The poem describes a battle waged, at the instigation of some unnamed goddess, by Ba'al, the god of the Rains, and his twin henchmen Kašir (‘Sir Adroit’) and Ḫasis (‘Sir Cunning’) against the gods of the sea and the rivers. The battle ends in the defeat and capture of the latter.

The interpretation of this text is really very simple. It mythologizes the natural rivalry between rain on the one hand and sea and river on the other as sources of irrigation at the end of the dry season.

As a small contribution to the volume of Iraq in honour of Professor Sidney Smith, I offer for publication a curious cylinder seal in the Kültepe style. This contribution, although inadequate, is at least fitting, because Professor Smith is well known for his contributions in this field.

The seal illustrated on Plate III is in a private collection and was bought in Beirut; it is 1.9 cms in length, and is made of haematite; glistening particles show in some places where the stone is engraved. The central scene depicts a bearded figure seated on a stool, clad in a flounced robe of striped multicoloured stuff, with a round cap or turban. The projecting point seems to me fortuitous, and to be caused by a slip of the engraver's tool rather than with the intention of depicting the horned cap of divinity. Approaching this enthroned figure is a worshipper, beardless, wearing a round cap and a fringed garment which hangs open in the Syrian manner. He holds a staff in front of him like a sceptre. At the knee of the enthroned figure sits a monkey, above his hand is a star, crescent and sun disc. Beside this scene there seems to have been originally a four-line inscription. Two lines of the inscription were subsequently partly defaced; this is demonstrated by the very faint sign in the middle of the third line KI. I am unable to make out any other traces of partly obliterated signs. The cuneiform is to be read directly from the stone, as on the majority of Kültepe seals. The photographic print has been reversed in the illustration for ease of reference.

Trotz der zahlreichen, bisher durchgeführten Untersuchungen über den Streitwagen im Altertum möchte ich mich hier noch einmal in einem kurzen Referat mit dem Typ des assyrischen Streitwagens und mit seinem Aussehen zu den verschiedenen Zeiten beschäftigen, denn wie im folgenden gezeigt wird, haben sich einige neue Gesichtspunkte ergeben.

Von den bedeutendsten Arbeiten sind in erster Linie zu nennen die Abhandlungen von E. Unger, Der Rennwagen in Vorderasien, U. Popplow, Pferd und Wagen im Alten Orient, J. Wiesner, Fahren und Reiten in Alteuropa und im Alten Orient aus den Jahren 1929, 1934 und 1939, sowie die ausgezeichneten lexigraphisch-kulturgeschichtlichen Untersuchungen A. Salonens über die Landfahrzeuge, die 1951 erschienen sind.

In dem letzten Jahrzehnt ist vor allem durch die Arbeiten von A. Falkenstein, C. J. Gadd, Th. Jacobsen, F. R. Kraus, M. Lambert und E. Sollberger eine ziemlich umfangreiche Literatur über die Könige der III. Dynastie von Ur entstanden. Ich will in meinem Aufsatz auf die Einzelheiten, die aus den verschiedensten literarischen Quellen gewonnen wurden, nicht näher eingehen. Aus all den vorgelegten Arbeiten wird es deutlich, dass das Herrschergeschlecht der Könige der III. Dynastie von Ur in Uruk beheimatet ist. Ich will keine Stellung nehmen zu der Auffassung E. Sollbergers, dass Urnammu möglicherweise als Sohn Utuhegals von Uruk angesehen werden darf. Auch ohne diese allernächtse Verbindung bleiben genügend nahe Beziehungen der Könige von Ur zu Uruk übrig. Man denke nur daran, dass Urnammu und sein Nachfolger Šulgi Ninsuna als ihre Mutter, Lugalbanda als den Vater und Gilgameš als ihren Bruder bezeichenen. Alle drei sind aufs engste mit Uruk verknüpft und in Uruk verehrt. Es kann deutlich gemacht werden, dass der Kult der Ninsuna erst mit Urnammu nach Ur verpflanzt worden ist. Eine unmittelbare Verbindung zwischen Ur und Uruk besteht auch unter Šusin, der den beiden Naditu Priesterinnen im Heiligtum der Innin in Uruk, Ababašti und Kubatum, wertvollen Gold-Achatschmuck schenkte; und diese Kubatum wird in einer Hymne an Šusin neben der Gemahlin des Königs als Herrin und Königin bezeichnet.

In 1951 the Directorate General of Antiquities in Baghdad acquired a limestone statue of apparently Sumerian date. The dealer from whom the purchase was made claimed that he had found the statue at Tell Aswad, an ancient mound situated on the left bank of the Euphrates some 24 km. to the north-west of Ramadi. Shortly afterwards a team was dispatched by the Directorate to examine the mound and in the course of executing small trial trenches near the surface of the mound encountered structures of plano-convex mud-brickwork. In view of certain peculiarities in the style and proportions of the Tell Aswad statue doubts were voiced among members of the Directorate as to its genuineness, and in consequence approaches were made to various eminent archaeologists and art historians with a view to eliciting their professional opinions concerning it. On the basis of photographs supplied by the Directorate the consensus of opinion among the experts was that the statue showed certain stylistic differences from hitherto known Sumerian statuary which by themselves at least were not sufficient to mark the piece as definitely genuine or definitely false.

iṣkakku kap-ta-ru-ú mu-ḫa-šu ù it i-ši-is-sú-ú ḫurâṣa(m) uḫ-ḫu-uZ mu-uḫ-ḫa-šu ta-am-liaban uknê(m)

‘A weapon of Caphtor with pommel and base overlaid with gold and pommel inlaid with lapis lazuli.’

A Fragmentary fresco from the Palace of Zimri-Lim at Mari of a flange-hilted dagger or dirk with pointed shoulders (or ‘horns’) provides a possible illustration of a type of weapon described in the inventory and merits attention when Levantine-Cretan-Mycenean connections are discussed. In 1961, N. K. Sandars drew attention to this text, convincingly traced the ancestry of the Mycenean flanged daggers and swords (her type B, with rudimentary ‘horns’) to the Asiatic mainland, and suggested that the wealth of weapons in Graves IV and V at Mycenae could be explained as ‘loot from foreign arsenals’. The Mari fresco (which must have been painted before Hammurabi destroyed the palace in his 33rd year in 1759 B.C.) together with the contents of tomb 22 at Jericho reinforces this conclusion and therefore precludes identifying the weapon on the fresco as an import from Crete, although the inventory phrase kap-ta-ru-ú can be interpreted from a technical point of view (see below).

This paper presents a review of the building work undertaken by Kurigalzu I and II. In doing so it aims to demonstrate that Kurigalzu I (x–1375 B.C.) was responsible for one of the most extensive and widespread building programmes for which evidence has survived in Babylonia. It also highlights the unequivocal evidence that it was Kurigalzu I who founded the city of Dur-Kurigalzu.

The hitherto unpublished Late Babylonian fragment BM 47806 + adds another example to the group of rituals which counteract witchcraft by banning sorcerers to the netherworld. Šamaš is asked to hand them over, on his journey to the netherworld, to Ḫumuṭ-tabal, the ferryman of the dead. The edition of BM 47806 + is preceded by a brief overview of rituals of this type, including a discussion of the relationship between ritual burial of figurines – symbolising the dismissal of sorcerers to the netherworld – and their ritual burning, the other single most important technique of figurine magic deployed to kill warlock and witch.

I am indebted to Mr. C. J. Gadd and Dr. Naji al Aṣil for permission to publish these two axe-heads. (Copyright with the Directorate General of Antiquities, Baghdad, and British Museum, London).

Plate XXXI, 1 is in the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum, No. 26948, and measures 19.5 cms. in length. It was bought with a collection of tablets in 1898 and has no known provenance. Plate XXXI, 2, 3 is in the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, No. IM 11494, and is said to have been found at Khafajah. This axe measures 20 cms. and bears an inscription along its upper edge which Mr. Gadd has kindly read as follows:—

The sockets of both these axes are remarkably similar and the heavy moulding round the edge of the shaft-hole is characteristic of many Iranian axes from Luristan. (See my Western Asiatic Shaft-hole Axes, Iraq XI, 1, pl. XXXVIII, 3 and introduction to Types 11 and 12). But while the Luristan examples have only a swelling or boss behind the socket, the British Museum and Baghdad axes have a definite hook which may have been used if the hafting was strengthened by binding which would have passed round the hook and the shaft of the axe. A similar socket with moulding and hook is found on the axe found by Professor M. E. L. Mallowan at Chagar Bazar which has an engraved scroll pattern round the border of the socket and the hook. (See Iraq IV, 2, pl. XV, and p. 152 and Iraq XI, 1 and p. 103).

On 12th November 1820 died in Mosul a little known young man named Carl, or Charles, Bellino. Aged only 29, he had already taken a serious place among those who laid the foundations of the study of cuneiform. Yet already in 1890 a German scholar writing an important study of its decipherment by Grotefend, confessed that he had almost no information about Bellino's life and career. As my German and Austrian friends and colleagues, (notably Professor K. Bittel, who felt a special interest in his young fellow-Württemberger), had most helpfully provided me with interesting fresh material about this young pioneer scholar of Mesopotamian studies, linked closely with England, I here offer it combined with other gleanings in the form of a brief biography in honour of Sir Max Mallowan. This will, I hope, supplement the very short accounts which are all that at present are available in print.

Carl Bellino was born on 21 January 1791 at the little town of Rottenburg (or Rothenburg) on the lovely river Neckar, near Tubingen in the then Kingdom of Württemberg, as the eldest of five children of Franz Josef Bellino (b. 1762) a silk and salt merchant and senator of that town and his first wife Anna Maria Beck, daughter of the postmaster of Günzburg. Franz Josef was himself born at Buchhorn (now called Friedrichshafen) in 1762 and was connected with Michael Bellini, a merchant of Venetian origin from Amsterdam who married Elizabeth Bianchi (or Weiss) at Heilbronn in 1727.

Much has been written about chariots with three-horse hitches in antiquity. Although the triga's use in racing is generally accepted, its suitability for the battlefield is more often questioned. Greek evidence for its use is found in the Iliad and in a few figured documents of the 8th century B.C. and later (Wiesner 1968, 20–2, 66; Chamoux 1975). In Italy the triga was known to both the Etruscans and the Romans (Bronson 1965; Humphrey 1985, 16 f). In the Near East more controversial evidence is found in 9th-century B.C. Assyrian reliefs of war and hunting chariots, for which its “asymetrical” hitch has been considered impractical (Bronson 1965, 102; Nagel 1966, 54; Jacobs 1984/85, 157). This note is to point to the possibility that Ashurnasirpal IPs chariots may not have been unbalanced despite the asymetrical harnessing (Fig. 1).

All ancient harness systems were based on the use of paired animals on either side of a central pole and under a yoke. Consequently, a third horse, added to one side or the other would, by apparently increasing the pull on one side, seem to throw the equipage out of balance; it should move in a circle, like an insect with a broken wing. Indeed, in the racing chariot this has been interpreted as intentional and as helping to cope with the sharp 180° turns of the ancient circus.

The gate of Nergal in the northern wall of Nineveh has given rise to a curious archaeological puzzle. The best start for an exposition of its elements is to record the statements made by the various archæologists and writers who in the past have made mention of this gateway in Sennacherib's walled city, and then to compare them with each other, and with a recent examination of the actual remaining monuments that, during a residence in Mosul, I have had the opportunity to make, since the chance of a landslide in the spring of 1941, followed by excavation by the Antiquities department of the Iraq Government, has restored them to the light of day.

This article explores a possible correlation between centralised planning and economic homogenisation within residential neighbourhoods in ancient cities. Pre-planned and constructed urban living quarters may have contributed to the concentration of residents with similar levels of material wealth. Distinct groups of people may be identified among different districts, neighbourhoods or specific sections within a neighbourhood at the intra-site level. Several examples from different parts of the world are given to show this correlation. Also, a case study to test this correlation is drawn from the third millennium B.C. cities of Tell Asmar and Khafajah in central Mesopotamia. Excavations at these sites unearthed dozens of houses within residential neighbourhoods, with one of the occupation areas at Khafajah displaying a well-structured project dating to around 2400–2300 B.C. Utilizing the Gini coefficient and Lorenz curve, I observe that the houses constructed as part of the centralised project exhibit a slightly higher degree of economic similarity compared to those houses found at other levels within these sites.

When Kish began to be excavated by the French archaeologist Henri de Genouillac in 1912, cuneiform tablets from Tell Uhaimir had already been in circulation on the antiquities market since 1910. Offers made by dealers in Baghdad and Paris in this period indicate that the site was being explored by local teams even before then. In an attempt to rebuild a timeline of the appearance of Kish artefacts on the antiquities market in the early 20th century, this article delves into the correspondence of the antiquities dealer Ibrahim Elias Gejou. It follows his offers of Kish tablets through letters currently held in three institutions, the British Museum, the Yale Babylonian Collection, and the Louvre Museum. The story of these artefacts’ dispersal between 1909 and 1935 highlights an understudied facet of explorations at Kish, and places the independent archaeological work of Iraqis at the heart of this site’s modern history.

Who created literary texts in ancient Mesopotamia, and did the Mesopotamians have a concept of “literature” (→ 1)? A core witness is the song Innana B / nin me šara (NMS → 2). New translations and an inductive analysis of references to text, addressee, and speaker reveals NMS to be created by a priestess for a war ritual (→ 3). Instead of staking a claim to authorship, however, the song stresses a claim for priesthood (→ 4). New evidence shows why: the creators of ritual songs are gods, and En-ḫedu-ana is only allowed to create such a song when she herself acts as a priestess embodying a deity (→ 5 and 6). The last section will offer proof that NMS belongs to the category of literature, from both ancient and modern perspectives, and explain why it is also to be regarded as both a mythic and ritual text (→ 7).The analysis demonstrates the birth of literature through the goddess Nin-gal, embodied in En-ḫedu-ana.

The gesture of the pointing finger performed by the Assyrian king and, sometimes, his officials and depicted on several monuments is commonly labelled by scholars as ubāna tarāṣu (to extend the finger and point), and variously interpreted as a gesture of homage, or prayer, or adoration to the deities. The article questions this generally accepted reading and proposes to interpret the pointing finger gesture as a simple deictic gesture, thus deprived of any religious connotation. It is concluded that the gesture had not intrinsic meaning but was intentionally used to point at and highlight important elements outside the monument or within the carved inscription or the image.

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.

The centenary year of Rassam's Jirjib sounding seemed an appropriate occasion on which to reconsider, and perhaps to some extent resolve, a rather odd set of problems to which this little-known operation had given rise. The matter is not one of great intrinsic importance, but does provide a useful cautionary tale for those scholars who have to deal with nineteenth-century records. What happened, essentially, was that in April 1882 Hormuzd Rassam, director of the British Museum excavations in Mesopotamia, passed through Der ez-Zor on the middle Euphrates. There, he reported to his employers, “I heard that some important antiquities had been found near Ras Alain, or the source of the Khaboor, in northern Mesopotamia on the river Jirjib. I sent at once, therefore, an agent thither to examine the spot”. Before the end of May, however, the kaimakam (or local governor) of Ra's al-‘Ain had stopped the work, and confiscated the “head of a black statue” which the agent had found “in the small space he was allowed to excavate”.

Other unpublished reports by Rassam are slightly more specific. There are said to have been “some statuettes in black basalt and bas-reliefs representing, I believe, hunting scenes”, or “sculptures in black basalt in which are represented antelopes, horses, armed men, bulls, and other figures”. Another report says: “the head of one of the statuettes representing a man was taken away from him [the agent] by the said Kayamakam, but he has brought a piece of a broken bas-relief with him to Mosul, which I have sent for to forward to England”. It is plain that Rassam, by then in Baghdad, never visited the mound in person.