The magnificent site-plans which we owe—with so much else—to Sir Leonard Woolley's brilliant and painstaking work at Ur show on the northern and western edges of the mound two harbours, opening out upon the white unknown outside the plan and thus tacitly posing the question of how much we can ever know about the great canal-system which once linked Ur and the other cities of Sumer in a net of intercommunication and—even more important—distributed to them the irrigation waters without which no city or other permanent human settlement could have existed.

The question is certainly legitimate, but not altogether an easy one; for it is well known that the major rivers of Iraq have substantially changed their courses since antiquity and also that in large sections of the country heavy deposits of new soil now securely hide all ancient river- and canal-beds deep under the present surface out of reach of investigation. Special methods must therefore be brought to bear if the ancient system is eventually to be reconstructed and we should like to call attention here to one such method, that of Ceramic Surface Survey, which has already been applied with good results and moderately extensively.

It is usual to see man's early achievements evaluated in the light of progress in architecture, decorative art, production of implements, and social organization. Less commonly is considered the profound impact on the essence of animals and plants rendered by his early experiments in transplanting them from one environment to another, and yet, nothing man has ever done has been of greater importance, nothing of more lasting consequence to civilization. What was achieved during the first millennia of agriculture is still of paramount importance to modern society and will for ever so remain. Unconscious of his impudence, man forced plants to grow beyond the areas where by nature they were at home and, in doing so, was instrumental in reshaping their genetic constitution, thus enabling them to follow him in his. expansive migrations practically all over the world. Without wheat and barley, the pyramids, the ziggurats, the Greek temples, and the modern skyscrapers would never have been built. And yet these two important plants did not naturally belong to these lands, but were forced to adapt themselves to conditions prescribed by man's need for extended living space.

During the last few decades, the belief of last century, that the great monuments of the deserts of Egypt and Mesopotamia represented the beginnings of human culture, has been replaced by the realisation that these magnificent human achievements were preceded by much humbler establishments. The remains of primitive villages were found in Egypt, demonstrably much older than the pyramids, and deep beneath the towering ziggurats of Mesopotamia were disclosed correspondingly inconspicuous sites. However, on closer examination it was agreed that even these early remains were too far advanced in sophistication of technique and art to represent the very commencement of established human society.

About thirty years ago clay cones bearing a newly recovered inscription of En-temena appeared in the antiquities market. The inscription is often referred to as the “brotherhood text,” because it relates that friendship was established between En-temena, governor of Lagash, and Lugal-kinishe-dudu, governor of Uruk. Since the inscription was new, it was soon published in a number of journals.

The inscription is of primary importance for the discussion of the location of Bad-tibira because it describes En-temena as the man who built the temple E-mush for the goddess Inanna and the god Lugal-E-mush, an epithet for Dumu-zi. From other texts it is known that E-mush and E-mush-kalama, presumably names for the same temple, were located in Bad-tibira. If the site where the cones had been discovered by robber diggers could be found, then the location of the ancient city of Bad-tibira could be re-established.

Since a vendor of the cones had said that they came from Medain, one of the reasons for the French excavation at a mound called Medain near Lagash was to attempt to locate Bad-tibira. Unfortunately, however, the labours of Ghirshman and Tellier were not successful in ascertaining the site of Bad-tibira.

The question of the geographical position of the biblical “Ur of the Chaldees” is one that has recurred from time to time within the last century since H. C. Rawlinson in 1850 first provided assyriological evidence to cast doubt upon the traditional and commonly accepted identification of the city with the site of Urfa. The basic facts and arguments have been restated many times: to recapitulate for the benefit of the non-specialist it may be said that the main points hitherto urged in favour of identification of Ur of the Chaldees with Urfa have been the similarity of name, classical and Arab tradition, the total ignoring of Babylonia in Abraham's quest for a wife for Isaac, and the reference in Josh. xxiv. 2 to “Beyond the River” (a term which in many cases means “Syria”) as the place of origin of Abraham.

The excavation of Tell el Muqayyar by Sir Leonard Woolley re-awakened interest in the problem, which was subsequently referred to by a number of writers, the general consensus of informed opinion being that archaeological evidence favoured the view that Ur of the Chaldees was indeed Ur in southern Babylonia; and in certain of his works Sir Leonard Woolley himself lent the weight of his learning to the view that the Ur with which Abraham was associated was none other than the famous cult-centre the ruins of which he had excavated. The view taken by Sir Leonard has been generally accepted since.

La hache en bronze coulé, entrée récemment dans la collection Foroughi, à Téhéran, provient d'une tombe du Luristan et fut acquise chez une personne qui arrivait directement de Kermanchah, centre où les paysans Lurs vendent les produits de leurs fouilles (Plate XXVIIb).

Par sa forme à douille ornée de protubérances digitaliformes, elle fait partie d'une famille de haches largement représentée parmi les bronzes du Luristan que l'on connaît depuis trente ans. Elle porte, gravée sous le bord supérieur, une inscription en accadien qui se lit: ša šarru m Šil-ḫa-ak dIn-šu-ši-nak i-pu-šu “(hache) que le roi Shilkhak-Inshushinak a faite.” Cette arme d'une tombe du Luristan vient ainsi enrichir la liste connue des objets de même provenance, qui portent des inscriptions et qui ont été publiés par Langdon, pour qui le signe ša signifiait “(propriété) de.” Or, il n’est pas possible de voir dans la hache que je publie une arme d'apparat ou ayant une telle destination. Un simple coup d'oeil permet de comprendre qu’une hache d'une épaisseur très réduite et dont la partie coupante se place presque à angle droit par rapport au manche, ne peut être qu’un objet votif destiné à être déposé dans un sanctuaire. Ce fut, selon toute probabilité, le cas des autres objets inscrits aux noms des rois ou des hauts dignitaires qu’a publiés Langdon. Une confirmation viendrait aussi de la hache frappée au nom du roi Untash-GAL, qui a été trouvée par nous dans le temple de Kiririsha, à Tchoga-Zanbil, près Suse. Croire que les épées gravées au nom d'un prince représentent des armes que celui-ci offrait à un guerrier se trouvant à son service, serait vouloir placer les anciens dans les cadres de la vie moderne. On inscrivait les objets votifs afin que le nom du donateur évoque pour toujours devant la divinité le geste de vénération.

In a previous number of Iraq, R. D. Barnett published an article, based on a communication given by him to the Rencontre Assyriologie in 1954, on the important discovery made at Ziwiye, a find that has posed so many definite questions and produced so few definite answers. Some drawings of hitherto unpublished material from this site in the possession of the Metropolitan Museum may perhaps be of interest, especially to those concerned with the problems posed by the bronze container in which the treasure was reputedly found. This receptacle was in the form of a coffin or bath of which one end was curved (Fig. 1). The other end was straight, one of its right-angled corners being now in the Metropolitan Museum (Fig. 2). This shape, common among the earthenware coffins at Aššur and at Ur, was recognised as being similar to two other metal ones unearthed by Sir Leonard Woolley at the latter site.

Among the tablets excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley at Ur there is a text containing incantations and rituals against slander and witchcraft. A hand copy of this tablet has been prepared by the present writer for inclusion in a forthcoming volume of texts from Ur; its publication may, however, be anticipated by the following edition, which is offered as a tribute of respect and esteem to the eminent excavator.

Incantations against witchcraft have been known since the early days of Assyriology from the large compilation known to the Assyrians as Maqlû “Burning”. These incantations are for the most part addressed to the Fire God; the usual practice was to make figurines of wood or wax representing the sorcerer and then to destroy them by fire, while invoking the assistance of the Fire God. An alternative was to place the figurines in a small boat and launch this on the water, where it would either float away downstream or capsize in a storm, and it is this procedure to which the present tablet is devoted. The interest attaching to this procedure with the boat is shown by the fact that the two incantations from Maqlû which refer to it have been quoted in extenso by such authorities on Babylonian magic as Morris Jastrow and R. Campbell Thompson; further examples of it will therefore not be unwelcome.

One of the most intriguing finds made by Sir Leonard Woolley at Ur was a large number of seal impressions on clay the discovery of which he described in the Antiquaries Journal XII (1932) p. 389 as follows:

“… in the uppermost levels there were found remains of the latest period in the city's history, ruins of private houses of the Persian age, and below their foundations the graves of the occupants of the houses. The house remains were scanty, scarcely ever sufficient to yield intelligible ground-plans, but it was clear that for the most part the buildings reproduced with minor alterations the houses of an earlier date whose walls were standing at a lower level. They produced no objects of importance, but the graves did yield a certain number of glazed vases, beads and seals. One clay coffin found in the low ground between the trenches, flush with the modern surface, proved very interesting. It had been plundered, and only a few fragments of bones and no clay or other vessels or beads were left in it, but at the bottom of the coffin there was a collection of nearly two hundred seal-impressions on clay. That these were really a collection was evident, for the lumps of soft clay had been pressed against the gems (the finger-marks were plain on the back and there was no hole through which a string could have been passed and had afterwards been baked so as to make the record permanent; they were illustrations of the specimens in a collector's cabinet.