ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the centre of the Fertile Crescent itself, where the archaeologists encounter difficulties similar to those that impeded in surveys of the lands east of the Tigris. The area falls into three provinces, very unequally explored: the parkland steppe of Northern Mesopotamia comprising Assyria and North Syria; the hill country immediately to the west of the Euphrates including the Orontes valley and the Phoenician coastlands; and Palestine. The written record begins seven centuries later than in Egypt and Sumer, when Manishtusu, Sargon's grandson, built or rebuilt the Ishtar Temple at Nineveh. The cylinders and the exact agreement of amulets and animal seals with those from the Erech hoard put together in Jemdet Nasr times, prove that Eye Temple C goes back well into that period. The wheel was not in use, but some vessels are said to have been shaped on a 'tournette', and perforated stone discs have been described as the implement used.
