6 



OLD BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTIONS 



them. Three months later I had obtained a general idea of their contents and their 

 age, and had catalogued about a third of them. On the basis of a report submitted 

 to the Publication Committee of the Expedition, of which Mr. Clarence H. Clark 

 is Chairman, a plan was carefully devised for making these cuneiform inscriptions 

 accessible to a wider circle of students, with as much speed and method as possible. 

 "With this view the Assyriologists of America and Canada were invited to lend their 

 aid to the preparation of an extensive work on the Expedition and its results. A 

 number of them have given assurance of their readiness to do so. 



In April, 1892, the undersigned was entrusted by the Committee with the edit- 

 ing of the series containing the Cuneiform Texts, and, at the same time, was requested 

 to undertake at once the preparation of the first volume of these texts. It is esti- 

 mated that the series will extend to eight or possibly ten volumes. Their general 

 plan and character are well explained in a report submitted to the American Philo- 

 sophical Society by a special committee, of which Mr. Talcott Williams was the 

 Chairman, at the stated meeting of May 20, 1892. 



I take this opportunity to acknowledge the liberality of the venerable American 

 Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, as shown in the promptness with which it has 

 undertaken the publication of the present. volume, by giving it a place in its learned 

 and valuable Transactions. I hope that in the future the Society will continue to 

 evince its interest in making such labors accessible to the republic of letters, by ex- 

 tending its sympathy and support to the undertaking whose plan has been described. 



A word more must be said as to the manner in which it is intended to prepare 

 the Cuneiform Texts for the use of the Assyriologist. For the sake of securing 

 uniformity throughout the series, and of avoiding what would make it excessively 

 costly, it was necessary to rej)roduce the inscriptions by photograph from copies 

 made by hand, rather than from the objects themselves. Besides, the editor some time 

 ago reached the conclusion that the method of direct photography is not at all satis- 

 factory in the case of many inscriptions. The best which has been done by that 

 expensive process is beyond question the work edited by Ernest de Sarzec and Leon 

 Heuzey under the auspices of the government of France: Decouvertes en Chaldee. It 

 possesses unique merits. But in spite of all the care that has been taken to secure 

 an exact reproduction of the monuments, any Assyriologist who has worked through 

 such texts as are found on Plates 33, 35 and 41, No. 1, will agree with me that the 

 decipherment, especially of the margins, makes a very severe demand upon the eye- 

 sight — a circumstance which makes the prompt and comprehensive use of the con- 

 tents of this beautiful work sometimes difficult. After mature consideration, there- 

 fore, the Committee found it most suitable to reproduce the Cuneiform Texts from 



