The object which bears the following inscription (Plates IX–X) measures 15·7 cms. by 7·6 cms. (middle). The cylinder is made up of three separate pieces found at Nimrud on different days (of April, 1952) in chamber 4 of the as yet unidentified building called provisionally Z(iggurrat) T(errace), near a doorway on the south side of the room, where it was evidently not in situ but loose among the filling, having been cast or ruined out from some other location. Into the same room had been tipped as rubbish a large number of Assyrian letters, found embedded in the earth along the north side, and blocking two doorways. How strangely far away it was from its true original site is revealed by the inscription, which proves that it was brought to Calah from distant Erech, not so much as a trophy of war, though in consequence of it, but rather for reasons of policy.

The expedition to Nimrud sponsored by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq began its fourth successive season on March 8th, 1952, and continued to work until the first week in May. The discoveries made during the course of this campaign were of extraordinary interest. Buildings and sculpture of high merit, ivories unsurpassed in quality, and inscriptions that enabled us to obtain a living and sometimes a personal picture of life in Assyria during the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., provided an ample reward for the effort expended in excavations. It must, however, be stressed that the discovery of so much material was a direct consequence of the fact that we were enabled to operate with an average of not less than 200 workmen, thanks to the financial help provided by various institutions. Once again, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gave us a generous measure of help and we are glad to take this opportunity of thanking the Trustees and the Director, Mr. Francis Henry Taylor, for their whole-hearted co-operation. This happy association with our American colleagues is also in large part due to the personal interest which Mr. Charles Wilkinson has taken in our progress.

When al Mu‘awiyah in A.D. 661 became Caliph in Damascus, and founded there a line of rulers addicted by policy and temperament to architectural enterprise and reliant in many spheres on the talents and support of a Syrian population, the building trades of Syria, which had enjoyed but desultory employment since the busy years of Justinian, were quickened to a new and fecund term of life.

Several buildings created in the ensuing century have survived in part: at Damascus al Walid's mosque; in Jerusalem the Ṣakhrah and a part of the Aqṣa mosque; on the fringes of the Syrian desert and in the Jordan valley the ruins of at least a dozen desert palaces and baths. It is no surprise to find in these buildings, in their ashlar and timber construction, their arcaded columns, their mosaics and marble revetments, and in many features of their plans, a perpetuation of well-established Syrian traditions, the accumulated inheritance of Phoenician, Aramaean and Hellenized Christian societies over the two thousand years preceding the Arab conquest.

The traditional aspect of Umayyad architecture is self-explanatory. What is more curious historically is the intrusion into its Syrian environment of structural and decorative processes (like brick vaulting, stucco revetments, or various new ways of drawing things) which can be shown to be of foreign devising, now for the first time admitted into the main current of Syrian architecture.

The fifth season's campaign at Nimrud (Kalḫu) has resulted in a further one hundred Assyrian texts which, with the archaeological evidence to be published later in Iraq, will add to our knowledge of the Assyrian military capital especially during the years preceding the fall of Nineveh. Forty-seven of the tablets were found together in good condition, for the fire which had destroyed the private dwelling built against the inside of the Eastern citadel wall (TW 53 Room 19) had happily baked the clay tablets hard and thus preserved them so that they were immediately legible and could be copied in the field. This group of tablets comprised the records of Šamaš-šar-uṣur, a high-official (SAG) who, besides owning a house, probably that in which the tablets were discovered, and land in Calah, set himself to conduct a lively business, mainly as a money-lender like most of his wealthy contemporaries, for forty years from 666—c. 626 B.C. During this period Šamaš-šar-uṣur acquired six female and two male slaves at an average cost of 50 shekels of silver, the price of such male and female slaves being about the same. One girl, Urkittu-uknu, who a few years earlier had fetched 54 shekels, he was able to buy for the reduced sum of 15 shekels, perhaps because of her advancing age or some disability, for the physical condition of a slave controlled the price and was written into the contracts.

At a remote and boulder-strewn site east of the Dead Sea, between Dhiban and Shihan, F. de Saulcy found a carved stone in 1851, which he described and illustrated in Voyage en Syrie (Vol. I, 324 and 333). The stone remained in position until the Duc de Luynes conveyed it to the Musée du Louvre in 1864 (Les Monuments Palestiniens et Judaiques by R. Dussaud, 1912).

The Shihan stele, as it is called, is carved on a block of blackish-green basalt just over a metre high and fifty-eight centimetres wide; it is chipped and broken all round the single male figure in high relief which occupies nearly all the remaining space. The body is squat and very muscular, the attitude is tense and alert, but the legs are missing below the knees.

So many different types of painted pottery have been found in the Near East and left unrelated that it seems important to recognise the constituent members of a single family where possible. Here an attempt will be made to identify a distinctive group of pottery which was made more or less contemporaneously in various parts of Turkey and North Syria between c. 1900 and c. 1550 B.C. This fabric is sufficiently similar in form, design and colour to enable us to say that it was technically interrelated, and that it was the manifestation of a fashion and mode of pottery comparatively restricted both in time and space. The makers therefore must have been in the grip of a dominant fashion; their wares were familiar, easily marketable, and doubtless often manufactured at the centres at which they have been found. But their common characteristics must lead to the conclusion, in keeping with the historical evidence, that the pot designers of Cilicia, the ‘Amq and North Syria were in fairly close touch with one another. There is no doubt that the pottery with which we are dealing has close connections with the Ḫabur ware, particuarly the large vessels, but in Cilicia, and to a lesser extent in the ‘Amq, there was a greater variety of forms and finer workmanship than the Ḫabur ware usually portrays.

The flat axe or adze blade with side lugs is commonly referred to by the terms armchen beil, lugged axe or adze or trunnion celt and many differing opinions have been expressed concerning its use, method of hafting, distribution and origin. Each of these questions raises a series of interesting problems many of which still require more positive evidence before they can be adequately solved. None of the Near Eastern examples has been found with the handle intact and so opinions as to the method of hafting these blades have had to rely on the evidence of the hafting of similar examples as used until recently in the Caucasus or upon representations of the type on reliefs. The latter afford little information, and scholars do not agree on whether the relief at Inbazar (Fig. 1) in Anatolia portrays a special type of lugged axe or another kind of weapon. It is difficult to see any sign of the lugs at the juncture of socket and blade: yet if this relief belongs to the Phrygian period and the weapon portrayed is of iron, then there are several European analogies for this form with a similarly curved base and this fact would support Przeworski's view that this is a “lugged axe”. A broken mould from Gavur Kalesi may also have been used to cast similar blades.

This year is a particularly appropriate one in which to revive the subject of the Royal Assyrian Seal, for it is exactly a century since the publication of Austen H. Layard's Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, in which —among so many other things that remain vivid and delightfully instructive —the royal character of the type of stamp seal under discussion was first suggested. The most recently discovered example of an impression of the Royal Seal was found some months ago at Nimrud.

What are the common features found in the extant specimens of impressions of the Royal Seal? It is always a stamp seal, the outline of the engraved sealing surface being circular. The bearded king is shown standing, right foot forward, wearing the standard royal head-dress of the period, his clothing terminating slightly below the knees. His left arm is outstretched, the hand grasping the top of the head of a lion which faces him. The king's right hand holds a dagger which he is plunging into the lion's chest. The lion itself is rampant, left hind leg forward, left front paw hanging ineffectually close to the king's right thigh; the lion's right front leg is poised, ready to strike, behind the lion's head. As in the vast majority of ancient Mesopotamian representations of lions, its mouth is wide open and its tail curls in.

The fifth volume of Ur Excavations, Texts, recently published, contains under nos. 732–790 a series of 57 tablets, all of which belonged to the archives of the Gá-nun-maḫ, the store-house of the Ningal-temple, and deal with materials issued for offerings to various major and minor gods and at various festivals. I have added to these documents a few numbers which were rejected from publication, but may be useful to strengthen the evidence; these are introduced by their excavation numbers, e.g., U6393, U6395, etc.; furthermore, I added from Ur Excavations, Texts, vol. III, published by Legrain, two numbers (236 and 282) which in fact are undated, but the persons mentioned in them, i.e., mār Nadi and Warad-Nannar, occur in other documents which can be dated to years of Abisare and Rim-Sin.

All in all, there are 65 texts covering a space of 100 years from the 19th year of Gungunum to the 19th year of Rim-Sin; there are hardly any documents after Sumu-ilum, as there is only one tablet which can be dated to Ṣilli-Adad, one to Warad-Sin, and three to Rim-Sin. Even the 60 tablets covering the 49 years from Gungunum to the end of Sumu-ilum form only a very small remnant of those which were really drawn up within those years.

In addition to the tablets which record offerings made to the major deities in the Ningal-temple during festivals, there are a few which similarly mention one of the minor deities, Ningal-á-anda, who was sometimes omitted from the previous lists (IV(d)). It would be interesting to discover how far these gifts were consumed by the priests themselves, as in the Old Testament ritual, and to what extent they might have sufficed for their maintenance. Unfortunately however, as we lack specific reference to the recipients and are unable to equate ancient values with a modern standard, we cannot solve this problem. The six tablets of group Vb are all very much alike. They first list butter, cheese, and dates as daily offerings and the same in smaller quantities as monthly special ones; an example is No. 58. The other documents combine these two chief issues (with figures correcdy increased); even No. 59, on which níg-díb-itu-da is omitted, is no exception since the figures show that both kinds are included. Often še-zibib and lubricating oil are added, and once (on No. 59) milk.