Barbara Toy followed the Mediterranean coastline of North Africa, travelling through what was then French Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, to Cyprus, then down through Lebanon, Syria and then through Jordan to Iraq. While in Iraq she visited several archaeological sites, including in May 1951 Sir Max Mallowan's excavations at Nimrud where his wife Agatha Christie was helping with processing the finds. The work on the site had just finished, and the finds for that season included the stele of King Assur-nasir-pal II. Her journey home is not described in the book, although in her second book "A Fool in the
Nimrud Slab Nimrud Slab The Nimrud Slab, also known as the Calah Orthostat Slab, is the top half of a "summary inscription" of the reign of Adad-nirari III (811 to 783 BC) discovered in 1854 in by William Loftus in his excavations at Nimrud on behalf of the "Assyrian Excavation Fund". It is the best known of the inscriptions of Adad-nirari III, since it includes a description of early Assyrian conquests in Syria and Palestine. The inscription was carved on a gypsum slab, and the surviving part of the inscription is thought to represent the top half of the original slab. The