FF, Rm2,174+313
The tablet is presumably of Assyrian origin as the museum catalogue designation ‘Rm2’
indicates.^239 There is a strong possibility that this tablet was discovered in the North Pal-
ace at Nineveh, and so was probably written at around the middle of the seventh century
B.C.E.^240 The fragment Rm2,174 was published by Virolleaud.^241
GG K6558+Sm1907
The script is Neo-Assyrian, and although the signs are somewhat crowded along each line
there are clear delineations between successive lines of text. The tablet is from Nineveh
and was most likely excavated from the Southwestern Palace.^242 In its original form the
tablet contained six columns that comprised a substantial amount, if not all, of both tab-
lets in the series. Each line tends upward to the right in its horizontal trajectory, so that
the beginning of a line is at roughly the same height as the end of the line that follows
(^239) The tablets marked ‘Rm2’ were shipped to the British Museum between 1879 and 1883. The tablets are
mostly “Assyrian, apart from strays” (J.E. Reade, "Rassam's Babylonian Collection," xxix). The tablets in
this collection were mostly excavated during Rassam’s second expedition to Nineveh in 1878 (see A.R.
George, 240 Gilgamesh, 387).
D. Brown, Mesopotamian Planetary Astronomy-Astrology, 18-19, notes that around 90% of the tablets
in the Rm2 collection were excavated from the North Palace. The construction of the palace was completed
in 645 B.C.E., which may serve as an approximate guide for when the tablet was written. There is, of
course, no firm evidence for the suggestion that the completion of the palace should inform us as to when a
tablet housed there was written. The date does, however, allow for a general approximation of when the
tablet was in circulation. 241
See C. Virolleaud, L'Astrologie Chaldéenne: Le Livre intitulé 'enuma (Anu) iluBel.' Second Supplément:
Texte Cuniforme (2 242 me Partie) (Paris: Librairie Paul Geuthner, 1912) 94-95, no. LXVII.
According to D. Brown, Mesopotamian Planetary Astronomy-Astrology, 18, the Smith collection in the
British Museum, designated ‘Sm’ in the catalogue, is almost entirely from the Southwestern palace at
Nineveh. George Smith excavated tablets from this collection during his second expedition to Nineveh in
1874 (see A.R. George, Gilgamesh, 386-87).