The following is an account of a short investigation carried out under the auspices of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago at Al-‘Ubaid in January 1937.

Excavations on this site have previously been undertaken by other institutions; some explanation is therefore necessary of the origin and circumstances of our short campaign.

In the course of the Oriental Institute's exploration of the Dyala region, not only was the existence of early Sumerian civilization established at several sites in this comparatively northern part of Babylonia, but successive stages in its development were revealed and could be studied in detail. At Khafaje it was with this problem that we were mainly occupied for seven successive seasons.

The uniformity of the material culture as found at these sites and at others located in Sumer proper soon became apparent, and was confirmed by innumerable cases of obvious resemblance between individual discoveries. It, therefore, seemed not unreasonable to expect a similar uniformity to appear in contemporary architectural remains.

The series of silver coins struck at Aradus in the last two centuries B.C. contains, in the letters added to the reverse type, rather more information upon the relations of the successive issues than is commonly to be derived from Greek coins: and a study of the specimens in the British Museum and Oxford collections, with the aid of casts from Berlin, Copenhagen, and Paris, has suggested that there may be a profitable field for investigation of the organization of this and the neighbouring mints. The statistics collected have therefore been recorded here as a starting-point.

Work on the material available from sites in the Charsadda Subdivision and the Mardan District is constantly producing new facts and new evidence, and so, although I have up to a point stated my case quite clearly in a previous article, I feel that there is a considerable amount of unpublished material which will go a long way towards presenting a very different view of these finds from that put forward by Mile Corbiau in Iraq.

As a beginning I should like to put forward a suggestion about the meaning of certain expressions, or at any rate what they mean to me.

The carat-weight, approximately 3 grains, has by tradition been derived from the seeds in the pod of the Ceratonia siliqua L., the carob, Arabic ḫarrūb or ḫurnūb. The word comes from the Greek κεράτιον, which is both the seed of the carob, and the equivalent of the Latin siliqua, carat, and κεράτιον in its turn is derived from κἑρας, a horn, from the crescent-shaped pods of the tree. These pods have been traditionally called St. John's Bread, having been supposed to have been eaten by St. John in the Wilderness, and they are also considered to have been the husks eaten by the Prodigal Son. (Enc. Brit., 11th ed. XVI. 859, s.v., ‘Locust-Tree’).

Coins of the Kākwayhid dynasty, whose princes ruled over a part of al-Jibāl (north central Persia) in the first half of the fifth/eleventh century, are of sufficient rarity to warrant their publication whenever they come to the attention of students of Persian history. The period between the collapse of the Buwayhid power and the rise of the Seljūqs is a complex one and as ‘Alā’ al-Dawlah, the Kākwayhid, played a not unimportant role in the political events of the time, his coinage is of considerable interest. While making a study of the Muḥammad an collections in the American Numismatic Society in New York I came across seven Kākwayhid specimens, all of them unedited, and these, together with two likewise unpublished coins in my own possession and one formerly in the collection of Professor Ernst Herzfeld, I propose to describe in the present paper. As previous notices of the Kākwayhid coinage are scattered in the wide numismatic literature, I have thought it worth while to assemble, as an appendix to the descriptions of these ten new specimens, all the known issues of the two Kākwayhid rulers who (to our present knowledge) struck coins: ‘Alā’ al-Dawlah Muḥammad b Dushmanzār and his an Farāmare.

In many villages and certainly in all the big towns in Iraq there are Government schools, in most cases for girls as well as boys. Newspapers are read and discussed, and in Baghdad the voice of the broadcaster may be heard in the land from loud speakers in most of the open-air coffee-houses, booming out weekly advice upon hygiene, care of children, and so forth. And yet the bulk of the women of the people, when it comes to matters which concern their physical life, are scarcely affected by the new ideas. At vital crises such as death, marriage, and childbirth ancient taboos are still observed and old customs still reign. A son or daughter who has been to school may protest or ridicule, but the still small voice is drowned in a torrent of talk from the elder women. Even a midwife who has learnt her craft in the Government training centres, of which there are now a growing number, though she may manage approximately to control essentials, humours her patients and their mothers, if she is wise, by observing the old taboos as far as possible.

I Possess two copies of this qmaha. The differences between the two are slight, though one is a recent copy and the other is dated 1273 A.H., and I surmise that both are derived from an older document in priestly possession. Mistakes in this earlier and already corrupt manuscript are reproduced as conscientiously as the rest of the text, and of mistakes and obscurities there are not a few. It is natural that these should occur, especially as the ancient language has long ceased to be used by the people. Priests, however well intentioned, miss out lines or, still worse, edit passages which they find incomprehensible, and, moreover, the practice of employing a fellow-priest to dictate the text ordered by a client is a common one and leads to misspelling and faults.

As for the original composition, I assume it to have been made somewhere about the time of the priest Ramuiia, who collected most of the ritual prayers into one volume, since the whole qmaha is based on the prayer given in that volume: ‘I prayed, lifting my eyes’. The ‘ancient roll’ mentioned by the copyist at the end of the qmaha may have been this original, or it may not. Ramuiia's date is probably to be placed during the first years of the Arab conquest.

Fragments of a cuneiform description of Babylon, containing the names of the town, its temples, and gates, have been published by Prof. E. Unger in W.V.D.O.G. XLVIII, pl. 82 and in his book Die Stadt Babylon, 229 ff. Notes on these tablets have been published by B. Landsberger in Z.A. XLI. 287 ff. There are seven fragments: 1. V.A.T. 13101 (Photo W.V.D.O.G. XLVII, pl.82);2. V.A.T.554(Reisner, Hymne No.5, Photo W.V.D.O.G.XLVIII, pl. 82); 3. B.M. 34878 (Photo W.V.D.O.G. XLVIII, pl. 82); 4. V.A.T. 13200 (Matouš, L.T.B.A. 1, No. 72, Photo Z.A. XLI, pl. VIII); 5. K. 3089 (P.S.B.A. XXII (1900), 559); 6. V.A.T. 401 (Photo Z.A. XLI, pl. VII); 7. K. 15122 (King, Suppl.).

The three tablets of the Ashmolean 1924–846, 1924–810, 1924–849 are partly duplicates, but fill large gaps. 1924–849 is a duplicate of V.A.T. 13101, col. I. V.A.T. 13101, col. I, fills the gap in 1924–849, obv. It contains the various names of Babylon, and according to its colophon it is an extract of the first tablet of the series, TIN-TIR(ki). This proves that V.A.T. 13101 is not the fifth tablet of the series TIN-TIR(ki), but that its colophon means— as B. Landsberger has already suggested in Z.A. XLI. 288—that five tablets have been written on a single one. V.A.T. 13101 does not give the whole series, but only extracts of five tablets.

Attentive readers of Layard's Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon will have observed that four of the lithographic plates and a number of small woodcuts in the text are taken from sketches by S. C. Malan, and that the Preface conveys ‘grateful thanks and acknowledgments’, among others, ‘to the Rev. S. C. Malan, who has kindly allowed me the use of his masterly sketches’. A fortunate chance has lately brought the writer of this article into communication with the artist's family, in whose possession his works are still happily preserved. Mr. Walter Malan, his grandson, has very generously allowed not only examination of the drawings contained in the bound volume entitled Armenia and Nineveh, but the reproduction of those which accompany this article; the first care of which must be that of renewing to him, for a like privilege, the thanks which Layard expressed to his grandfather.

After stone was abandoned as the material for the manufacture of weights in favour of base metals such as lead or bronze, specimens of ancient weights which have survived are too corroded to be of value for the determination of standards. We are dependent upon the weights of gold or silver coins for such knowledge as we possess. These coins have been in circulation and therefore subject to wear, whilst silver coins during their long burial in the earth have been in addition exposed to corrosion. They have lost weight. The method of fixing the standard of weight has in consequence been to select such coins as appear to have suffered little loss and draw conclusions from them. The weights of such coins, however, are variable, and no principle can be laid down to determine the particular coin which represents the true standard. For stone weights a sufficiency of specimens of which we know fairly accurately the original weight is often available to enable the problem to be solved statistically, but unworn coins are rare. In this paper an endeavour is made to draw conclusions as to the average loss of weight of worn coins from observed data so that statistical methods can be applied. This is done by means of an hypothesis for which an experimental verification is adduced from modern English coinage. From the hypothesis a formula is obtained connecting the original standard weight of a given series of coins with the mode derived from a statistical investigation.

The following paper is an account of a survey made on behalf of the Liverpool Institute of Archaeology, as part of the work of the Neilson Expedition to the Near East. The object of this survey was to investigate as many ancient sites as possible in the neighbourhood of the Jebel Sinjar, in order to link up the Khabur region, so thoroughly examined by Mr. Mallowan in 1934, with the river Tigris and the archaeologically better known area to the east of it. The writer's personal interest was largely concentrated upon the formidable array of mounds representing settlements of the pre-Christian era, with some emphasis on those dating from prehistoric times. He was, however, also fortunate in having the assistance of Mr. G. R. Reitlinger, whose comments on and photographs of some of the Islamic and other late remains form the subject of a separate section of this article in this number of Iraq. It was a chance circumstance that Sir Aurel Stein was at the same time at work upon a survey of the Roman Limes, also covering the Sinjar district. This seemed to justify a somewhat cursory examination of sites which were obviously Roman.

The territory west of Mosul, which includes the strange isolated mountain range of Jebel Sinjar, has always been somewhat off the beaten track. Under the Ottoman Empire it was the theatre of the dissidences of the Yazidi Kurds and the Shammar Arabs against the Turks. At the present day it is still remote, being left aside by the newly developed motor routes, though it is skirted by the Mosul-Tall Kochek highway connecting Baghdad with Stambul and Europe; this is shortly to be replaced by an extension of the railway. In the winter of 1907 Friedrich Sarre and Ernst Herzfeld, proceeding from Buseirah on the Euphrates to Mosul, passed through the town of Balad Sinjar, where they spent two days, made measured drawings of the shrine of Sittna Zenab and the minaret of Kutb ad-Dīn and collected some inscriptions. Then they went on to Mosul, covering eighty-five miles in three days' riding, which gave them little opportunity to leave the road. Nevertheless, their Archäologische Reise im Euphrat- und Tigris Gebiet of 1911 is still the only archaeological survey of the district.

On p. 90 of Iraq, 1937, a Prize was offered for an essay on some archaeological or ethnographical subject (not mainly linguistic or literary) connected with Prehistoric or Pharaonic Egypt.

The Committee reports that it is very gratified at the response, the following ten essays having been sent in. They came from England, America, France, Egypt, and the Sudan, and are listed in the order in which they were received.

Nippur was one of the most important cities in the Sumerian world. Here was situated the shrine of the Lord of the gods, Enlil; here the king's name was spoken by Enlil, lord of the earth, calling him into existence as king, at the great shrine é-kur, the mountain-house where the god abode amongst men, and where kings did him honour.

The site was in part excavated by an American expedition from 1889 to 1990, but much still remains to be done. The excavations yielded large quantities of tablets of which, there is reason to believe, not all have as yet been published. The first group, dating to the Third Dynasty of Ur, with which this study is concerned, were published in 1910 under the editorship of Professor Hilprecht, and consisted of 171 tablets and fragments, but not until last year did others of the Hilprecht Collection appear. A few have appeared elsewhere, so that, in all, about 400 tablets and fragments from Nippur are at present available for study. The collection now published for the first time at the end of this article adds thirty-seven more. These are considerably less than the number of tablets which have been published from other sites of the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, such as Drehern, Umma, and Telloh, but they are sufficient for a review of Nippur at this period, such as is attempted here.

Among the Assyrian letters of the Quyunjiq Collection of about the end of the eighth century, or first half of the seventh century B.C., of which the texts were published by R. F. Harper (Assyrian and Babylonian Letters), and the translations by Leroy Waterman (The Royal Correspondence of the Assyrian Empire), No. 586, K. 1102, is peculiarly interesting. Dr. R. Campbell Thompson, at my suggestion, has re-examined the tablet and has made a few slight alterations in Professor Waterman's translation. The tablet would appear to run as follows:

‘[Greetings, perhaps covering seven lines, broken away, but certainly addressed to the King] … peace to the overseer (or, arrangements) of Ishtar of Commands.

‘Concerning that which the King (my) lord sent me, thus “Of thy certainty send (answer)”. I will tell the final (decision) to the King, my lord.

‘The inflammation wherewith his head, his hands (arms), feet (legs) are inflamed, is due to his teeth. His teeth must be drawn: it is on this account that he is inflamed; he will reduce (it(?)) through internal (channels)( ?). Then will all be well…’