Gertrude Bell died peacefully in the morning hours of Monday 12th July 1926, two days before her 58th birthday. Fifty years later we recall her devotion to a country in which she had dedicated the last years of her life. Her bones rest where she had wished them to rest, in the soil of Iraq.

I saw her for the last time, three months before she died, together with A. H. Whitburn, the architect at Ur, towards the end of March 1926, in her little house behind what was then named New Street Baghdad. We reached, as Victoria Sackville West has described it, “a door in the blank wall, … a creaking of hinges, a broadly smiling servant, a rush of dogs, a vista of garden-path edged with carnations in pots, a little veranda and a little low house at the end of the garden path, an English voice—Gertrude Bell”. She received us courteously—“Ah you two”, she said, “I am glad you have come”, for she was tired and dispirited, long overdue for the leave that she never took, and now that she had discarded her activities in politics, archaeology had become the ruling passion of what was left of her life.

Ivory as a material has a unique and fascinating appeal by virtue of its rich warm colour and sheen. Since very early times, ivory has been synonymous with luxury, as witnessed in the Old Testament reference to Ahab's “house of ivory”, the epitome of luxurious living; in Amos' imprecation against the rich “that lie upon beds of ivory”; and in Ezekiel's lament for Tyre, perfect in beauty, where the very benches are made of ivory. In addition, we are told that Solomon's royal throne was made of ivory, commissioned from Phoenician craftsmen who excelled in this art. Finally, the identification of ivory with luxury and hence corruption is clear in the Homeric allusion to the “Gate of Ivory”, through which dreams pass that mislead.

The discovery of actual ivory objects more-or-less contemporary with the literary references during excavations of the Assyrian palaces at Nimrud in the mid-nineteenth century thus engendered great excitement. The pieces were not only beautiful in themselves; they also brought the ancient traditions to life.

The Middle Assyrian tablet fragment BM 98496 (Th 1905–4–9, 2), published here by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum, was excavated by Campbell Thompson at Nineveh in 1905, and a correct description of it as a bilingual arranged in parallel columns was given by L. W. King in his Supplement to Bezold's Catalogue of the Cuneiform Tablets in the Kouyunjik Collection of the British Museum (1914). An excellent photograph of the best preserved side appeared on Pl. iii of this volume. Despite this initial publication the text remained unnoticed until R. Borger drew attention to its similarity to KAR 118 and 119, bilinguals of Tukulti-Ninurta I (HKL I (1967) 659). J. S. Cooper also voiced the same opinion in ZA 61 (1971), 2. The present writer's interest arose from studying a copy of the text by F. W. Geers in Chicago, since there were plain allusions to the Assyrian King List (henceforth AKL), and these are the earliest attestation of this historically and chronologically important document.

The story of Gilgamesh and the Land of the Living is one of a small group of Sumerian epic tales in which human beings rather than gods dominate the narrative. It is now generally agreed, from the evidence of alternative textual sources, that Gilgamesh was a historical figure; the fifth king of the first dynasty of Uruk who lived between 2700 and 2650 B.C. Kramer, Lambert and other Sumerologists accept that some of the events recounted in these “human epics” may preserve a historical basis. It is recognized, however, that the processes of communication by oral tradition and the literary embellishments of the scribes who first recorded and then copied the tales resulted in the introduction of “unhistorical motifs such as exaggerated notions of the hero's powers, omniscient dreams and the presence of divine beings”. The present article will consider the question of a practical motivation for the visit of Gilgamesh to the Land of the Living. We shall also examine the evidence for the geographical location of this region and attempt to identify the species of tree called by the Sumerians ERIN, which grew there. A source for the monster Humbaba whom Gilgamesh confronts, will also be considered.

When, in their contributions to the revised Cambridge Ancient History, two eminent archaeologists independently thought it best to refer only in passing to the enigmatic structure at Jamdat Nasr in central Iraq excavated by Langdon in 1925–6, further discussion of it needs more than usually precise justification. Frankfort put the matter explicitly: “Its plan has not been sufficiently elucidated for guesses regarding its function to be profitable.” The charge is indeed accurate; but is the implied sentence of complete and continuing obscurity fair? May not contents be as revealing of function as plan? This building was indeed not only badly excavated, but also inadequately and obscurely published. Its contents, however, were adequately published, and have since been widely recognized as a distinctive component of Mesopotamian culture in the last quarter of the fourth millennium B.C. Outstanding among them was a collection of archaic tablets which constitute very nearly the oldest, and most coherent, administrative archive yet retrieved from antiquity. These tablets alone will continue to send scholars from time to time back to the building whence they came. My purpose here is simple and threefold: to make Langdon's plan more easily accessible and as complete as possible on the basis of the surviving original draft; to set out concisely what further information there is on these excavations and those of 1928; and finally to attempt not so much to resolve the “temple-palace” dilemma as to set discussion of this building on as firm and broad a basis of evidence as is now possible. For the purposes of this paper I accept the opinion of Delougaz that the pottery found at Jamdat Nasr, though not necessarily a homogeneous group, belongs largely to Diyala Protoliterate “d”.

In April–May 1974, the Polish Centre for Mediterranean Archaeology (director Professor Dr. K. Michalowski) carried out a first season of excavations on the central part of the citadel at Nimrud. The work was directed by the author of this article.

For introductory information on this work, the reader is referred to a preliminary report on the results of this first season now in press, and to a summary communication by J. N. Postgate which has already appeared in this Journal. M. Falkner has published an account of previous work on the site by Layard, Rassam, Loftus and Mallowan, and J. E. Reade, in a very important contribution, published for the first time two of the colossi which reappear here.

One of the main results of the work of the Polish expedition was the discovery of Neo-Assyrian colossi and reliefs, some of them with types of representation previously unknown. Most of these monuments formed the decoration of a building, till now only partly excavated, which was built by Aššurnaṣirpal II and restored by Shalmaneser III. To avoid confusion with the so-called Centre and Central Palaces, I propose provisionally to refer to this as the Central Building. For an over-all view of the excavations, see Plate VII. The photographs for the present study are all the work of Mr. Waldemar Jerke.

It is too early to make specific statements on the function of this building and its relationship to the NW Palace, but I hope that it will become possible after the excavation seasons projected for Autumn 1975 and Spring 1976. At present one feature of this building at least is clear, its similarity in plan (so far as rediscovered) with the NW wing of Sargon's Palace at Khorsabad, and with the wings of some other Assyrian state buildings designated by G. Turner as “Reception Suite, Type F”.

The fragment published here is of black stone, from Mosul Museum, registered IM 55640, where the writer saw it on display in 1967. It comes from a stela that was probably similar in shape to most other neo-Assyrian stelae, and it records not only a military event and the king's name, but also a royal grant of land.

In September 1974 the University of Edinburgh began a survey of archaeological sites in the Khabur headwaters region of North-eastern Syria. One of the principal aims of this survey was to collect materials for a preliminary study of prehistoric ceramics and geological clays in that area by neutron activation analysis. From its inception this project received the aid and encouragement of the Department of Antiquities of the Syrian Arab Republic, and we should like to give special thanks to M. Bahnassi, the director of the Department of Antiquities, and to M. Bounni for their help. The work was supported by grants from the Russell Trust and from the Munro Foundation.

Previous to the survey, a long series of neutron activation analyses had been completed on prehistoric pottery, mainly of the Halaf period, from excavated sites in Northern Iraq and Eastern Syria. A comparison of the chemical compositions of Halaf sherds from different sites indicated that some varieties of Halaf painted ware had been extensively traded. It was hoped that a study of clay and pottery compositions at a number of ancient sites within a limited geographical area would provide evidence for the detailed form of this pottery trade, and would reveal the sources of the clays used in prehistoric pottery manufacture.

In 1912 Macalister published the 100-foot long line of enormous, rough uninscribed standing stones at Gezer in Palestine. The next year, Andrae published the strange, double row of stelae, some rough, some uninscribed, mostly very large, which he had found at Assur. The similarity between the two installations was immediately noted and for over sixty years the Stelenreihen at Assur have been cited in the many discussions of the maṣṣēbôt of Palestine. The singular importance of the Assur stelae lies in the fact that some of them were inscribed, whereas the Palestinian stones were not. The Assur inscriptions tell us that the stones represented people, and Eduard Meyer and others believed that the Gezer stones probably had the same meaning. Obviously, in order to project the meaning of the Assur stelae on the Gezer stones, one assumption had to be made: that the people in the two areas were practising identical customs. Curiously enough, this basic assumption has yet to be proved. In fact, many later scholars have taken the Assur stones to be merely one example of a wide-spread custom of setting up plain stones. The Assur stelae have been lumped together with the ever increasing number of plain stones, those found singly as well as those discovered in clusters, with Biblical evidence for maṣṣēbôt, with Punic stelae, and even with Greek hero cults. Far from considering the Assur inscriptions as the determining factor in interpreting uninscribed stones elsewhere, meanings drawn from this wide body of comparative material have been imposed on the Stelenreihen.

The three objects published in this article are the property of M. Jean Mariaud de Serres, to whom thanks are expressed for his willingness that they should be made available to scholarship. The one is an Old Babylonian private letter, measuring 61 × 45 mm, and is inscribed on both sides and three edges. It was sent by Ili-u-Šamaš, a man to judge from his name as known from other more explicit Old Babylonian contexts, to a lady, Šat-Emah. No other occurrences of this name have been noted by the present writer, though the type is a well known one. To judge from the mention of Sippar in lines 17–18 the sender seems to have lived there, or in the immediate vicinity. From the content of the letter it would seem that the addressee lived not too far from Sippar. She was certainly a land owner, and the sender was either the same or was involved in agricultural operations as a financier. After the address, the letter consists of a string of items continuing previous communications which cannot be elaborated from study of this letter alone. In view of the mention of Sippar one may wonder if the lady was a nadītum-priestess, since at this time they might own land. To judge from script and orthography, this letter is perhaps to be dated to the reign of Hammurabi or Samsu-iluna, but such an estimate can be only approximate. (For copy, see Fig. 1).

In his study on Mesopotamian inheritance F. R. Kraus remarked that greater clarification on inheritance rights might be achieved from the demographic, economic and sociological statistics yielded by specialized study of the texts. I shall here deal with the data emerging from the Old Babylonian Sippar material and my interpretation of these data, focusing solely on the question of kinship and the rights of inheritance and approaching the problem more from an anthropological perspective than a legal one.

As Robin Fox in his Kinship and Marriage states, “every society makes some provision for the transfer of property on death and the transfer is usually to a kinsman … If ‘next of kin’ are to inherit, then nearness of kinship has to be defined; and among these near kin some order of preference has to be set up”.

With the generous consent of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago excavations at the site of Abu Salabikh were re-opened in September-December 1975 by the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq, under the writer's direction. It is a pleasure to record here our profound gratitude to Dr. Isa Salman, Director-General of Antiquities, and to all those members of his directorate who made our work possible and assisted us in every way. Special mention must be made of our representatives, Ghassan Azzawi, Ali Hashim, and Abdul-Mejid Muhammad, who never failed to give us all possible help, and of Dr. Abdul-Hadi al-Fouadi, whose assistance as director of excavations in Baghdad was indispensable. The members of the team were Niels Christian Andersen, M.A.A., architect, Dr. P. R. S. Moorey, cataloguer, R. M. C. Shirley, archaeologist, Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan and Kathryn Tubb, photographer and conservator respectively, and Mr. and Mrs. Philip and Adrienne Watson, archaeologists. Mrs. Carolyn Postgate was in charge of the pottery, and Miss Martha Patrick nobly doubled up as child-minder and draughtswoman. All members earned our sincere gratitude for their conscientiousness, and invariably did more than the mere recital of their assigned functions would imply. Grants towards the costs of the excavations were made by the British Academy, the British Museum, Trinity College Cambridge, and the C. H. W. Johns Fund, Cambridge, and to all these institutions we are greatly indebted for their support.

The reports given below cover excavation work in Iraq during 1975, together with a few which could not be included in the last collection of reports for 1973–4 in Iraq 37 (1975), 57–67. The information on each site has been kindly provided by the director of the excavations, unless otherwise specified, and the final version checked by him wherever possible. The sites are arranged in alphabetical order, according to their best known name.

The material for this report has been assembled by Mr. J. N. Postgate, Director of the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq, and the Editors are glad to acknowledge his efforts. They join with him in expressing their gratitude to all those colleagues who have so willingly contributed information on their work, and especially to Dr. Isa Salman, the Director-General of Antiquities in Iraq, for his generous co-operation which alone has made this compilation possible.

Excavations were restarted at this Early Dynastic site to the north-west of Nippur by the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq under the direction of J. N. Postgate, and lasted from September to December, 1975. Work was confined to the main north-eastern mound, in Areas A and E investigated by the Oriental Institute expedition in 1963 and 1965.

A recent article in this journal shows a most welcome interest in Berossus, who has suffered a most undeserved neglect, especially in the English language, over the last century. Further, the writer of this article has for the first time tackled the problem of Pseudo-Berossus which Felix Jacoby posed in his text in FGrH by assigning certain fragments to “(Pseudo-)Berossos”. Jacoby's death before the commentary on this section was written has deprived us of knowledge of the grounds for this editorial procedure. The matters involved are highly important for the history of Babylonian ideas and the recent treatment of the problem merits critical scrutiny.

The agreed facts are that Berossus wrote his Babyloniaca in three books, and that genuine excerpts are quoted in Josephus and Eusebius, though these may not be the ipsissima verba of the author, having perhaps been taken from some sort of digest made by Alexander Polyhistor. The original work seems to have had a remarkably limited circulation in antiquity. These excerpts deal with mythology, legend and history relevant to the Old Testament. Of course Berossus may have written other works which are not quoted by Josephus and Eusebius because they lacked any Biblical interest. Some Greek and Latin authors, especially Vitruvius, Seneca, Pliny the Elder and Censorinus, cite Berossus on astrological matters, and it is these which Jacoby assigned to “(Pseudo-)Berossos”. Drews is entirely correct when he refuses to reject Josephus’ testimonium about Berossus’ reputation for astronomy, and since Berossus had no knowledge of the best contemporary Babylonian mathematical astronomy, as Neugebauer has remarked, the older traditional astronomy cum astrology must be meant. So far so good. No doubt Berossus did write on this subject, either in his Babyloniaca or elsewhere. But some statements in the Latin writers are so erroneous as to raise serious doubts whether they had themselves read Berossus.