Irving Finkel is the senior curator responsible for the cuneiform tablet collection in the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum. He is a specialist in medical and magical works in Akkadian and particularly interested in esoteric inscriptions that concern ancient thought and speculation.St John Simpson is also a senior curator in the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum where he is responsible for the collections from Iran, Central Asia and Arabia. He specialises in the archaeology of the Sasanian and early medieval periods and has excavated extensively in the Middle East and Central Asia.

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• Preface ; J.E. Reade: a bibliography of works (1967–2019) ; Part 1: Mesopotamia ; Massimo VIDALE et al. – Palaeolithic finds from Nineveh ; Juris ZARINS – Ur, Lagash and the Gutians: a study of late 3rd millennium BC: Mesopotamian archaeology, texts and politics ; Irving L. FINKEL – New light on an old game ; Sébastien REY – A Seleucid cult of Sumerian royal ancestors in Girsu ; Aage WESTENHOLZ – The sins of Nippur ; Ariane THOMAS – A royal chariot for Sargon II ; John MACGINNIS – The gods of Arbail ; Mogens T. LARSEN – The development of Neo-Assyrian narrative art: toward Assurbanipal’s Ulai river reliefs ; Irene WINTER – The harpist’s left hand: a detail from the ‘Banquet Scene’ of Assurbanipal in the North Palace at Nineveh ; Simo PARPOLA – The population of Nineveh ; St John SIMPSON – Annihilating Assyria ; Part 2: Foreign connections ; J. Mark KENOYER – Bleached carnelian beads of the Indus Tradition, 3rd millennium BC: origins and variations ; Asko PARPOLA – Iconographic evidence of Mesopotamian influence on Harappan ideology and its survival in the royal rites of the Veda and Hinduism ; Maurizio CATTANI – The Joint Hadd Project and the Early Bronze Age in south-east Arabia ; Stefan KROLL – The location of Mešta in archaeological context ; Jonathan N. TUBB – Assyrians in Transjordan ; Julie R. ANDERSON – Of Kushite kings and sacred landscapes in the Middle Nile valley ; Part 3: Discovery and reception ; Dan POTTS – ‘Un coup terrible de la fortune:’ A. Clément and the Qurna disaster of 1855 ; Stefania ERMIDORO – The William Kennett Loftus legacy to the north: Near Eastern materials in Newcastle-upon-Tyne ; Tim CLAYDEN – ‘Two unpublished drawings of excavations at Nimrud’ revisited ; John RUSSELL – A bit of a bull and a bit of a puzzle ; Henrietta McCALL and Michael SEYMOUR – George Scharf and Assyrian sculpture ; Paul COLLINS – Casts and the reception of Assyria