authentic tablets, and information as to the conditions under which many of the unprove-
nanced tablets were acquired.
As controlled excavations with sufficient notation are so rare, it is usually possible to talk
only in very general terms about the archaeological context of tablets from either Assyr-
ian or Babylonian localities. The most reliable information is that contained in the texts
themselves, typically in the colophons or date formulae. Where information in the text is
lacking, we can get some indication of where a tablet was found based on the museum
numbers that were assigned to them. On this evidence we can make some comments
about tablets in the British Museum from the Kuyunjik collection (K), those from the
Rassam collections (Rm 1, 2), and those from Smith’s excavations (DT, Sm). Only very
limited information is available for the BM collection. As for the other museums, the few
tablets we will consider from the Vorderasiatische collection of the Staatliche Museen in
Berlin (VAT) can be elucidated by the detailed reconstruction of the libraries and ar-
chives of the city of Assur by O. Pedersén.^117 For the tablets with Nimrud (ND), Sul-
tantepe (SU), University Museum in Philadelphia (CBS), and Museé de Louvre (AO)
museum numbers, we will rely principally on the notes in the primary publications or
catalogue entries, with some recourse to the surrounding scholarly literature.
Selecting the Texts for Analysis
The process of selecting textual material must of necessity be both methodologically
sound and expedient in its application, so as a manageable body of textual material can be
(^117) O. Pedersén, Archives and Libraries in the City of Assur: A Survey of the Material from the German
Excavations (Studia Semetica Uppsaliensia 6; 2 vols; Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1985).