (Surveyor and Draughtsman); Messrs. David Biernoff, Mark Davie, Patrick Guthrie-Jones and Ian Todd (Archaeological Assistants). Mr. Biernoff also recorded the animal bones, and he and Mr. Keall repaired the pottery; Mr. Todd was responsible for the photography of the objects. Mr. Sarafaraz was appointed by the Director-General of the Archaeological Service of Iran as Inspector to accompany the expedition during the 1962 season, and he also acted as an Archaeological Assistant.