In autumn 1989 a team from the British Museum worked at Nimrud and Balawat, resuming an association of the Museum with these two sites reaching back nearly a century and a half. At Nimrud work was confined to the excavation of a single room in Fort Shalmaneser (T20), while at Balawat a small trench was opened in that part of the mound where Hormuzd Rassam is believed to have found the two sets of Assyrian bronze gates in 1878. Originally it was intended that a report on the work at Nimrud would be held over until it could be presented in final form after the excavation of Room T20 was completed. In view of the present political situation, however, it is uncertain when operations will be able to resume. Therefore, we have decided to publish a report now.

This work would not have been possible without the co-operation and assistance of the Directorate General of Antiquities and Heritage of Iraq, to whom we owe a considerable debt of gratitude. In particular, we should like to mention Dr. Mu'ayyad Sa'id Damerji, the Director-General, and Sd Manhl Jabr, the Superintendent of the Northern Region. Both did everything in their power to facilitate our work. Our representative from the Directorate was Sd Fadhil Abbas Hamdani, who tolerated with great forbearance our ageing Land Rover and the logistical problems caused by working simultaneously at two sites. At Nimrud we also received help from Sd Muzahim Mahmud, in charge of the excavation and restoration work in the North-West Palace, and the discoverer of the immensely rich tombs of the Assyrian queens, and Sd Abd al-Salaam, the representative attached to the Italian mission also working at Nimrud. Throughout the season we stayed at the Nineveh dig-house in Mosul, commuting daily to Nimrud and Balawat. There, we had the good fortune to share quarters with the Italian team from the University of Turin. As well as good comradeship, we are much indebted to them for help with transport arrangements and for liberally sharing with us the fruits of their excellent cuisine. In particular, we should mention the Director of the Italian mission, Paolo Fiorina, and the field director, Angelo Ghiroldi.

About 1965 I gave a lift to an old villager somewhere near Shergat in northern Iraq. Hearing that I was English, he said that he remembered the English and produced, instead of some casual polite remark, the very specific comment: “they were just people, they introduced fair courts.” It was, though he could hardly have known it, a reference to the remarkable work of Sir Edgar Bonham-Carter, who in the early days of the Mandate founded Iraq's School of Law and re-established the machinery of justice, drafting a great deal of the necessary legislation himself and creating a system which in principle still exists. He was one of those British officials whose services in Iraq are indeed memorable, and it is a great honour for me to be giving the eighth Bonham-Carter Memorial Lecture today.

We in the small archaeological world, however, think of Sir Edgar especially as a leading spirit in the establishment of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, first chairman of the Executive Committee, and husband of course of Lady Bonham-Carter who is still one of the School's best friends. So I thought it appropriate that I should devote this lecture to another man who also, in his own way, bridged two cultures (Figs. 1, 2) and who was in fact the first Iraqi archaeologist, with great achievements and discoveries to his credit.

Yet Hormuzd Rassam, instead of being crowned with the honours that were his due, ended his life in disappointment and relative obscurity. His reputation has never fully recovered from the malicious attacks made upon it in his lifetime, and from the failure then to acknowledge his contribution to our knowledge of ancient Iraq. His reputation as an archaeologist in particular has suffered from the vastly improved archaeological techniques which were developed in Iraq a generation after he himself had left the field. He is condemned for not recording and publishing his excavations properly, and for being a treasure-hunter rather than a seeker after truth, when such criticisms might more reasonably be directed

A new look at the three best-known examples of Babylonian humour prompts a revised edition of one text, the Tale of Ninurta-pāqidāt's Dog Bite, and gives an opportunity to present significant new collations of the other two, At the Cleaners, and the Tale of the Poor Man of Nippur.

This text, inscribed on a Neo-Babylonian tablet excavated in a private house at Uruk, is the most recently discovered of the comic tales that are the subject of this paper. It was first published by Antoine Cavigneaux in 1979. At that time not all the text was properly understood, though the gist of the story was clear: a man of Nippur is healed by a priest at Isin, and invites him to Nippur to be his guest. On arriving at Nippur the priest follows his patient's instructions but misunderstands what is said to him by a gardener woman and, in doing so, causes such offence that he is driven out of the city. A second translation of the text was made in 1986, by Erica Reiner. Her study of its literary structure threw new light on the nature of the humour, but she had little new to offer in the way of decipherment of the parts of the text that were not already fully understood.

Cavigneaux rightly saw the text to be a story that belongs to the “Schulmilieu”. My interest in the tale stems from my own schooldays, as it were, for I first read it as a student with my teacher, Professor W. G. Lambert. Two significant improvements in the understanding of the text came of that experience. Reading it recently with students of my own, along with the other texts discussed in this paper, encouraged a new appraisal of the tale and its problems, and at length produced further important breakthroughs in decipherment. Accordingly it has been thought worthwhile to present the entire story in a new edition.

Studies of the materials of cylinder seals (Sax, 1986, 1991b, and in preparation a, b, c) from Western Asia throughout the 3000 years or so of their production (c. 3500 B.C. to c. 400 B.c.) have shown that there was a chronological evolution in material usage. The seals are chiefly composed of simple mineral assemblages and the selection of particular raw materials appears to have been influenced by such properties as hardness and colour. A general trend, that higher proportions of harder stones were used with advancing time, has been observed (Gorelick and Gwinnet, 1979, 1990; Sax and Middleton, 1992). The trend in increasing hardness is likely to be related to the practical advantages of sealing with harder stones and to the correspondingly greater status that they commanded; it also would have required the development of suitable lapidary techniques. This paper is concerned with trends in material usage for cylinder seals in the latter half of the third millennium B.C. during the Akkadian, Post Akkadian and Ur III periods in Mesopotamia. The evolution in material usage during these periods is markedly different from those of both earlier and later periods, perhaps indicating the operation of special factors of availability, as will be discussed.

Details of the materials of the seals in the collections of the British Museum stylistically dating to the Akkadian, Post Akkadian and Ur III periods are included in the catalogue published by D. Collon (Bimson and Sax, 1982). Some minor amendments have been made to the results presented there but these do not affect the overall pattern of material usage.

The excavations of the State Organization in Tell Haddad-Meturan were part of the great salvage project in the Hamrin area. Though they were conducted under difficult circumstances they were amongst the most fruitful enterprises of the project, especially from the epigraphic point of view. Among other things a relatively large number of tablets from the OB period was excavated. Most of them are Akkadian and of economic content, and will be published in due course by several of our colleagues. A fragment of the “Laws of Ešnunna” has already been published by one of us (F. Al-Rawi, Sumer 38 [1983], 117–120). There is also a certain number of lexical texts, but the greatest surprise was caused by the discovery of a relatively large number of Sumerian “literary” texts (in the broad sense of the term literary, including magic etc.), the first important find of this kind since the Ur excavations (cf. Gadd and Kramer, UET VI/I and VI/2), and the first made by an Iraqi excavation. We have had the great privilege to be entrusted with the publication of these tablets. They will soon be published in a TIM (Texts from the Iraq Museum) volume under the authority of the State Organization, some particularly important pieces being also edited independently in separate articles. We will undertake here a survey specifically of the Sumerian corpus; to clarify the exposition we shall also use a small part of the information kindly communicated to us by the excavators and by the colleagues who are studying the rest of the tablets, though this is not an anticipation of the final publication, either archaeological or philological. Once all the texts are published there will remain an interesting study to be done about their precise dating, and their grouping into coherent archives, also no doubt interesting conclusions on the function of the texts and of the buildings. Such study will be made possible by the exact documenting of the find-spots of each individual text, even of small fragments, which has been made by the excavators.

In May 1874 Birch wrote to Fox Talbot that “The Arabs have tapped one of the Babylonian libraries and documents of the later dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar are finding their way to England, but they are all sale tablets, and therefore, of inferior interest.” One of George Smith's intentions during his ill-fated last expedition in 1876 was to inspect and acquire similar contract tablets offered by Michael Marini of Baghdad in June 1875. Such was his interest that his dragoman Mathewson reported that, although hungry and tired on arrival at Baghdad, he was so impatient that he went in search of Marini to see and arrange the purchase of antiquities which he had in store for him. He would never for a moment be put off looking at anything with cuneiform on it. Smith reported and commented on an initial purchase of “about 800 objects and have got them very cheap”.

A cholera epidemic and unrest made conditions for his expedition such that he started down river to reach Kurnah on 30th April 1876 to take the advice of the Consul General. He returned through flood and sandstorm to arrive on 8th May when he noted “Difficulties, Plague, incomplete returns”; “Quarantine, disinfecting, dissatisfaction”; “riots at Baghdad two sects of Mahom(medans) dispute as to Shrines”. This was part of the wider political unrest of the time and he noted “rebelling on Hindiyeh, riot at Mosul, Salonica, Difficulty at Damascus fear of spread of plague”, and finally “give up expedition and return”.

Among the tablets from Sippar in the British Museum catalogued by E. Leichty, four unidentified prism fragments were found. Fragments of two of these had earlier been rejoined and copied by Pinches. All four prism fragments come from relatively small five-sided prisms and are written in neo-Babylonian script. The prisms share features that suggest they may be fragments or duplicates of the same or very similar inscriptions: appearance and orthography (texts 1 and 2); identical lines and columns showing third-person verbal forms (texts 2 and 4); and similar closing sections (texts 1 and 3). Transliterated and translated below, the texts of the prism fragments are not identifiable as duplicating in style or content any other known inscription of an Assyrian king. They are for this reason interesting.

1. BM 56617 (87–7–14, 996b + 1815), joined and copied by Pinches, is the largest of the fragments published here. The records of the British Museum state that the prism fragment comes from Aboo-Habba (Sippar). The fragment preserves four of its five faces; the top and bottom of the prism are broken away. The preserved portion of column i begins with the usual opening titles of the king and thus the missing portion above–at least 5 lines–probably contained an invocation to a deity. The prism should probably be assigned to Esarhaddon, although his name does not appear in the inscription, because of the appearance of Sennacherib's name as the first name in the genealogy that follows the king's titles.

Les rapprochements entre le matériel ethnographique et celui découvert dans les fouilles archéologiques ont souvent aidé à identifier des techniques anciennes ou des objets dont le mode d'emploi s'était depuis longtemps perdu dans nos régions. Récemment, cette méthode comparative appliquée à l'étude du matériel céramique harappéen avait aussi permis de reconnaître, dans cette très vaste série d'ustensiles, ceux qui avaient pu être utilisés dans la chaîne de production de certains dérivés laitiers. Le travail ci-dessous forme en quelque sorte la suite de cette première étude, mais il repose cette fois principalement sur l'interprétation de scènes pastorales puisées dans l'iconographie mésopotamienne qui est l'une des principales sources documentaires sur la vie quotidienne ancienne de cette région.

Les ovins, on le sait, sont bien adaptés aux écosystèmes arides et forment la plus grande partie des troupeaux des régions de steppes et de savanes. Il n'en est évidemment pas de même dans les zones humides ou irrigables, le long des fleuves ou des marais, que ce soit en Mésopotamie ou dans les vallées de l'Indus, où le bétail est presque entièrement composé de bovins. Par conséquent, comme la gamme des sous-produits du lait de vache n'est pas tout à fait la même que celle du lait de brebis, l'économie des régions à bovins majoritaires diffère aussi sensiblement de celle des zones arides. Les différences sont surtout apparentes lorsqu'il s'agit de laitages conservables qui ont fait l'objet, non seulement d'un commerce régional, mais aussi parfois d'échanges avec des contrées éloignées moins favorisées par leur géographie.

A newly recovered inscription of Maništūšu records the building of a temple of Ninhursaa at a city whose name is written HA.A KI. The text is inscribed on a stone door-socket (now in private hands) found in situ and excavated, probably in the 1930s, at Kharā'ib Ghḍairīfe. Ghḍairīfe is a large mound on the right bank of the 'Aḍaim close to its confluence with the Tigris.

There are several other tells in the immediate vicinity, such as Tell al-Dhuhūbe and Tell 'Uṣaimī, and it is likely that together these form the remains of one ancient site. The locations can be identified in the Atlas of the archaeological sites in Iraq, map 21:

sites nos.

2 Kharā’ib Ghḍairīfe

3 Tell al-Dhuhūbe

4 Tell ‘Uṣaimī

A nineteenth-century map of the Turkish Empire marks ‘ruin’ at exactly this spot. Information about the sites in the immediate vicinity is currently limited to the details recorded in Archaeological sites in Iraq, pp. 76f., which gives all of them as Islamic in date, with the exception of site 1, Tell Abū Ḫalīj (Hassuna and Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian), and site 9, Khirbet Shahāb al-Aḫmad (Neo-Babylonian).

However, there are indications of earlier periods at Ghḍairīfe also, especially Akkadian ceramic remains and small metal figurines. Also found there were several silver Islamic coins, including an Umayyad coin dated 16 A.H.

These two tablets, E.36-7.1904, were acquired by the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1904. I am grateful to the Museum for permission to publish them and would like to thank J. Bourriau and E. Vassilika fo their help. I would also like to thank Cornelia Wunsch for reading the manuscript and providing many useful comments and for drawing my attention to the Strassmaier texts relevant to text No.1, discussed below. The tablets come from the Egibi archives. Neither of the documents is sealed, so both are copies rather than the primary, legally binding text.

The 13th and 14th seasons in the current series of campaigns at Tell Brak took place from the middle of March to the end of May in 1992 and 1993 respectively. The work was sponsored and generously supported by the McDonald Institute of Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. Generous contributions were also received from the National Geographic Society, the British Academy and the British School of Archaeology in Iraq. We must once again express our gratitude to our sponsors and also to Dr Ali Abou Assaf, Director General of Antiquities and Museums, to Dr Adnan Bounni, Director of Excavations, and to their staff in Damascus, Aleppo, Deir ez Zor and Hasake for their constant and friendly support. Sayid Ibrahim Murad served us well as Representative of the Directorate General in both years.

The writers acted respectively as Director and architect and as Deputy Director with special responsibility for photography and for pottery and other small finds. In 1992 Dr Jesper Eidem and Dr John MacGinnis acted as epigraphists and also served as site supervisors; other site supervisors were Mr Geoffrey Emberling, Mr Nicholas Jackson, Mr Alan Lupton, Dr Roger Matthews, Miss Penelope Spikins and Professor T. Cuyler Young, Jr. In 1993 Roger Matthews and Alan Lupton were again with us, and we were also joined by Dr Augusta McMahon, Professor Dietrich Sürenhagen and Mr David Thomas. Dr Wendy Matthews took charge of micromorphological sampling and helped with the pottery in both seasons, as did Miss Helen McDonald, who has now completed five seasons as our efficient registrar and draughtsman. Our very capable and hard-working conservator in 1992 and 1993 was Miss Fiona Macalister. We were also pleased to welcome Dr. Charly French, who is in charge of the soil micromorphology and environmental programme, and who was able to visit us for the first week of the 1993 season. We are extremely grateful to them all.

The seal impression Aleppo Museum 6763 was discovered by Sir Max Mallowan and published by him in Iraq IX (1947), pl. XXIV: 1. It is unclear how much contact Mallowan's epigraphist, Gadd, actually had with the material (Finkel 1985, 201), but in any case the inscriptions on the seal impressions were not then read. The Mallowan glyptic from Brak in Aleppo was missing for many years (Finkel 1985, 199 n.2), but has recently been rediscovered by Hamido Hammade, Curator of Syrian Antiquities. We publish the impression here in advance of the full catalogue of the Brak glyptic which is now in preparation because of the importance of the inscription.

The impression was made onto a flat strip of unbaked clay with a smooth unmarked back which is broken at both ends. It seems most likely to me that this type of sealing—which is not uncommon—was made simply to see what the design looked like. It is not impossible that the impression (or indeed the seal itself) was brought to Brak from elsewhere for some purpose such as to authenticate other sealings or to identify a person, but the seal could also have belonged at Brak. This uncertainty means that the inscription cannot furnish proof of the ancient name of Tell Brak.

In 1991 the twelfth season of excavation of the Akkadian buildings at Tell Brak in Syria, under the direction of David and Joan Oates, yielded the skeletons of five domestic donkeys to add to the skeletons of a dog and a donkey that were retrieved in 1987 (Clutton-Brock 1989). The positions of the new skeletons are shown on the plan, p. 163, and their excavation is described by D. and J. Oates (1991). It appears from the finding, in 1992, of a small temple in the same area (FS), together with fragments of yet another donkey skeleton, that the deposition of the carcasses had a ritual significance. The temple was at first thought to be dedicated to the god Šakkan, whose name was read on bullae found in the courtyard, but this reading has since been disputed. However, the presence of the donkey skeletons and of a number of gazelle horns in the temple ante-cella suggests that the deity had some special connection with these animals, as we know that Šakkan did (p. 164). The donkeys were probably sacrificed at the same period as the donkey and dog excavated in 1987 and can be similarly dated to an historical date of c. 2200 BC.

As with the previous donkey skeleton the five new equids were identified as donkeys rather than horses, hemiones, or hybrids, on the enamel patterns of the cheek teeth and on the size and proportions of the limb bones; see Clutton-Brock (1986 and 1989) and Eisenmann (1986) for the anatomical and dental distinctions between the species of equids.