The Iranian Iron Iii Chronology at Muweilah in the Emirate of Sharjah*

doi: 10.2143/AWE.7.0.2033258 AWE 7 (2008) 189-202 THE IRANIAN IRON III CHRONOLOGY AT MUWEILAH 189

THE IRANIAN IRON III CHRONOLOGY AT MUWEILAH IN THE EMIRATE OF SHARJAH*

Oscar White MUSCARELLA

Abstract The site of Muweilah in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, has been published by its excavator Peter Magee over a number of years as having flourished during the Iron II period of the UAE/Oman, Arabian chronological system, ca. 1100/1000-600 BC. He has further asserted that within this long period, Muweilah’s existence can be dated to the time of the north-western Iranian Iron II period, which terminated ca. 800 BC, dating his site specifically to ca. 920-770 BC. Evidence used to affirm the Iranian Iron II chronology includes Iranian and local architecture and pottery parallels, and C 14 data. I rejected the viability and relevance of these parallels in print in 2003, to which Magee responded, reaffirming his 10th-early 8th-century BC chronology. Here I respond to the excavator’s ongoing defence, and argue for a considerably later north-western Iranian Iron III date for Muweilah.

The Background Reacting to two of Peter Magee’s articles (of 1997 and 2001) about his site Muweilah in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, I challenged the chronology he presented, claiming it was too high, and disagreed with his cultural/historical conclusions relating to the nature and date of the pottery and architecture recovered.1 Magee responded to my challenge,2 vigorously defending (appropriately) his position. Here I offer my response to his 2005 defence: I have not changed my mind regarding his dating of Muweilah and present my arguments for rejection here. Be- ginning with his first reports Magee has continuously reported that Muweilah came into existence during the UAE/Oman, Arabian Iron II period, which he dates from ca. 1100/1000 to 600 BC.3 The reader must understand from the beginning of the

* I want to thank Ernie Haerinck and Dan Potts for making suggestions, suggesting bibliography, and sharing their views with me. And Peter Magee for graciously allowing me to publish photographs from his publications. 1 Muscarella 2003, 249-50, n. 102. My critique was presented briefly in a footnote in an article rejecting a new C 14 date recently proclaimed by the excavators of Gordion in Anatolia, arguing that it was too high. The footnote was presented to give another example of a C 14 date that I believed to be incorrect. I first encountered Muweilah at a Bryn Mawr lecture by Peter Magee in October 2002, where I first expressed (verbally) my disagreements about the chronology he assigned to Muweilah’s pottery and architecture. 2 Magee 2005a. 3 Magee 1996a, 208; 1996b, 246, 249; 1997, 96; 1999, 44; 2002, 161; 2004, 32; 2005a, 161; 2005b, 96.

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discussion that this chronological period, Iron II, is alleged to have lasted for 500 years; and that in Iran this same 500-year time-span encompasses two separate and distinct cultural and chronological periods, Iron II and Iron III – crucial issues not articulated by Magee. Within that broad Arabian Iron II time frame he specifically situates Muweilah’s construction and existence contemporary with the chronology of the Iranian Iron II period, with Hasanlu Period IV, which terminated ca. 800 BC (i.e. 200 years earlier than the apparent termination of the Iron II period in Arabian terminology).4

The Ceramics One significant component of the collective evidence he presents is that Muweilah has vessels with ‘bridged spouts’ (bridged describes the unit that connects the spout to the rim), which to him are forms typical of the Iranian Iron II period (Fig. 1).5 However, vessels with a bridged horizontal spout are a classic characteristic form of the Iranian Iron II period (Fig. 3). And although many of the spouts of the published Muweilah examples are broken-away, some are intact and reveal, not a horizontal but an upright, vertical spout – a characteristic not of the Iranian Iron II period, but of Iron III. He states that some Muweilah examples have a short bridge, others have no bridge. But Muweilah has no typical Iranian Iron II-form horizontal spouts. Magee also presents references and drawings of vessels from Rumeilah, a nearby site, as relevant comparanda for his asserted UAE and Iranian Iron II chronology there also.6 None has a bridged horizontal spout, and the examples presented are painted (as at Muweilah7 – Fig. 2), which decoration is a manifest post-Hasanlu IV/Iranian Iron II characteristic (below); and formal parallels for the spout form of E, joined to and level with the vessel rim, are from Luristan in the Luristan Iron III period.8 Sialk B (a cemetery) has painted bridged horizontal spout vessels, which were cited by Magee as Iranian Iron II chronological parallels for Rumeilah, and later

4 I am not a scholar of Arabian archaeology and I found it confusing that the very same terminology used in Iranian archaeology, Iron I, II, III, is employed in Arabia. For a discussion of the Iranian/ Hasanlu Iron Age terminology and problems, see Muscarella 2006. 5 Magee 1996a, 203, 205-06, figs. 16-17; 1999, 45, figs. 5-6; 2001, 121, 123, fig. 12; 2002, 164-65, fig. 2; 2005a, 165, fig. 1, right (compare the Hasanlu vessel at the right); 2005b, 99, 112, figs. 5 (Fig. 1 in this paper), 20; Magee et al. 2002, 141, fig. 13. 6 Magee 1996a, 208; 1996b, 246-48, fig. 7.B, C, E, G; 1997, 93-95, fig. 2; 2005a, 165, fig. 1, centre; see also Boucharlat and Lombard 2001, 218, fig. 11. 7 Magee 1999, 45, fig. 5; 2005b, 100, fig. 6. 8 Overlaet 2005, pls. 8.2, 9, 11.3-4. Further, the drawing of B (in n. 5 above) seems to be a resto- ration.

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Fig. 2: Assorted vessels from Muweilah. 2: Assorted vessels from Fig.

Fig. 1: Spouted vessels from Muweilah. from vessels 1: Spouted Fig.

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Fig. 3: Bridged horizontal spouted vessel from Hasanlu IV (Metropolitan Museum of Art 65.163.72).

also cited as evidence supporting his early Muweilah chronology.9 He quotes Dyson, who, discussing the spout-painted juxtaposition there, claimed: ‘The main occupation of Sialk B would then belong to the eighth century…’ overlapping ‘the end of Hasanlu IVB and the beginning of IIIB.’10 The problem here is that Dyson made a significant error: painted pottery in fact does not appear in Hasanlu IV or in the following period Hasanlu III B, the Urartian period, but after the latter’s destruction, in Period III A, which came into existence not earlier than the late 7th or early 6th century BC.11 I too would agree with Magee that ‘it is too early to make definitive statements concerning the date of Iron Age Sialk’,12 which is a complicated subject. But I would add, that based on the Sialk pottery, one cannot date Rumeilah (or, indeed, Muweilah) within the Iranian Iron II chronology as established in north-western Iran. Magee himself admits (but then ignores it) that the Arabian ‘decorative pat-

9 Magee 1997, 94, 96, fig. 2; 1999, 45; 2005a, 162; 2005b, 93-94. 10 Dyson 1965, 208. On this also, see Young 1965, 76-80, figs. 13-14. 11 This reality has been known for decades: viz. Haerinck 1978, 85. For details and bibliography, see Muscarella 2006, 15, 17-20. 12 Magee 2005a, 163

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terns’ are ‘unlike the examples found in Iran during this period’, i.e. in the context here, Iron II.13 Magee continuously uses the terms ‘bridged’ or ‘bridged-spouted’ to describe the Muweilah spout form, but inexplicably does not inform us whether the bridged spouts are positioned vertically or horizontally. The position of the spout deter- mined how the liquid was poured out into another container, and although Magee mentions this process, he does not inform us how far the Muweilah people had to tip their spouts.14 Spouted vessel forms from the Iranian Iron III period exist, viz. at Hasanlu, Ziwiye and Yanik Tepe.15 In response to my 2003 brief comments on this significant matter, Magee re- plies16 it is ‘difficult to know’ how Muscarella can be certain that they are ‘horizontally or vertically spouted’. My answer is that lacking textual information, I looked at his published photographs, which do not portray horizontal bridged spouts; and how and why does Magee know that they are horizontally spouted: which must be the case to qualify for his Iron II attribution? But nowhere has he addressed this, recognised its significance in his discussions of parallels and chronology. He subtly adds two ambiguous modifications to his previously published claims.17 One is ‘that not all the Muweilah examples are comparable to the more elongated horizontal bridge-spouted examples from north-western Iran’. If by ‘more elongated’ he is now stating that the (some?) spouts at Muweilah are bridged horizontally, but are short, why not say it straightforward? Note that in this 2005 article the ‘horizontal’ word for the Muweilah vessels is mentioned for the first time, again ignoring its chronological importance.18 He also claims that he is not able to see how any of the Muweilah examples are ‘significantly [his emphasis] different from Iranian Iron Age II bridge-spouted vessels in general [my emphasis]’. In another venue published the same year19 he also stated, obliquely and casually, that ‘there are many differences between the Arabian…and west and northwest Iranian examples. The east Arabian examples contain a more open spout that differs from the very elongated horizontal [sic] spout found on some [sic] northwest and central Iranian examples’ (no profile drawings are published). The vertical spout position remains unmentioned here, concealed from us, although the vertical word is used when informing us that verti-

13 Magee 2005b, 99. 14 Magee 2005b, 108-09. For the spout pouring position by the Iranian Iron II population, see Stein 1940, pl. XXX, 8. 15 Hasanlu: Young 1965, 56, fig. 2.1 (the spout is incorrectly restored; it is vertical, as recognised by Haerinck 1987, 87); Ziwiye: Young 1965 60, fig. 4.5; Yanik Tepe: Haerinck 1978, 84, 87, fig. 7. 16 Magee 2005a, 163-64. 17 Magee 2005a, 164. 18 Magee 2005a, 164. 19 Magee 2005b, 99.

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cal spouts of a different form exist at Sialk. Here also he generalises about a long life for bridge-spouted vessels down to the 8th century BC.20 I suggest that Magee’s 2005 defence contra Muscarella 2003 is an attempt to modify all his previously published, and strongly stated, pottery parallel claims. Here is the core of the issue under review: I see only bridged vertical spouted vessels among those published from Muweilah (Figs. 1-2), a form in Iran that is stratigraphically distinguished as occurring later than the Iron II horizontal spout examples. In 1996 Magee asserted an indefinite generalisation, ‘Bridge-vessels are leitfossils for the Iron II period in western Iran’,21 but omitted the qualifying ‘horizontal’, a term essential in any characterisation of Iranian Iron II leitfossil spouted vessels. For excellent published Hasanlu Period IV examples see Stein; for the record, there are examples of bridged horizontal spout vessels in post-Iron II Iran.22 Magee23 also cites examples of ‘bridged spouted vessels’ at Godin and Baba Jan, and which (again) is meaningless, and in the context a misleading use of ‘bridged’ (why omit the crucial position of the spout?). In fact, all the vessels from these sites are dated to the Iranian Iron III period – and all the cited vessels have vertical spouts; also, Baba Jan has much painted pottery:24 which as such should have been employed to date Muweilah (and Rumeilah, as below) to the Iranian Iron III period. Magee claims25 it was ‘not [his emphasis] bridge-spouted vessels’ that were the sole basis for his dating of Muweilah, it was the C 14 evidence (see below). Indeed he unquestionably (and vitally; see below) depends on the carbon dates. But, not- withstanding his disclaimer, no reader of Magee’s publications can be unaware that his Iranian Iron II pottery-parallel assertions are a major component of his arguments concerning the specific cultural, geographical source and chronology at his site.26 Note also his statement that ‘absolute chronology of the Iron II period is available from both C 14 data and [my emphasis] foreign parallels for Iron II

20 Magee 2005b, 94. 21 Magee 1996b, 248. 22 Stein 1940, pls. XXIV, XXX, no. 8; compare the Iron III examples there, pl. XVII, and the drawing in pl. XXVIII, 17. An excavated example from Ziwiye has hanging triangles and incised chequerboard decoration (Dyson 1965, 206, fig. 11): it has a parallel at Muweilah (Magee 2005b, 113, n. 28); Nush-I Jan (Stronach 1969, 18, fig. 7); War Kabud in Luristan (Overlaet 2005, pl. 11.1), which may possibly be dated in Luristan chronology to Iron IIB, 8th century BC or later. 23 Magee 2005b, 94. 24 Magee (2005a, 94, n. 9) cites Goff 1985 as a Baba Jan reference. This is an error, repeated in the bibliography: the journal reference should be Goff 1978, and the issue is Iran 16, pp. 29-66 (for a painted vessel with vertical spout, see pl. 1Ia). Nn. 6 and 7 also have wrong references. The Manor house at Baba Jan does not seem to have a columned hall; it has three columns, probably for a colonnade. For the post-9th century dating of Baba Jan, see Muscarella 1988, 140, n. 1, 209, n. 4 (contra Boucharlat and Lombard 2001, 222, n. 9). 25 Magee 2005a, 163. 26 See Magee 1996a, 208; 1997, 93-95 (Rumeilah); 2001, 123; 2002, 164.

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pottery’.27 Also claimed here is that: ‘The most chronologically diagnostic evidence [my emphasis] for foreign inspiration in the Iron II period is found in painted and unpainted bridge-spouted vessels.’28 True. But there are no painted vessels in Iron II Hasanlu, or Dinkha Tepe, or at any other manifest Iron II sites in north-western Iran (above). Also unrecognised by Magee is that there is more ceramic evidence available at Mu- weilah to support a post-Iron II occupation there, and by centuries. First is a distinct vessel form called a Trichterrandschale, characterised by a relatively long flaring rim joining a bulging body (Fig. 2, centre and lower).29 There are no known Iranian Iron II parallels; they occur in Iron III contexts, and later, in the Achaemenid period: see the long list of post Iranian Iron II sites where they occur given by Kroll.30 Then there are fragments of two terracotta vessels identified by him as incense burners that are ‘decorated in typical Iron Age II fashion: swirling lines around the holes’.31 The example illustrated has two isolated holes, and does not appear to be a censor; furthermore, he gives no parallels to support the ‘typical’ Iron II attribution. Also recovered is a domed, fully perforated manifest ceramic incense burner cover crowned by a figure of a bull (Fig. 4).32 Magee informs us that this censor fits

Fig. 4: Ceramic censor cover from Muweilah.

27 Magee 1996b, 247. 28 Magee 1996b, 247. 29 Magee 2005b, fig. 7, centre. 30 Kroll 1976, 115; see also Young 1965, 58, fig. 3.6, 11, fig. 4.6. 31 Magee 2004, 27-28, fig. 4 for one example. 32 Magee 2001, 123-24, fig. 14; 2005b, 112-13, fig. 21.

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‘within the repertoire of Iron II ceramics’, and says parallels occur at three Arabian sites; Magee is here employing Iron II only in its UAE/Arabian Iron II terminology (ca. 1100/1000-600 BC, see above). But the censor cover most certainly cannot be used as evidence to support a 9th-century BC Iranian Iron II date for Muweilah: because there are no Iranian Iron II parallels, there are only post Iranian Iron II parallels. B. Goldman has conveniently brought most known censors together (Ara- bian examples are not mentioned).33 Censors on stands begin in the 2nd millen- nium BC, but rounded, removable domed covers are rare, only that depicted on a Hittite scene (Goldman – CC), and it is not perforated. The next rounded cover example known is from the 7th century BC. Ashurbanipal garden relief (Gold- man – LL), also unperforated. Only those from the Achaemenid period have all the characteristics of the Muweilah censor cover: form, multi-perforations and, some- times, figured handles (Goldman – A, B, F, G, I).34 Some are domed, others pyra- mid shaped and stepped, for which also see the Achaemenid examples from U≥ak.35 One can argue that the Achaemenid-form censor derives from a late phase at Muweilah, the time prior to its destruction, but then indeed this could also obtain for the vertically spouted vessels as well: which were recovered in the destruction level there.36 The archaeological evidence indicates that the Muweilah censor cover cannot be employed to date the site’s destruction to ‘a fire sometime after 770 BC but before c. 600 BC’.37 Its presence contradicts this asserted chronology: and brings into the discussion an Achaemenid period at Muweilah (whether it can be argued that such censors existed earlier in Arabia, I leave to the specialists); Magee plays down involvement with Fars.38

The Architecture Architecture is another major component of Magee’s Iranian Iron II chronological evaluation. The vital argument here is that Muweilah’s columned hall plan is crucial evidence for comprehending a date for the site. Because Magee consistently per- ceives this plan as distinctly related to Burnt Building II (BB II) at Hasanlu, Period IV (Fig. 5), it thus signifies contemporary existence, a chronological parallel and dependence; and inasmuch as BB II is ‘earlier than those at Muweilah…one must assume [my emphasis], therefore, that influence was exerted from Iran to south-

33 Goldman 1991. 34 Goldman 1991, pl. XVII. 35 Özgen and Öztürk 1996, 114-19, nos. 71-73. 36 Magee 2005b, 98. 37 Magee 2001, 115; see also below. 38 Magee 2005b, 107, 112.

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Fig. 5: Columned Hall plans of Hasanlu, Muweilah, Nush-i Jan and Godin.

eastern Arabia at this time’39 (10th-9th centuries BC; see below). The architectural parallels further signify to him that there must have been direct and complex social contacts between the two widely distant sites.40 Such assumptions have no empiri- cal archaeological or historical support in Arabia or north-western Iran. Muweilah’s columned hall is best described as an apadana (whether with stone or wood columns is irrelevant), and has closer formal parallels at geographically

39 Magee 2002, 162-63; see Magee 2001, 117, fig. 2; 2002, 165; 2005a, 167, fig. 4; Magee et al. 2002, 138, fig. 6. 40 Magee 2001, 128; 2005a, 164.

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closer sites in western Iran. The hall has ‘twenty columns bases arranged in a five by four pattern with one row against the wall’ that fill the interior space.41 Hasanlu BB II has eight central columns, four each in two rows, with space all around them, and a series of smaller columns situated against the walls; other buildings at Hasanlu have eight or four central columns.42 The two sites have different column numbers and internal dispositions. Although Magee does mention the columned halls at the late 8th-7th century BC sites at Nush-i Jan and Godin Tepe (also Persepolis and Pasargadae),43 which I had cited as appropriate parallels (Fig. 5), closer in plan to Muweilah, and that the sites are geographically closer than Hasanlu, they are dropped from further investi- gation (until 2005): because, I suggest, Hasanlu BB II had been accepted as the Muweilah parallel. In 2005 my judgment that Hasanlu BB II is not a suitable parallel for Muweilah, which parallel is more meaningfully recognised at the later- dated sites, was rejected.44 I readily reaffirm it. Nush-i Jan has a twelve-columned hall, three rows of four each; Godin has a central hall with thirty columns, five rows of six each, and two flanking narrower halls with a smaller number of columns (10, 16; partly reconstructed). Magee leaves it to the reader to decide, but is immediately compelled to add that the Hasanlu-Muweilah parallels ‘seem to me stronger than those from’ Nush-i Jan and Godin. I reject the urgency of this claim. To me the Muweilah building is paralleled by the apadana plans, which are kindred in their column number, placements and concept. BB II’s plan cannot be architecturally and formally privileged over those from Iranian Iron III Nush-i Jan and Godin.45 Boucharlat and Lombard46 also discuss these two sites, accepting their ‘filiation’ with Rumeilah (they do not mention Muweilah!) as not inconceiv- able, and accept them all being contemporary. Note also that a possible columned hall has been partly excavated in Iran, at Ziwiye: a room with sixteen columns in two rows was uncovered, but this may be a colonnade. Although a columned hall was excavated at Rumeilah,47 it gets but a mere mention by Magee.48 Rumeilah’s hall has three columns in three rows; an underlying structure seems also to have had columns, although it is possible here we have a

41 Magee 2002, 162. 42 Dyson 1965, pl. XXXIV; for a full plan of the Period IV columned hall structures, see Muscarella 2006, 9, fig. 3. 43 Magee 2002, 163. 44 Magee 2005a, 164 45 The juxtaposition of the building plans under review is conveniently displayed in Magee 2005a, fig. 4 – here Fig. 5. 46 Boucharlat and Lombard 2001, 221-22. 47 Boucharlat and Lombard 2001, 205-18, figs. 3, 7. 48 Magee 2005b, 109.

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partially covered area.49 Boucharlat and Lombard date Rumeilah within the Ara- bian Iron II period, but nota bene, they place its chronological phase at the latest to the late 8th-7th century BC.50 This is reasonable, indeed, and must form the beginning discussion of the chronology of Muweilah. A relevant academic issue is worth raising: if indeed Muweilah’s apadana was constructed in the Iranian Iron II period, then, in this scheme, may not one ponder if the Median examples in Iran could have been derived from South Arabia, and not from an indigenous northern Iranian background? For, if Muweilah had contact with far-away Hasanlu in the 10th-9th centuries BC, why not consider a continuous contact with the mainland, with the closer Median area, whose buildings were built after those at Muweilah? Magee doesn’t confront this view, but seems to obliquely reject it.51 While casually accepting Magee’s chronology (Muweilah ‘apparently [sic] dates from before 800 BC’), Curtis and Razmijou52 correctly reject Arabia as the source for the Median and Achaemenian apadanas. But they also believe that the architecture in both areas experienced inspiration from ‘the same tradition,’ which, independently obtained, they argue, derived from Hasanlu. Thus they support Magee’s chronological and cultural conclusions – north-western Iranian influence and contact with Arabia in the Iranian Iron II period – which my present paper again rejects.

Carbon-14 Data From the earliest reports Magee cited C 14 data as evidence to situate Muweilah chronologically in the Iranian Iron II Period: in 1999 the buildings ‘were in existence by the ninth century BC…. destroyed sometime after 770 BC’;53 in 2001 ‘the buildings… came into existence sometime after ca. 920 BC…. destroyed by fire sometime after 770 BC but before c. 600 BC’;54 in 2002 the initial construction date is lowered to ca. 900 BC;55 in 2003 it is after 920 BC and with ‘an upper limit of 800 BC’ for the site’s destruction (wood and date seeds).56 In 2004 the construction date for the site is now the ‘end of the ninth century BC’, based on dates and date seeds samples.57 The following year Magee emphasised the C 14 evidence from dates and burnt beams for the chronology, repeating that the ‘main buildings’

49 Boucharlat and Lombard 2001, 215, fig. 6. 50 Boucharlat and Lombard 2001, 221, n. 9. 51 Magee 2002, 163. 52 Curtis and Razmijou 2005, 50. 53 Magee 1999, 46-47. 54 Magee 2001, 115. 55 Magee et al. 2002, 153-54. 56 Magee 2003, 2-3, 7. 57 Magee 2004, 32.

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were ‘constructed after ca. 920 BC and destroyed sometime after ca. 800 BC but before ca. 600 BC’.58 And ‘bridge’ spouted vessels were ‘in use, therefore, sometime after 920 B.C.’, perhaps even ‘from c. 1000 B.C. onwards’, and ‘exhibit some form of influence from Iran’ [my emphasis].59 In the final analysis, C 14 evidence is the core of the issue at hand. Surely it was the C 14 dates that firmed his chronological claims, his associated dating of the pottery and architecture. All three are presented as if they naturally form a closed, self-created triangle of mutually supporting evidence. The C 14 dates given in Magee 2004, along with data given in table 1 there, do not manifestly prove the Iranian Iron II chronology argued. Here I stick my neck out, for I see a problem with the C 14 analysis; and I must leave a close analysis to C 14 statistical experts to debate (as they will also with my 2003 article that disa- grees with another C 14 determination). One more issue, an important conclusion of Magee’s, should be addressed. Magee believes that Arabian letters inscribed on a vessel fragment excavated at Muweilah manifest that the South Arabian script existed in south-eastern Arabia, and thus, based on his chronology, indicates that ‘serious cultural interaction with Yemen began 300 to 400 years earlier than previously thought’.60 If I am correct in my disagreements with Magee’s Muweilah’s chronology, this cultural assertion is er- roneous, but warrants independent discussion by the experts.

Conclusions Based then on the pottery, the censor and formal architectural parallels, and a challenge of the C 14 date, I argue that Muweilah came into existence in the post-Ira- nian Iron II period, probably in the 7th century BC (or later?), whatever UAE/Ara- bian terminology is employed (late Iron II?). When Magee states that there is an ‘absence of iron III material culture’ at Muweilah,61 he can only be referring to Ara- bian terminology. And Muscarella never committed the ‘fundamental error’ of only equating ‘this pottery and thus this site’.62 (One may aptly use the same phrase to describe Magee’s equating Hasanlu with Muweilah.) What I said and repeat, is that no ceramic or architectural evidence present at Muweilah, or Rumeilah, supports an Iranian Iron II date there. The issue is not, and never was, whether there was Iranian influence and trade with Arabia,63 but when it commenced.

58 Magee 2005a, 163; see also 2005b, 97-98. 59 Magee 2005b, 98-99. 60 Magee 1999, 43-45, fig. 3, 47-49. 61 Magee 2004, 33; also 2003, 1. 62 Magee 2005a, 161. 63 Magee 2005b, 95-96.

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Addendum In the latest issue of BASOR (No. 347 [2007], 83-105; it appeared at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 20th September 2007) Peter Magee has a long article on Arabian sites (‘Beyond the Desert and the Sown….’), including Muweilah. Here in a long discussion on chronology he dates Muweilah (along with other sites) generally within the Arabian Iron II period, with a broad 500 year range date of 1100-600 BC. But not once here does he mention that in his many (and repetitious) earlier writings he has consistently dated Muweilah to the 9th century BC, vigorously asserting alleged Hasanlu IV B, 9th-century BC ceramic and architectural parallels. These articles, eleven in all–and of which a total of five are omitted/ignored in his argument and from the bibliography–are discussed and critiqued by me in the above, in the present article. There is more. Nowhere in the BASOR article does he mention or include in his bibliography my original challenge to his 9th-century BC dating of Muweilah that appeared in AWE 2.2 (2003), n. 102. And nowhere does he include a reference to his long article in AWE 4.1 (2005) contra my 2003 note, wherein he challenged my late dating (hundreds of years later than his dating), and vigorously defended the 9th- century date for Muweilah that he has touted for a long time. Furthermore, he does not mention that he had read with my permission (upon the request of AWE’s Editor-in-Chief) in August 2006 the then unpublished article submitted to AWE – the present article – re- butting his 2005 AWE paper!

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Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, NY 10028-0198 USA [email protected]

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