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In his introduction to the Nimrud wine tablets Professor Mallowan has pointed out that the closest source of iron for Assyria were mines noted by Layard in Kurdistan, notably in the Berwari valley north-east of Amadiya, and also in the Tiyari mountains “particularly in the heights above Lizan”.Iron was also observed by Layard only “three or four days journey from Mosul”, “in great quantities scattered on the sides of mountains,” and his information is confirmed by the Rev. George Percy Badger who visited Kurdistan between 1842 and 1850. He gives the following information, “of iron they have abundance in several parts of Tiyari, this they smelt and beat out into rude ploughshares and such other tools as they require for tillage. The people of Asheetha, however, are famed for tempering steel, and the best packing needles used by Kurdish muleteers are made in this village”. Deposits in the Kurdistan mountains may also have been the closest source of supply for the land of Muṣaṣir.Although we can suspect that these sources were exploited by the Assyrians, archaeological and documentary evidence is lacking and this preliminary study concerns other possible sources in Anatolia and Syria with reference to Assyrian textual references and evidence concerning the most important deposits known to-day, including those recorded in the last century. At the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 1st millennia B.C. the expansion of the Assyrian armed forces necessitated regular and increasing supplies of smelted iron ore which could be used in the production, not only of weapons, but of tools and implements for use in building, agriculture and other allied crafts.
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