BSAI/BISI Publications

Copyright in the BISI's publications lies with the BISI.

Publications are available from OXBOW Books. BISI Members receive 20% off BSAI/BISI publications.

There are special discounted prices at OXBOW on some of the older titles.

BISI COPYRIGHT POLICY - Please see below for details of the BISI copyright policy.

NEW PUBLICATION - June 2010

Your Praise is Sweet – A Memorial Volume for Jeremy Black from students, colleagues and friends Edited by Heather D. Baker, Eleanor Robson  and Gábor Zólyomi This volume is intended as a tribute to the memory of the Sumerologist Jeremy Black, who died in 2004. The Sumerian phrase za3-mi2-zu dug-ga-am3 ‘Your praise is sweet’ is commonly addressed to a deity at the close of a work of Sumerian literature. The scope of the thirty contributions, from Sumerology to the nineteenth-century rediscovery of Mesopotamia, is testament to Jeremy’s own wide-ranging interests and to his ability to forge scholarly connections and friendships among all who shared his interest in ancient Iraq. A4, hardback, Pages: 472 (xii + 460) ISBN- 978-0-903472-28-9 Price £35 You can use the OXBOW Order Form to order the book and other BISI publications.

Once there was a place : Settlement Archaeology at Chagar Bazar, 1999-2002 by Augusta McMahon with Carlo Colantoni, Julia Frane and Arkadiusz Soltysiak PB 428 pp ISBN 978-0-903472-27-2 (Price £25) This volume presents the research of the British team within the modern excavations at the northern Mesopotamian site of Chagar Bazar, resumed in 1999 after a 62-year hiatus since the excavations of Max Mallowan.  It incorporates settlement archaeology approaches and theoretical ideas of “place” in exploring the site and its internal and external landscapes.  The primary focus is the settlement during the early 2nd millennium BC (Old Babylonian Period, post-Samsi-Addu), its final ancient occupation. The authors have taken a contextual approach, integrating aspects of the settlement’s internal variations, including both community and private architecture, together with burial practices and symbolic and functional material culture.  While its political importance varied, Chagar Bazar’s persistence of occupation meant that it played a key role within the regional landscape as a meaningful landmark. 428 pp, 88 plates, sewn A4, PB 2009

Ivories from Nimrud VI: Ivories from the North West Palace (I845-1992) by Georgina Herrmann, Stuart Laidlaw with Helena Coffey ISBN   978-0-903472-26-5  Price:  £75 (PUBLISHED AUGUST 2009)

The great, ninth century palace which Ashurnasirpal II (883-859) built at his new capital of Kalhu/Nimrud has been excavated over 150 years by various expeditions. Each has been rewarded with remarkable antiquities, including the finest ivories found in the ancient Near East, many of which had been brought to Kalhu by the Assyrian kings. The first ivories were discovered by Austen Henry Layard, followed a century later by Max Mallowan, who found superb ivories in Well NN. Neither Layard nor Mallowan was able to empty Well AJ: this was achieved by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and Heritage, who retrieved arguably the finest pieces found at Nimrud. Finally, an interesting collection of ivory and bone tubes was found by Muzahim Mahmud, the discoverer of the famous Royal Tombs, in Well 4.
This volume publishes for the first time the majority of the ivories found in the Palace by location. These include superb examples carved in Assyria proper and across the Levant from North Syria to Phoenicia and provide an outstanding illustration of the minor arts of the early first millennium. In addition ivories found in the Central Palace of Tiglath-pileser III and fragmentary pieces found in the domestic contexts of the Town Wall Houses are also included.
In addition to a detailed catalogue, this book also aims to assess the present state of ivory studies, discussing the political situation in the Levant, the excavation of the palace, the history of study, the various style-groups of ivories and their possible time and place of production. This volume is the sixth in the Ivories from Nimrud series published by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq (now the British Institute for the Study of Iraq).
Format:  444 pages; 148p  prelims & text, 134 pp catalogue & appendices, 138 pp B/W plates & 24 p colour plates. Size 25 x 31 cm  
ISBN   978-0-903472-26-5  Price:  £75 (PUBLISHED AUGUST 2009)

NEW LIGHT ON NIMRUD - Proceedings of the Nimrud Conference 11th-13th March 2002 (December 2008)

Edited by J.E. Curtis, H. McCall, D. Collon and L. al-Gailani Werr

This book publishes 34 papers by international and Iraqi experts given at a conference on Nimrud at The British Museum in 2002. Excavations at the important Assyrian capital city of Nimrud have continued intermittently since 1845, culminating with the discovery in 1989-90 of the tombs of the Assyrian queens with astonishing quantities of gold jewellery. All aspects of the excavations and the various finds and inscribed material from Nimrud are considered in this volume, with particular attention being paid to the tombs of the queens and their contents. The evidence of inscriptions and the results of paleopathological investigation are brought together to identify the bodies in the tombs. There is much previously unpublished information about the tombs, and the jewellery is fully illustrated in eight colour plates. Finally, the significance of Nimrud as one of the greatest sites in the Ancient Near East is fully assessed.
336 pages, 9 pages colour plates, 8 pages plans & 295 b/w illustrations. Hardback, A4 ISBN 978-0-903472-24-1   

Price £40

BISI/BSAI related Publications

St John Simpson, Excavations at Tell Abu Dhahir - Ancient Settlement in the Zammar Region: Excavations by the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq in the Eski Mosul Dam Salvage Project, 1985-86, Volume Two

Edited and with a foreward by Warwick Ball.
162 pp, 63 figs, 46 pls, concordances, Arabic summary
Archaeopress, Oxford 2007; BAR - S1724; ISBN 978-1-4073-0166-2; £35.00

SEE BISI Newletter No. 22 for a full description of the publication. [NL 22]

Nicholas Postgate (ed.), Languages of Iraq, ancient and modern, 2007

Authors and editors:

• Nicholas Postgate (editor), Introduction
• Jeremy Black(†), Sumerian
• Andrew George, Babylonian and Assyrian: A history of Akkadian
• David Hawkins, Hurrian
• Alan Millard, Early Aramaic
• Geoffrey Khan, Aramaic in the medieval and modern periods
• Eleanor Coghill, Fieldwork in Neo-Aramaic
• Clive Holes, Colloquial Iraqi Arabic
• Christine Allison, Kurdish in Iraq
• Christiane Bulut, Iraqi Turkman.

For all five thousand years of its history Iraq has been home to a mixture of languages, spoken and written, and the same is true today. In November 2003, to celebrate the country's rich diversity and long history as a centre of civilization the British School presented a series of talks by experts on each of the major languages of Iraq and their history, and this illustrated volume brings these now to a wider public.

Iraq's languages come from different linguistic families - Semitic, Indo-European, and agglutinative languages like Sumerian, Hurrian and Turkish. Some, although long dead, have a prime place in the history of the Old World: Sumerian, probably the first language to be written and the vehicle of cuneiform scholarship for more than two millennia, and Akkadian, the language of Hammurapi and the Epic of Gilgamesh, and used across the Near East for administration and diplomacy. The history of Aramaic is even longer, stretching back to overlap with Akkadian before 1000 BC. It survives, precariously, in both written and spoken forms, being one of four languages spoken in Iraq today. Of these Arabic as a major world language has often been described, but here we have an account of the vernacular Iraqi Arabic dialects, and the descriptions of Iraqi Kurdish and Turkman are unique, detailed and authoritative.

Pp. viii, 187. 32 b/w maps and illustrations. Size 240 x 160mm PB Price £15

ISBN 978-0- 903472-21-0 (Published 2007 and printed by Cambridge University Press)

Alastair Northedge, The historical topography of Samarra (Samarra Studies I), paperback 2007 NOW AVAILABLE at reduced price £25

Originally published in conjunction with the Max van Berchem Foundation, the BISI/BSAI has just re-published with some revisions Alastair Northedge’s Historical Topography of Samarra in a paperback version with a new preface commenting on Samarra’s recent tragedies. This is the first fundamentally new work to come out in half a century on one of the world’s most famous Islamic archaeological sites: Samarra in Iraq. This capital of the Abbasid caliphs in the 9th century is not only one of the largest urban sites worldwide, but also gives us the essence of what the physical appearance of the caliphate was like, for early Baghdad is long lost. It was known not only for its famous spiral minarets, but also for its Golden Dome over the tombs of the Imams, and its long avenues of mud-brick architecture - the latter still visible, although the Golden Dome was horrifically destroyed in a bombing in February 2006 and its two remaining minarets in another bombing in June 2007. With the end of Saddam’s regime in Iraq, there is renewed interest in the Abbasid caliphate “the Golden Age of Early Islam”, rightly seen as the foundation of modern Iraq.

Northedge sets out to explain the history and development of this enormous site, 45 km long, using both archaeological and textual sources to weave a new interpretation of how the city worked: its four caliphal palaces, four Friday mosques, cantonments for the military and for the palace servants, houses for the men of state and generals. Samarra is particularly strong on the archaeology of sport: polo grounds, courses for horse-racing, and hunting reserves. After treating the origins of the Abbasid city under the Sasanians, the author then analyses each sector of the city, and explains why it was abandoned at the end of the 9th century. The volume is abundantly illustrated with aerial photographs of the site. This is the first of a series of Samarra Studies; in the second, The Archaeological Atlas of Samarra, the archaeological remains will be catalogued, and in the third, Pottery from Samarra, the ceramic finds from the archaeological survey will be published.
Alastair Northedge is Professor of Islamic Art and Archaeology at Université de Paris 1. He has worked in Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and conducted projects at Amman in Jordan, and Ana in Iraq, in addition to Samarra. He is author of Studies on Roman and Islamic Amman, and joint author of Excavations at Ana, with Andrina Bamber and Michael Roaf.            

ISBN 978-0-903472-22-7 (Price £25 – 20% discount for BISI members - originally list price of £40)

426 pages; 91 plates; 116 figs. A4 size. Hardback with jacket. ISBN 0-903472-17-1 Price £50

David Oates, Studies in the ancient history of northern Iraq, reprint 2005

This is a facsimile reprint of the trail-blazing book by David Oates which has been out-of-print for far too long. It is primarily the report of his survey and excavation of sites in northern Iraq between 1954 and 1958. But it is at the same time a memorial to the great explorer, Sir Aurel Stein, whose pioneer fieldwork on the Roman frontiers in Iraq in 1938-39 provided the initial stimulus. Apart from preliminary summaries, this work remained unpublished in the difficult years between 1939 and Stein’s death in Kabul in 1943.

Subsequent examination of Stein’s draft-manuscript showed that further investigation and a more leisurely assessment were demanded by the range and importance of the subject and by changing perspectives. With the aid of the Stein Bequest to the British Academy, David Oates gave new substance to ‘the lost traveller’s dream’, extending it widely into a more general account of the Mesopotamian scene from the Assyrian period in the second millennium BC to the struggles of Rome and Byzantium with the Parthians and Sasanians in the early centuries AD. The book concludes with a study of little-known Hellenistic, Roman and Parthian pottery, mostly from the author’s excavations.
David Oates went on to serve the British School of Archaeology in Iraq as field director at Nimrud, director of the excavations at Tell al-Rimah, as Director of the School in Baghdad, Member of the Council, Chairman and President. David Oates died in 2003 and the reprinting of this volume by the School in his memory has been generously funded by The Charlotte Bonham-Carter Charitable Trust.

There have been no changes to the text or images (including a Foreword by Sir Mortimer Wheeler) and the pagination has remained the same. David’s widow and long-time collaborator, Dr Joan Oates, has added a Preface illustrated by a photograph from the author’s collection.

The photograph on the jacket is of a stele of Adad-nirari III (811-783 BC) found at Tell al-Rimah. (Price: £30 tbc) First Published 1968 by the British Academy; reprinted by the BSAI ((2005) Price £30

Harriet Crawford (Editor), Regime change in the ancient Near East and Egypt – from Sargon of Agade to Saddam Hussein (Proceedings of the British Academy, 126), 2006

The manner in which government practices and personnel survive the violent disruption of regime change is an issue of current relevance, yet is a subject which has rarely been ignored by modern scholarship. These essays, covering more than four thousand years of history, discuss the continuity of administration and royal iconography in successful changes of regime in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Iran. Recurring patterns are identified in ten case studies, ranging from third millennium Mesopotamia to early Islamic Egypt. A summary of the recent history of Iraq suggests that these regularities have lessons for the modern geopolitics of today. This volume arises from a conference jointly sponsored by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq and the British Academy.

248 pages, 30 figures, OUP/British Academy, ISBN-13: 978-0-19-726390-7 £35 - Oxford University Press

Nimrud: an Assyrian imperial city revealed, 2001 by Joan and David Oates

Nimrud (ancient Kalhu) in northern Iraq, was the capital of the Assyrian Empire during most of the 9th and 8th centuries BC, and remained a major centre until the destruction of the Empire in 612 BC. This authoritative account, written by two of the excavators of the site, traces its history and its gradual revelation through archaeological excavation, begun by Layard in the 19th century and continuing to the present day. The volume is abundantly illustrated and includes finds that have not previously been published, together with illustrations and the most complete account in English so far of the remarkable discoveries made in recent years by Iraqi archaeologists in the tombs of the Assyrian Queens. Contents:

• Introduction;
• Chapter 1: The Land of Assyria - Setting the Scene;
• Chapter 2: Major Palaces on the Citadel;
• Chapter 3: Tombs, Wells and Riches;
• Chapter 4: Temples, Minor Palaces and Private Houses;
• Chapter 5: Fort Shalmaneser: the ekal masarti;
• Chapter 6: The Written Evidence;
• Chapter 7: Types of Object and Materials from Nimrud;
• Chapter 8: Post-Assyrian Nimrud;
• Epilogue.

309p, 175 b/w illus, maps and plans, 16 col pls (British School of Archaeology in Iraq 2001 and reprinted 2004)

Other Publications

In addition to the journal IRAQ, and the bi-annual Newsletter, the School's other publications include:

• Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud (CTN)
• Ivories from Nimrud (IN)
• Abu Salabikh Excavations (ASE)
• Tell Brak Excavtions (TBE)
• Samarra (SS)
• Iraq Archaeological Reports (IAR)
• Miscellaneous (Misc)

Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud (CTN)

• Vol. I - The Nimrud Wine Lists, by J.V. Kinnier Wilson: £18.00
• Vol. II - The Governor's Palace Archive, by J.N. Postgate: £18.00
• Vol. III - The Tablets from Fort Shalmaneser, by S. Dalley & J.N. Postgate: £30.00
• Vol. IV - Literary Texts from the Temple of Nabu, by D.J. Wiseman & J.A. Black: £45.00
• Vol. V - The Nimrud Letters, 1952, edited by Henry W.F. Saggs (2001): £40

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Ivories from Nimrud (IN)

• Vol. I/2 - Equestrian Bridle-Harness Ornaments, by J.J. Orchard: £18.00
• Vol. II - Ivories in the Assyrian Style, by M.E.L. Mallowan & L.G. Davies: £18.00
• Vol. III - Furniture from SW7, Fort Shalmaneser, by M.E.L. Mallowan & G. Herrmann: £18.00
• Vol. IV - Ivories from SW37, Fort Shalmaneser, by G. Herrmann: £100.00 - out of print
• Vol. V - The Small Collections from Fort Shalmaneser, by G. Herrmann: £48.00
• Vol. VI - Ivories from the North West Palace (I845-1992)  by Georgina Herrmann, Stuart Laidlaw with Helena Coffey: £75
• Vol. VII - in preparation

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Abu Salabikh Excavations (ASE)

• Vol. 1 - The West Mound Surface Clearance, by J.N. Postgate: £18.00
• Vol. 2 - Graves 1-99, by H.P. Martin, J. Moon & J.N. Postgate: £35.00
• Vol. 3 - Catalogue of Early Dynastic Pottery, by J. Moon: £30.00
• Vol. 4 - The 6G Ash-Tip and its Contents, ed. A.R. Green: £55.00
• Vol. 5 - in preparation
• ASE 1 - 4 (four-volume set £120.00)

Further publications are anticipated under this series but are currently on hold.

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Tell Brak Excavations Jointly published with the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge.

• Excavations at Tell Brak. Vol. 1: The Mitanni and Old Babylonian periods, by D. Oates, J. Oates, H. McDonald et al., (jointly published by BSAI and McDonald Institute Monographs): £45.00
• Excavations at Tell Brak. Vol. 2: The Third Millennium, by D. Oates, J. Oates, H. McDonald et al., (jointly published by BSAI and McDonald Institute Monographs): £95.00
• Excavations at Tell Brak. Vol. 3 - in preparation
• Excavations at Tell Brak. Vol. 4: Exploring a Regional Centre in Upper Mesopotamia, 1994 -1996, ed. R. Matthews (jointly published by BSAI and McDonald Institute Monographs): £75.00

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Samarra Studies

• Historical Topography of Samarra (Samarra Studies I), by Alastair Northedge - 426 pages; 91 plates; 116 figs. A4 size. Hardback with jacket. ISBN 0-903472-17-1 Price £50 Reprinted in PB 2007 (£25)

Forthcoming publications in this series:

• A. Northedge & D. Kennet, Archaeological Atlas of Samarra (Samarra Studies II) - expected publication 2011
• R. K. Falkner & A. Northedge, Pottery from Samarra, The Surface Survey and the Excavations at Qadisiyya 1983-9 (Samarra Studies III)

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Iraq Archaeological Reports

• Vol. 1 - Excavations at 'Ana, by A. Northedge et al.: £35.00
• Vol. 2 - Excavations at Tell Rubeidheh, by R.G. Killick et al.: £35.00
• Vol. 3 - Settlement Development in the North Jazira, Iraq, by T.J. Wilkinson & D.J. Tucker: £35.00
• Vol. 4 - The Excavations at Tell al Rimah: The Pottery, by C. Postgate, D. Oates & J. Oates: £48.00
• Vol. 5 Artefacts of Complexity: Tracking the Uruk in the Ancient Near East, edited by J.N. Postgate (2002 Reprinted 2004) £55.00
• Vol. 6 - Secrets of the Dark Mound: Jemdet Nasr 1926-1928, by Roger Matthews (May 2002) £48.00

Miscellaneous

• The Middle Babylonian Legal and Economic Texts from Ur, by O.R. Gurney: £20.00 (on special at OXBOW)
• The Old Babylonian Tablets from Tell Al Rimah, by S. Dalley, C.B.F. Walker & J.D. Hawkins: £24.00 (on special at OXBOW)
• Fifty Years of Mesopotamian Discovery, ed. J.E. Curtis: £10.00 (on special at OXBOW)
• Nimrud: An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed, by Joan and David Oates (2001 & reprinted 2004): £19.95
• The Published Ivories from Fort Shalmaneser, Nimrud, by G Herrmann, H. Coffey and S. Laidlaw (Institute of Archaeology, University College London & British School of Archaeology in Iraq (2004) 181 pages A4 format with apx. 15 scans per page with an accomanying CD. £18
• Studies in the Ancient History of Northern Iraq by David Oates (Price: £30) First Published 1968 by the British Academy; reprinted by the BSAI (2005) with new Preface by Joan Oates.
• Languages of Iraq Ancient and Modern, ed. J.N. Postgate (2007) £15
• Your Praise is Sweet – A Memorial Volume for Jeremy Black from students, colleagues and friends, edited by by Heather D. Baker, Eleanor Robson  and Gábor Zólyomi 2010 (£35)
• Once there was a place : Settlement Archaeology at Chagar Bazar, 1999-2002 by Augusta McMahon with Carlo Colantoni, Julia Frane and Arkadiusz Soltysiak (2010) (Price £25)

All the above are obtainable from Oxbow Books. BISI Members may claim a 20% discount when ordering.

Other BSAI Related Publications

• Ancient Settlement in the Zammar Region, Excavations by the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq in the Saddam Dam Salvage Project, 1985-86 Vol. 1, edited by Warwick Ball. BAR International Series 1096 2003 £35
• Lost Heritage - Antiquities Stolen from Iraq's Regional Museums, Vol. 2, by H.D. Baker, R.J. Matthews & J.N. Postgate. Copies were supplied free of charge directly from the BSAI and a few are still available.

The two part publication of the Journal Iraq (Vol. LXVI & LXVII, part 1) Nineveh: papers of the XLIXe Rencontre Assyrilogique Internationale, London. ISBN 090347218X, 2 Volume set (2005) ($140) is available from Eisenbrauns and OXBOW Books (£75)

BISI COPYRIGHT POLICY

The British Institute for the Study of Iraq aims to advance research and public education relating to Iraq and neighbouring countries in anthropology, archaeology, geography, history, languages and related disciplines within the arts, humanities and social sciences from the earliest times until the present. Accordingly, our copyright policy is designed to allow free access to our resources for non-commercial purposes, as follows:

• BISI should be contacted for permission for all copyright requests.
• We will waive copyright fees for the reproduction of images in academic and educational publicationswith print runs up to 1000 copies.
• We request in return a copy of the relevant publication for our future library in Iraq (or for the Iraqi libraries).
• We will also waive fees for academic and educational use of BISI images on the internet.
• For publications with print-runs in excess of 1000 copies, and for commercial use of images on the internet, the copyright fees per image will be as follows:
  £75 for print runs of 1001-4000 copies
  £150 for print runs above 4,000 copies
  £150 for commercial use on the internet
  

Please send all requests to the BISI Administrator.

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