uable as are the portions available, they
chiefly make us long for more.

A very large number of tablets belonging to the second period are now in
Europe and America. They seem to have been purchased from dealers, either
in the East or West; and may be presumed to have been discovered by the
natives. No reliable information can therefore be had as to their origin.
Various places are mentioned: Sippara, Abu Habba, Senkereh, Telloh, Warka,
have all been stated to be the place of discovery. There seems no good
reason why tablets of this period should not be found anywhere in
Babylonia. But on examination it is found that collections said to be from
widely different places contain duplicates; while the same collection
contains tablets dated at different cities and with dates a thousand years
apart. It is conceivable that the records of important transactions,
especially the transfers of land, were deposited by order in the archives
at the capital, wherever that was for the time being. We may imagine that
the archives at Sippara or Larsa were afterwards transferred to Babylon,
for safety, or in pursuance of a policy of centralization. Certain it is
that a large number of the texts imply a devotion to Shamash as chief
deity, while others ascribe the pre-eminence to Marduk or Sin. But this
fact is quite consistent with the archives having been discovered in
either Babylon or Sippara.

(M25) On the other hand, it is not unlikely that the apparent
centralization is of purely modern production. The dealers put together
tablets from all sources and ascribe the collection to the place of origin
which best suits their fancy. As a consequence, scarcely any collection
contains a homogeneous series belonging either to one period or source.
This is the more deplorable because so few are competent to date a tablet
by the style of writing upon it, and internal indications are often
lacking.

In the British Museum we have the following collections:

I. A number of "case" tablets brought from Tell Sifr by Loftus in 1850.
Owing to a misleading statement in Layard's _Nineveh and Babylon_, p. 496,
these have generally been taken to be from Warka, the ancient Erech. But
the account given on pages 270-72 of Loftus, _Travels and Researches __ in
Chaldea and Susiana_, leaves no doubt of the place and date of their
discovery. These are usually denoted by B.

II. A number of tablets now in the Kouyunjik Collections. It is certain
that these do