Athar Alrafedain

Ashurbanipal’s Library considered one of the ancient library in the ancient world till now. What has been discovered approximately 30000 tablet and broken pieces by Layard and his followers in the palace of Ashurbanipal and his grandfather’s , Sennacherib palace and Nabu temple. All of them kept in the British Museum. Tese tablets are: royal corresponding, medical , astronomy, astrology , literature etc… Since 2000 , Mosul university initiate project called “ The revival of Ashurbanipal’s Library”  on the its campus. This project contsist three main building , the library, service building and college of Archaeology . This project still undergo.

This research tackles one of the important political aspects in Assyria further to its characteristic as an evidence enables us to recognize the genuine dimensions which led to the exhaustion of the Assyrian military mechanism and finally the collapse of Nineveh in 612B.C.
It has become quite clear through the induction and analysis of Assyrian royal annals further to the cuneiform documents related to the nations who simultaneously lived with the Assyrians that several direct and indirect evidences can throw some light on the real shortcomings the Assyrian kings suffered in their foreign affairs and their military campaigns. This is, in deed, related to several reasons which have been thoroughly tackled in the present paper.
The present research is divided into two main parts:
                Part one shows the indirect evidences of the above mentioned shortcomings which are embodied in the repeated allegations of false triumphs added to the exaggerations with regard to showing foes'' casualties. These exaggerations have been proved as supernatural after the induction of the political development added to what have been referred to by posterior monarchs that contradicts with the ancestral annals. In addition to the crystal clear contradiction with regard to the supernatural allegations of foes'' casualties found in monarchical annals of same content.
                Part two tackles the direct evidences of the above mentioned shortcoming, and this part is subdivided into two subdivisions:
                The first shows the evidences of political failure which are embodied in the disobedience of some petty states and kingdoms which were under the leverage of the Assyrian kings.
                The second shows the military shortcomings found in the Assyrian texts added to the texts of peoples who defied the Assyrian leverage and military aggrandizements in the region. Furthermore, the military shortcomings are classified in the light of the Assyrian'' attacks from one hand and the nations they invaded on the other.  

Phonetics is regarded as one of the most important aspects of the Akkadian language through which the explanation and analysis of human sounds can be known. This is achieved by studying the origin of words and the changes that happened to these sounds, the explanation of  their place of articulation, and their properties. Hence, phonetics has become of great importance in structuring the syntactic and morphological features of speech in all languages. Because the glottal catch (Hamza) has many difficulties and complications in written and spoken forma, this research aims at shedding light on this sound. It is more complicated in Akkadian language , because both this language and its speakers are dead. However, the linguistic proximity between this language and Arabic shows that hamza wasil and hamza badil  occurred through the transformation  of guttural sounds (هــ ، ع، ح ، غ) into  glottal catch. A special sign for ( خ )  is used; it sometimes keeps itself, and at other times, it becomes glottal stop according to it speakers. It is affirmed in this research that the guttural sounds which took the shape of glottal stop have been pronounced according to the place of articulation. It was ignored by Akkadian writers, and they truly recorded their language. Actually, they followed the reductive system of Cuneiform signs, which is part of the reductive and derivative system known in old languages. The reader can discover this through the close reading of the research.

Research highlights the ability of troops Assyrian to overcome the water Obstacle in his different fights, as it fought bravely and achieved victories over the armies of his contemporary, thanks to its highly sophisticated devices at the time, helped him to cross the water bodies like the two rivers presidents of the Tigris and Euphrates and their tributaries as well as the waters of the marshes and swamps in southern Iraq, the battles occurred, then the victories have been achieved for the benefit of the Assyrian army as it is written in the news Assyrian kings(911-612 BC.).

The research aims at shedding light on the most prominent architectural element which is roofing in the buildings of  Mosul city during the Islamic ages. Although the archaeological studies have not ignored this element, our research has dealt with “roofing styles and their development in the buildings of Mosul city during the Islamic ages “. So, the research has been divided into several vocabularies through which we have studied the roofing styles starting from Al-Rashidi age ,Omayyad age to the Al-Athabki age . And it seems that the roofing styles in the buildings of the city illustrate the presence of  Mosuli architect in not only the engineering and planning touches but also in the artistic skill of creating comprehensive constructional space taking into account several affairs like weather, building materials, space wideness and building planning. The research illustrates that the city has been influenced by its cultural heritage attributed to ancient Iraq and to the pre-Islamic conquest .
 Throughout the historical texts and the remains of the city , we have noticed the variety and diversity of buildings and their space wideness.

The ancient Iraqis created the cuneiform writing five thousand years ago. The excavations provided us with hundreds of thousands of cuneiform texts. In fact, the use of cuneiform lasted for three thousand years. These texts gave us good knowledge in the fields of history, culture and other fields. As for the ancient Iraqi literature. It has been tackled by many translations and studies .Their essential sources are the literary genres such as the epics, legends, incantations and others. It must be mentioned that the literary studies are less than other studies in spite of the large quantity of various cuneiform texts including the letters which are the main topic of our study. The present research concentrates on the study of some of discourse style in letter writing in the Neo-Assyrian period. As it is known that these letters were written in Akkadian with its two dialects namely Neo-Assyrian and NeoBabylonian. These are official letters which represent the official discourse characterized by its declarative features which were highly different from the ordinary discourse. The literary discourse cannot be ignored and it must be studied and well analyzed. This reflected the reality of the history of Ancient Iraq which lasted nearly three centuries (911-612 B.C.).This is the New –Assyrian period. In this research, the letters are classified according to their subject matter such as complaining, sarcasm, praise, satire, threatening, proverb and wisdom. This research is concerned with the rhetorical study through which the verbs can be pointed out linguistically taking into consideration the phonetic aspects. It can also go through psycholinguistics. This can be achieved by examining all the mental activities expressed by these verbs. This is called psycholinguistics which is a branch of psychology that enable us to make a comparison between the cultural heritage of the ancient Iraqis and the present time.

Emphasis is considered as an important outstanding stylistic phenomenon in the Akkadian language. One can understand the importance of this phenomenon and analyze it to throw some light on its secrets via reading, analyzing, studying, the cuneiform texts written in the Akkadian language and contrasting them with some other Arabite languages. The researcher tackles the relations found in a text in both of its oral and semantic aspects via the analysis of the objectives intended on the part of the addresser when he is forming his message and the addressee''s comprehension of the message which may vary among the cases of showing; attestation, mendacity, denial or hesitation. This, indeed, compels the addresser to form his message in such a way as to be convenient with any of the above mentioned cases. Such object is, indeed, applicable via the use of emphasis on the following levels: ( 1 ) Semantically via the oral repetition of meaning, or ( 2 ) Orally via the use of some utterances indicating assertion, the use of the present form of the verb preceded by a demand, the use of an oath to indicate assertion or the use of an attributive expression to indicate assertion. The second type, i.e., the oral emphasis has been tackled in some details. Generally, the emphasis is divided into the following two main types:
First- The Oral Emphasis: This type of emphasis is used to strengthen the speech, confirm it and make the addressee understand without any illusion, ambiguity or oblivion. In this type of emphasis, there is a follower which determines the followed part of the text; i.e., the first utterance that is uttered identically. This style; i.e., the oral emphasis was so common in the Akkadian texts especially those recitative ones in which the above mentioned procedure was unequivocally followed for the sake of the emphasis which creates the effect on the addressee. Second- The Semantic Emphasis : In this type of emphasis, there is a follower which determines the followed part of the text so as to remove the ambiguity and the semantic expansion. This type of emphasis is applicable via the use of some special utterances, sentences containing a present verb preceded by a demand, an oath, attributive expression or the use of an article.

In his city Kȃr-Tukulti-Ninurta, King Tukulti-Ninurta I established palaces, temples, and a ziggurat. He surrounded the city by walls with towers. After the king being killed, royal cuneiform texts were found. These were of the most magnificent texts made of the most precious metals like gold, silver, and copper. Seals were found, such as the one of King Tukulti-Ninurta. This King ornamented the walls of the city with plant and animal plaster decorations in various colors. Many potteries and a number of common people graves were found. The city was greatly described by the aforementioned King; it was built in a strategic location on the trade caravans'' routes, making its location a well-known mentioned one by travellers who visited it overland by donkeys, mules and camels and through the Tigris River by boats and rafts. The city continued to draw attentions as excavators, including Germans, came to it for excavation, found a lot of ancient monuments, and transferred them to Berlin Museum in which they are preserved now.

This research deals with the Hittite royal burial ceremonies during the second millennium BC. The study is based on the contents of the written and the Hittite religious beliefs that would have the need to published texts as burying was of the important traditions within bury the body of the deceased and in the case of being left without burying that was reflected negatively on the living and cause them anxiety and discomfort, as well as the lives of the deceased turn to ghosts which hurt the living people, so it was necessary to bury the dead bodies in general and the bodies of kings were being buried according to special ceremonies that continue for (14) days during which variety of rituals were conducted with several measures .

This article deals with four Old Babyloian cuneiform texts unearthed at Tell Abu_Enteek ( ancient Pekasi ) during the Iraqi Expedition carried out on the last few years. These texts dated to the reign of Samsi _ Iluna son of Hammurabi,  king of Babylon  ( 1749_ 1712 B.C ) .Now in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad. 

The research focuses on the analysis of the shape of the king Hammurabi (1792-1750BC);linking the artistic aspect with the scientific one which is documented by modern theories and the accuracy of the artist at the time to bring into view the technical details for implementing the two specimens which have been selected to be studied and analyzed due to the lack of the discovered art models belong to the king himself, as well as giving his works of art their right entitlement with in contemporary studies knowing that he had represented one of the most important figures that have had an influential role in Iraqi history in general and the ancient Babylonian history in particular.

Substitution is a change of  consonant by another one for sound purposes for internal and external factors . The substitution occurs  the previous or subsequent sounds as a result of the impact of the strongest voice whether the subsequent sound is a pronoun conscience or  othe affix. Consequently,some of the sounds near the lettres and this will lead to dropping some of the sounds. If the word  contains   two  stressed. consonnants  one of them will be substituted with weak one from the same category. There are also some sounds which have no difference in use such as ( k,q,d and t)  both readings are correct. The letter (N)  is one of the weak consonants in Akkadian. Therefore, the letter ( N) in initial,medial and final positions of the root is substituted and replaced  by the stress.This letter is omitted when preceeding two doubled unstressed letters in the form  -tan- .It is the opposite of the letter  (r) which is one of the strong letters in Akkadian. For this reason, it is very rare to find  some cases in which the letter (r) is changed into  another letter  in different dialects  apart from the Old Babylonian with the assimilation of (r) in all Akkadian dialects  with the following letter.

This unpublished text is under number (IM. 204243) its measurements (10.8 x 9.5 x 2.5 cm). It is one of the holdings which reached the Iraqi Museum through confiscation. It is considered as one of the most important administrative texts of grain records belonging to the city of Umma during the reign of ŠUL Governor in the Akkadian period (2371- 2230 BC.). What gives this text its extreme importance is that it is considered as the first cuneiform text discovered belonging to this ruler who had achieved a highly balanced accounting of the city of Umma in the field of administrative building (house of the scepter) (É . GIDRU) which is the centre of local government of the city. Large quantities of grain crops which came from the territory of the city were recorded in the text, which was under the supervision of the chief of peasants King (SAG. APIN. NA LUGAL. KE4. NE) charged of its administration from the Akkadian King and they have delivered grain crops to the stores city Umma.

Date formula or as it is known as the dates of years according to the events is one of the most important subjects in the cuneiform texts. It became one of the most prominent historical corpus kept by the ancient Iraqis for us, and they explained the events in detail to be This study came to highlight the .successful beginning of the calendar significance of the acts listed in the contents of the Date Formula from the ancient Babylonian period(1595 - 2004 BC) as a model. These deeds were the most prominent source that showed the reality of events in detail. This came to illustrate what is full of confusion or ambiguity in the interpretation and sometimes inaccuracies in the translation because the significance of the concept of the language means the study of the meaning by explanation and interpretation also by the study of lexical meaning comparing it with what is stated in the dictionary. The present research is divided into three parts based on the diversity of the contents of historical Date formula based mainly on significance of the actions. The first part includes the political events like crowning the kings or political marriage or the death of one of the kings or the legislation and the reforms in the country. Or it deals also with the military campaigns like the destruction of cities as well as wars and battles and fighting the enemy armies. The second part is confined to the religious events like the inauguration of priests and priestesses in the temples, as well as what is related to ceremonial religious events such as establishing statues of the goddess and the Kings. Finally, the last part concentrates on construction irrigation projects, such as digging canals or the agrarian reform , and building the temples the fences, gates and small industries related to decorate temples.

Mesopotamia is the cradle of civilization inhabited by humans since ancient ages People there learned all kinds of acknowledge among which various works of arts. They acquired good experience in ornamentation especially those concerned with trees and plants. The geographic isolation of Egypt, on the other hand, did not prevent it from being in contact with other civilization of the ancient. Near East.
The relationship with ancient Mesopotamia was much more effective. Egypt was affected at that period by ancient Iraqi civilization, and Egyptians could not find any problem to lend and use it. Who looks at the ornamentations could find and feel the Iraqi and Egyptians artists’ elements of plants and trees of which the surrounding nature is rich of. They applied the elements of their artistic works. it is well known that nature is rich of plants as there are different flowers, fruits, herbs and trees. Therefore, this environment became an inspiration for both Iraqi and Egyptian artists. The discovered artistic sights are the basic source of our information for studying the subject of plants ornaments. it shows their features and effects according to the development especially the subjects of originality and effect in the art of plant ornamentation in both ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt.

        The recent study aims at giving a new thought about Prophet Yona”s miracle Which we likely believe that is took place in Old Assyria (nowadays “Mosul).The study also tries to prove certain aspects of that miracles that contradict to others common ideas which say that the event happened in far seas and deep oceans according to some global myths