Only six brick inscriptions and six cylinder inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian king Nabopolassar are known. The cylinder inscriptions are listed below in the hypothetical chronological order suggested by P. R. Berger, Die neubabylonischen Königsinschriften (AOAT 4/1, Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1973), and lettered A to F for convenience. Berger's numbering is given and also that of S. Langdon, Die neubabylonischen Königsinschriften (VAB 4, Leipzig, 1912).

A. Rebuilding of E-PA-DÙN-ti-la, temple of Ninurta, Babylon (Berger, no. I, 2; Langdon, no. 4).

B. Repairs to Imgur-Enlil, Babylon (Berger, no. I, 1; not in Langdon).

C. Building of Nēmetti-Enlil, Babylon (Berger, no. II, 3; not in Langdon).

D. Building of E-edina, Sippar (Berger, no. II, 2; Langdon, no. 3).

E. Building on Euphrates at Sippar (Berger, no. II, 1; Langdon, no. 2).

F. Rebuilding of E-temen-an-ki, Babylon (Berger, no. III, 1; Langdon, no. 1).

Mention is made by Berger of four copies (Bab. 29363, 36495 and 41860 and BM 26263) of B, the cylinder inscription concerning Nabopolassar's repairs to Imgur-Enlil, the inner wall of Babylon. The only publication of any of these so far is a translation in Koldewey/Delitzsch, Das wiedererstehende Babylon, 4th edn. (1925), 132 (details in Berger, p. 135).

The Sargonic victory stele from Telloh is one of the most celebrated works of art from third millennium Mesopotamia. Two fragments, one inscribed (AO 2679 = Pl. III) and one with relief (AO 2678 = Pl. II), have been known since 1893, and all who have examined them agree that the two fragments very probably belong to the same monument. Because of the incomplete inscription, the monument has generally been dated on art historical grounds to sometime between the reigns of Sargon and Naram-Sin. The purpose of this study is three-fold: to publish a newly identified fragment of this stele, to offer a new interpretation for the entire monument, and to propose a precise dating and historical context for it.

YBC 2409 is of white limestone, and was at least twice reused (in antiquity ?) as a door socket. As a result, the stone is heavily damaged. To judge from its accession number, the piece was acquired by Yale before 1915. Remains of three bands of inscription are found on one side. A glance at the photograph (Pl. IV) will show that this stone is strikingly similar in appearance to AO 2679. Samples of AO 2679 and YBC 2409 were analysed by Catherine Skinner, Yale University (see Appendix II).

The purpose of this paper is to present several pieces of evidence concerning Samarians, Urartians and Nubians, most of them in the royal army of Sargon II, following the fall of Samaria in 722 B.C. and its submission to Assyria. The main evidence is new, and comes from a small group of administrative cuneiform tablets, conveniently labelled Horse Lists, which have been published as Nos. 99-118 in volume III in the series Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud (CTN III) edited by Stephanie Dalley and J. N. Postgate. The new evidence has drawn attention to certain passages in the royal inscriptions of Sargon, for which a few new readings, interpretations and deductions are here offered that throw some light on the treatment of Samaria and its people by Sargon. The new evidence can also be used to highlight two groups of men whose equestrian talents were imported and put to good use at the heart of the Assyrian royal army.

The material that has been assembled comes chiefly from the reign of Sargon II, but has a wider timespan than a single reign, for in many respects Sargon (721–705) can be shown to have followed the example of his illustrious predecessor Tiglath-Pileser III (744–727) ; and the evidence from texts continues down into the reign of Ashurbanipal. One aim of the study has been to break through the stereotyped phrases of Assyrian royal records, to show that in fact the Assyrians did not rule through tribute, booty and forcible deportation alone; they imported horses from Egypt by trade, and they employed foreign advisers and expert officers in their army. Another aim is to show in one respect how the royal inscriptions can be complemented with various legal and administrative records, and to demonstrate the value that each kind of source has for the other; published tablets from Nineveh, Nimrud and Tell Halaf have contributed supporting evidence to the better known, formal accounts of campaigns.

It is evident from Assyrian records, reliefs and present features in the landscape that Neo-Assyrian kings devoted considerable effort toward the construction of canals to irrigate the environs of their capital cities. The water delivered by these installations would have changed the appearance of the Assyrian countryside by facilitating the growing of luxuriant gardens which not only provided Assyrians with exotic fruits and pleasant living conditions but also demonstrated their king's mastery of nature. One example of this activity is the Negūb Tunnel.

The author visited Negūb in September 1977 to undertake a survey of the tunnel and its immediate area. He is most grateful to the Director of Antiquities of Iraq for permission to complete the fieldwork and for the facilities that were made available. Manhal Jabur the Director of the Nineveh Expedition and Inspector for Mosul Antiquities is to be especially thanked as is Salim Younis who represented the State Organization for Antiquities and Heritage and who bore the discomforts of the work. The visit was made possible by a grant from the British School of Archaeology in Iraq which is gratefully acknowledged as is the assistance of Professor Oates and of Nicholas Postgate, then Director of the British Archaeological Expedition in Iraq. The invaluable help of Ismael Hussain Hijara during the fieldwork was also appreciated.

The importance of control of the valleys of the Habur and Euphrates rivers to the Assyrians can hardly be over-estimated. The two river valleys are major routes from N. Syria and S.E. Turkey to southern Assyria and to Babylonia.

In the Neo-Assyrian period, control of the valley of the River Habur was won early, as the Assyrian armies marched westwards across N. Mesopotamia. Control of the Euphrates, between the confluence of the Habur and the Babylonian border, followed soon after.

We are particularly well-informed about the geography of the Habur and the Euphrates, below the confluence with the Habur, during the reigns of Adad-nerari II, Tukulti-Ninurta II and Aššurnaṣirpal II. Texts from the reigns of these three kings describe campaigns along the banks of these rivers and list each night's halting-place. These are usually described as “itineraries”. (Such texts are exceptionally rare from ancient Mesopotamia. Besides these three passages in the Assyrian annals, only two other lengthy, well-preserved itineraries in cuneiform have come down to us.) 2 Other, conventional passages from the Annals of Aššurnaṣirpal II are a valuable supplement to these texts.

In a recent number of this journal, Theresa Howard-Carter published photographs of the moulded demonic figures on opposing sides of the body of a large grey-ware pottery vessel now in the British Museum (Plate VII). According to her information, this vessel was “acquired by Loftus in 1851 from either Warka or Larsa” and “should date to the beginning of the second millennium”. Equating the creatures depicted with a winged demon carved on a limestone relief from Tell al-Rimah, which she dates to c. 1800 B.C., and which she hypothetically reconstructs on analogy, Howard-Carter identifies the type as “an early or proto-Pazuzu”, concluding that “As for Pazuzu, it is entirely possible that he did not, at this date, have his later unpleasant character, repulsive face or even his name; he stands apart as an accessory to Humbaba in warding off evil spirits”. If correct, this would be a significant contribution to the prehistory of Pazuzu, who has hitherto not been attested before the Late Assyrian period.

In a note of the same volume, however, the present writer has referred to this same vessel, BM 91941, as a “Neo-Assyrian pottery vessel from Nimrud” and identified the moulded figures as representations of the apotropaic “Scorpion-man” of Late Assyrian art. The pot was in fact found by Layard in a fragmentary condition “beneath the fallen bull, at entrance b of the great hall of the North West Palace ” at Nimrud, and is surely, therefore, Late Assyrian, despite these claims to the contrary. The iconography is comparable to that of Late Assyrian art, similar Scorpion-men being portrayed in monumental sculpture both as full-size figures (Plate VIII) and on a smaller scale as copper or bronze furniture fittings (Plate IXa) or in the detailed representation of garment embroidery (Plate IXb). On cylinder seals, the figure admittedly would appear to be first attested in the Akkadian period, and is known at least once in the Middle Assyrian, becoming popular in Late Assyrian times (Plate X).

Mari letters from the so-called “Assyrian Interregnum” show that the realm of Šamšī-Adad I stretched far into areas east of the Tigris, and included important towns like Arrapha, Qabrā and Šušarrā (Tell Shemshāra). A few texts relate directly to an Assyrian campaign against Qabrā, and these combined with other evidence make it possible to form a fairly accurate impression of how this town was added to the empire.

Our best source for the campaign is the text on the famous victory stela AO 2776 in the Louvre. As argued by several scholars its author was certainly Šamšī-Adad. The inscription, after a brief introduction, describes how he conquered Arrapha (col. I) and spent some time there performing religious ceremonies and establishing an Assyrian administration in the land of Arrapha, which no doubt included a large area in the plain south of the Lower Zāb. Then on the 20th of Addaru he crossed the Zāb (col. II), raided in the land of Qabrā and destroyed the harvest there, (col. III, 1–6). The text then continues: “(and) all the fortified towns of the land Urbēl I conquered in the month Maqrānu, and I placed my garrisons everywhere.

The remarkable ruin-field of the Abbasid city of Sāmarrā’, on the banks of the Tigris 125 km north of Baghdad, and the residence of eight Caliphs between 221/836 and 279/892, is one of the most significant Islamic archaeological sites. But in neither Arabic nor western languages is there an adequate overall description of the remains. It was for this purpose that at the end of 1982 the president of the State Organization for Antiquities and Heritage, Dr. Mu’ayyad Sa‘id Bassim, agreed to a project of planning the remains of Sāmarrā’ from historical air photographs, as an adjunct to the major project of the State Organization there, the “Project for Developing the Twin Cities of Sāmarrā’ and Mutawakkiliyya”.

There are two basic reasons why a project of this kind is important at present. The first is that even 75 years after Viollet put his first soundings into the Jawsaq al-Khāqānī there is much that remains untouched and unplanned, although the plan is there to see on the surface. The second is that many archaeological sites in the Arab world are being affected by the tremendous pace of development of the past few years. Sāmarrā’ is more vulnerable than most, because of its vast size, and because the modern small town of Sāmarrā’ is placed in the middle of it. Naturally modern Sāmarrā’ wishes to grow. Although it is fortunate that a development agreement has been successfully concluded between the municipality of Sāmarrā’ and the State Organization for Antiquities, a kilometre of ruins in each direction has been destroyed, and the dumping of rubbish from the town continues in further areas. Moreover, the wall mounds at Sāmarrā’ can be easily destroyed by ploughing; and agricultural development, even in the relatively barren landscape of the east bank of the Tigris, is an important factor. Archaeological remains which are well known are less likely to be destroyed than those which are not.

The study of chronology is little but a dry exercise when undertaken for its own sake alone. Yet, there can be little doubt that it remains a necessary prelude to virtually all of the more interesting analyses of social, political, economic, and other issues which archaeologists may seek to address. It is in this spirit that I would like to present a reevaluation of the internal chronology of the Royal Cemetery of Ur which has formed the basis of my ongoing research into various sociological aspects of the cemetery.

The Royal Cemetery constitutes a vast body of data, largely without parallel in Mesopotamia. Well excavated and reported for its time (Woolley, 1934, 1955), it contained more than 2,000 burials, many of them with lavish sets of material accompaniments. The so-called Royal Tombs, from which the cemetery derives its name, contain, in addition to vast quantities of material wealth, the bodies of anywhere from a few to more than 70 individuals accompanying the principal occupant of each tomb. Although the most spectacular graves all appear to date to the earliest portion of the cemetery's use, burials continued to be made in the cemetery, apparently without interruption, for some 500 years.

The fifth and sixth seasons of excavations at Tell Brak took place from mid-March to early June of 1983 and 1984 respectively. The expedition was sponsored by the Institute of Archaeology, University of London, and financed by generous grants from the National Geographic Society, the British Academy, the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Crowther-Beynon Fund of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge University, as well as private contributions. The staff in 1983 included the writer as Director and architect, Mr. David Jeffreys as Assistant Director, and Dr. Joan Oates who took charge of the pottery and small finds, assisted by Miss Jennifer Oates and Miss Susan Oates. Site supervisors were Miss Jane Grenville, Dr. Glenn Schwartz, Mr. Michael Parker Pearson and Mr. Richard James. In 1984 Mr. Jeffreys was to our great regret unable to be with us, but his responsibility for the excavation of Area CH was most ably undertaken by M.Jean-Marc Meunier of the University of Liège. The site supervisors in 1984 were Dr. Irving Finkel of the British Museum, Mr. Graham Philip, Mr. Donald Matthews and Mr. Andrew Cook, and Mr. Michael Charles joined us as palaeobotanist. I should like to express my thanks to all my colleagues and, on behalf of the whole expedition, to acknowledge our debt to Dr. Antoine Suliman, who served as the representative of the Directorate General of Antiquities in both seasons and was of the greatest assistance to us both as a site supervisor and in dealing with administrative matters. I must also express our gratitude to Dr. Afif Bahnassi, Director General of Antiquities and Museums, and to all our Syrian colleagues in Damascus, Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor and Hasake for their unfailing and friendly cooperation. We were especially pleased this season to receive a visit from Dr. Adnan Bounni and his expedition, which gave us a welcome opportunity to discuss our work with a senior member of the Directorate-General at Brak itself. Credit for the trouble-free conditions in which we work is due largely to the Mudir Nahiya of Tell Brak, who has for many years taken a great interest in the excavations and assisted us in many ways.

It has long been evident that by the late fourth millennium Brak was a large urban site, and that at this time its inhabitants were in close contact with southern Mesopotamia. Mallowan's excavation of the Eye Temple provides important evidence in this respect, although we now know that the Eye Temple itself could not have been Brak's major shrine (D. Oates, n.d.). Our own excavations have produced large quantities of Late Uruk pottery, in 1978 in a sounding at the southeast corner of CH and in 1981 in Area TW (Iraq 1982, 189–90, 195–96), but until this past season none of this material has been found in well-stratified contexts. The area of the 1978 sounding yielded no identifiable building remains, but the pottery seemed to comprise a consistent assemblage which, by comparison with that from the Late Uruk levelling fill in Area TW, we decided was likely to derive from a later, final Uruk (Jamdat Nasr) horizon (Iraq 1982, 191). Of particular interest was a hearth surrounded by relatively complete “casseroles” (Iraq 1982, 203). A numerical tablet was found in the level immediately beneath the hearth, still without any associated building remains.

During the 1984 season investigation of the adjacent area by J.-M. Meunier revealed that the ED III levels excavated over most of CH, and published in Iraq 1982, had actually been terraced into the side of a Late Uruk tell, the intervening strata having been largely destroyed in the course of extensive terracing and levelling operations (cf. p. 163, Fig. 3). Both the ED III buildings, and what is preserved of the earlier tell, slope sharply downhill to the north, resulting in a situation where some Late Uruk levels on the southern side of the CH excavations lie, in terms of absolute height, above those of ED III.

The 1984 season of excavations at Tell Brak numbered among its discoveries the eight inscriptions that form the subject of the present note. Prior to the 1984 season a small group of mostly fragmentary Old Akkadian inscriptions was recovered during the course of the three pre-war seasons conducted at the site by M. E. L. Mallowan, while an inscribed seal impression dating to the same period and a Late Uruk numerical tablet were found during the 1978 season. The group now presented contains material of considerable importance, and consists of two pictographic tablets, two stamped bricks, three cuneiform tablets, and a fragment of an amulet. This material, which falls into the Uruk, Old Akkadian and Middle Babylonian periods, is presented in chronological order.

Over the last quarter century the North-West Palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud, which was once treated as a building of minor interest, has been the object of three large books and several scholarly articles. Much of this progress has been due to the work of the Iraq authorities who have re-excavated the state apartments and collaborated with the Polish scholars, Janusz Meuszyński and Ryszard Sobolewski, in making detailed plans available for publication (Fig. 1). One area in particular, which we now understand better, is the west wing of the state apartments. At the request of Meuszyński, I once promised to gather together what information I could find in London concerning the west wing and the sculptured panels found there, and this article is dedicated to his memory. It has taken a different form from that originally envisaged, as a study of the sculptured rooms not covered in Meuszyński's own book (1981) is now being prepared jointly by Sobolewski and Samuel Paley. What I present here is information derived from unpublished copies of cuneiform inscriptions, and some fresh evidence and observations relating mainly to Ashurnasirpal's narrative sculptures. The inscriptions are ones which were once built into the structure of the palace; they were recorded by the original excavator, A. H. Layard, in a notebook (Layard, Ms. A) which is now preserved in the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum.

During 1983 and 1984 the focus of archaeological research in Iraq shifted to the north of the country, with teams from Iraq and abroad participating in the Saddam Dam Salvage Project (previously known as the Eski Mosul Dam). In addition work continued on some sites in the Qadisiyeh Dam Salvage Project (formerly the Haditha Dam Salvage Project) and on research excavations in the south of the country.

We are indebted to Dr. Mu'ayyad Sa'id, President of the State Organization for Antiquities and Heritage, for permission to publish these reports in Iraq. We would also like to thank Dr. Behnam Abu as-Soof, Dr. Muhammad Baqir al-Husseini, Dr. Abd-as-Sittar al-‘Azzawi and Sd. Abd-ul-Qadir Hassan, the Directors-General of the four regions, for the considerable assistance they have rendered. Our greatest debt is to the excavators of the various sites who have freely given the information about their discoveries. We apologize for any errors we may have made in summarizing their results.

The reports from the Saddam Dam Project have been collected by Robert Killick and those from other areas by Jeremy Black, from information supplied by the excavators, amplified by personal visits, conference reports, etc.