Twenty-two years ago, on joining the Nimrud expedition for part of the 1952 season, I had the unforgettable privilege on arrival of being shown round the excavations by the Director, Max Mallowan. He had the gift of making every chamber of the Burnt Palace, every fragment of ivory, every slab and every sculpture, breathe with life as though there had been drawn back the curtain of two and a half millennia which separated us from the vitality and bustle of Calah when it was the capital of Assyrian kings.

Within a few days of my arrival the main archive of Nimrud Letters began to appear. When C. J. Gadd, the expedition epigraphist, with characteristic generosity waived his claim to publication of these letters, Max Mallowan did me the honour of inviting me to deal with them. Thus, whilst the present article constitutes my formal tribute to Sir Max Mallowan on his 70th birthday, my previous publications of Nimrud Letters and those yet to come are no less a testimony of my debt, and my gratitude, to a great Assyriologist.

The military achievements of Assyria so flamboyantly proclaimed in the royal annals would have had no enduring success had they not been followed up and supported at every step by the work of the Assyrian bureaucracy. This must not be taken to imply an essential dichotomy between the military arm and the Civil Service: indeed, military activities and civil administration were often aspects of a single continuing operation, and the same officials could be involved in both. Prisoners needed to be moved, fed, housed, and settled; whilst within subjugated territories it was a matter of importance to Assyria no less than to the subject populations to produce conditions in which the economic activities of the area—its agriculture or lumbering or horse-breeding or metallurgy—could return to normal as soon as possible.

Le beau cylindre gravé en hématite A 357, trouvé en 1936 pendant la seconde campagne de fouilles à Chagar Bazar (Haute-Syrie), a été publié par Sir Max Mallowan dans son rapport définitif paru dès 1937 dans Iraq 4, 97, 111 et 136 à 137, ainsi que dans un article préliminaire dans Illustrated London News (1937), 521.

Il ressort du rapport dans Iraq, dont on admirera la précision, et l'étendue des comparaisons stylistiques, que le cylindre de Chagar Bazar faisait partie des offrandes funéraires déposées dans un caveau voûté en briques crues, anciennement écroulé, situé sous le sol d'une habitation comprenant au moins quatre pièces, et dont les fondations remontent au XIX e s.av.n.è. (“Grave 153, room 42, level I, early intermediate, section, fig. 6, p. 122”). A la suite de reconstructions, réparations et transformations successives de la maison, le niveau des sols superposés et des pavages dans les courettes a été rehaussé de 3 mètres. L'occupation semble s'être poursuivie jusque vers la fin du XVIIIe s.av.n.è., et aucune trace d'incendie n'a été signalée. Sous le sol de la pièce 42 où fut mis au jour le caveau 153 ont été dégagées trois inhumations: les offrandes qui y furent déposées constituent le contexte archéologique du cylindre A 357. Il se compose de poteries, dont certaines peintes (types fig. 21 (6), 22 (14), 23 (7), 24 (1)), attribuées au “early intermediate level I”, autrement dit à l'Ugarit Moyen 2 de la stratigraphie de Ras Shamra; cf. Stratigraphie Comparée et Chronologie de l'Asie Occidentale, 91, 1900–1750 av.n.è.).

Le bel objet que représente notre planche XL est à Paris dans la collection de M. Maurice Bérard, qui nous a très aimablement permis de le publier ici. Nous lui en exprimons notre vive gratitude. Malgré quelque doute qui affecte l'interprétation de ce petit monument, son intérêt est trop grand pour qu'il convienne d'en différer la publication. Le vendeur — un antiquaire de Beyrouth — donnait, paraît-il, comme lieu de provenance le petit village de Niha dans le Liban, bien connu par ses deux temples. D'autres déclarations parlaient de Kerak Nouh, tout près de Zahlé et peu éloigné de Niha. Ces deux prétentions ne sont pas impossibles, mais on verra que le décor de l'objet appartient en tout cas à des cultes qui n'ont pas de rapport avec les sanctuaires de Niha, voués au grand couple syrien de Hadad et d'Atargatis. Si l'objet vient bien de cette région, il faudra l'attribuer à un culte étranger, non attesté jusqu'ici dans ces montagnes.

Il s'agit d'un couteau d'apparat dont la lame de fer n'a laissé qu'un tronçon corrodé. Mais le manche de bronze, couvert de figures en relief, est parfaitement conservé sous une jolie patine vert-olive. Le sommet de cette poignée représente une tête de taureau à la puissante encolure, marquée de fanons. La garde forme une simple barre transversale, terminée d'un côté par une tête de sanglier, de l'autre par une tête de lion. Quan t au corps de la poignée, il est enlacé dans les plis d'un serpent, dont la tête est appliquée contre la nuque du taureau (pl. XLa).

The remarkable Assyrian monument known as the “White Obelisk” was found by Rassam in July, 1853 at Kuyunjik and immediately attributed to Aššurnaṣirpal II (883–859) whose name (admittedly without titles or patronymy) appears in the inscription. In 1883, Pinches gave a detailed description of the Obelisk with a tentative interpretation of its inscription, but it was only some 80 years after the discovery that the first, and only, full edition of the monument appeared. In it, Unger rather forcefully argued for a much earlier date, namely the reign of Aššurnaṣirpal I (1050–1032). This dating, widely accepted, was later challenged by Landsberger who showed that the textual evidence certainly favoured the original attribution to Aššurnaṣirpal II.

Since then, philologists have generally been following Landsberger while archaeologists, with the notable exception of Frankfort, held for Unger's thesis. Recently, however, a more cautious attitude has begun to prevail among archaeologists. Thus, although in his Die Kunst des Alten Mesopotamien (1967), 126–128, Moortgat demonstrates that the White Obelisk cannot be ascribed to Aššurnaṣirpal II, he nevertheless adds a question mark after “Assurnasirpal I” in the caption to the illustration in the same volume (Pl. 251). Similarly, Hrouda, while upholding his earlier attribution to Aššurnaṣirpal I in his most recent work, adds in a footnote: “Zuweisung unsicher.” Finally, the scholar to whom we pay homage in this issife of Iraq, and who is one of the latest to have discussed the White Obelisk, has come down in favour of Landsbefger's dating to Aššurnaṣirpal II, explaining the stylistic oddities of the monument as due to the Ninevite craftsmen who carved it very early in the king's reign, and who may have been less skilled than their colleagues at Calah.

Among his other interests Sir Max Mallowan has always held a lively affection for the history and archaeology of south-western Iran, and in this year in which we celebrate his 70th birthday it may be appropriate to offer him these notes on certain problems connected with the final stages of the Persian migration. It is perhaps apt also that I should take u p an Achaemenian topic since it was Sir Max, now thirteen years ago, who first encouraged me to excavate at Pasargadae, the capital of Cyrus the Great.

The route by which the Persian tribes reached the region of Fars remains in dispute. According to one time-honoured theory the Persians entered Iran by way of the land bridge of the Caucasus and made their first halt c. 850 B.C. in a northerly locality, Parsua, to the west or south-west of Lake Urmia. From there at some date after Sargon of Assyria's eighth campaign in the year 714 B.C., it has been suggested that they may have struck due south, arriving first in Khuzistan, where they settled at Susa, Masjid-i Sulaiman and Bard-i Nishandeh, before they proceeded eastwards to the locality of Pasargadae.

This contribution to the volume in honour of Sir Max Mallowan has its starting point in texts found at Nimrud (Calah) during the excavations he directed there in 1949–57. The initial publication of texts soon after their discovery was invariably due to his personal encouragement and realization of their wide-ranging importance and interest. Indeed, his work at the site produced much new evidence for the political and cultural history of Assyria during the last four centuries of its power when it dominated much of the ancient Near East. Later generations may well attribute to his work there much of the change from the traditional picture of Assyrian kings as primarily the forerunners of military frightfulness to a new view of them as sensitive, able leaders, administrators and builders. It is true that they always needed to be alert to guard their personal position while they maintained law and justice in troubled times which then, as so often in the history of Mesopotamia, required the use of military resources to maintain territorial integrity and the economic basis on which it depended.

The vassal-treaties imposed by Esarhaddon illustrate the means by which the stability of the royal dynasty was maintained and the often precarious nature of the king's hold over his subject peoples. The stipulations presented to them both orally and in writing in May 672 B.C. called both for an initial affirmation of loyalty and for its periodic renewal.