Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

408 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
occupied in the political and civil life of its population,
it has been necessary to lay before the reader all the principal
facts which I could extricate from the often obscure reports
at my disposal, in order to enable him to comprehend
the condition and characteristic features of the ruins
and to
acquaint himself with the history and methods of their
exploration. My review of Haynes' work on the western
side of the Shatt en-Nil will have to be briefer, as he, like
Peters, never attempted to explore those mounds systematically,
but, on the whole, was satisfied with recovering all
the tablets and other antiquities from the numerous unbaked
brick buildings which they contained. Most of the twenty
thousand cuneiform records and fragments excavated between
1893 and 1896 in the long ridge limited by the
numbers VI and VIII on the plan of the ruins (p. 305) are
lists (and a few contracts) dated in the reigns of Cassite
rulers (about 1
500-1 250 b. a), several of which show exceedingly
interesting and peculiar seal impressions. Some
two or three thousand belong to the third pre-Christian
millennium. They include many so-called contracts (and
receipts)
from the time of the kings of the dynasties of Ur,
(N)isin, Larsa, and Babylon. 1 There are a few letters and
literary tablets among them, which may originally have
formed part of the temple library situated on the opposite
bank (IV) of the canal. The neo-Assyrian, Chaldean and
Persian dynasties are represented by about twelve hundred
contract tablets.
More than seven hundred of these are of especial importance.
At the end of May, 1893, they were discovered
in one of the rooms of a ruined building at a depth of
twenty feet below the surface (VIII on the plan of the
1
I remember, e. g., a tablet dated in the government of Ur-Ninib of
(N)isin, about five hundred to eight hundred dated according to Rim-Sin's
new era (fall of (N)isin), several dated in the reign of a king Bel-bani, and
a few dated in the reigns of other kings previously not known. Comp. p. 382.