excavated in what is now southern Iraq by H. Rassam.^215 This tablet was published by
T.G. Pinches.^216
E, AO7540+
This tablet, now at the Louvre, originally contained six columns and probably held the
entire text of MUL.APIN on the same tablet. Weidner considered this tablet to have been
written in the third century B.C.E., judging it to be of a similar period to BM86378 (tablet
A).^217 The script is Neo-Babylonian and quite similar to tablet A in appearance. Another
fragment that was originally published in connection with AO7540 (W3376) is now
lost.^218
(^) BM36851). Such impressions, though rare, can only have been made when the clay of the tablet was still
malleable, and so obviously attest to those tablets being fired, or at least prepared for firing, in antiquity. 215
Rassam’s expeditions between 1879 and 1882 were primarily focused in southern Iraq. A significant
number of tablets that were acquired by the British Museum at this time came from uncontrolled excava-
tions via local antiquities dealers, for which see J.E. Reade, "Hormuzd Rassam and His Excavations," Iraq
55 (1993) 51, and J.E. Reade, "Rassam's Babylonian Collection," xv. According to J.E. Reade, "Rassam's
Babylonian Collection," xxvii, British Museum catalogue numbers BM30001-84999 were catalogued be-
fore November 1894, and, more specifically, the majority of tablets catalogued as BM33328-77218 are
from Rassam’s excavations in Babylonia between 1879 and 1882. 216
See T.G. Pinches and J.N. Strassmaier, Late Babylonian Astronomical and Related Texts (Brown Uni-
versity Studies 18; Rhode Island: Brown University Press, 1955) 232, nos. 1496 and 1497. 217
See E.F. Weidner, "Ein Babylonisches Kompendium Der Himmelskunde," American Journal of Semitic
Languages and Literatures 218 40, 3 (1924) 188.
See the description in AfO 24, 4-5. A photograph of the obverse of W3376 appears in AfO 24, pl. XV,
but most of the script is illegible due to salt incrustations.