Underwood & Underwood 

 THE EXCAVATED SITE OF ASSUR, A COLONY OF BABYLON 

 Parts of the city's walls, quays, streets, palaces, and temples have been laid bare 



The scribes of Ashurbanipal searched 

 the temples and schools of Babylonia and 

 Assyria for these productions and re- 

 wrote them in what was then modern 

 Assyrian (see page 155). 



There are many indications of the tran- 

 scription of older texts, or the handing 

 down of them from one period to an- 

 other. Not a few tablets in the Ashur- 

 banipal library have subscriptions or 

 colophons stating that they are copies 

 written according to originals found in 

 such and such a city. 



Several instances of earlier versions 

 have been found. For example, there is 

 a version of the Gilgamesh represented 

 in the Yale collection by a tablet, and in 

 the Berlin Museum by a fragment which 

 belong to a time fifteen hundred years 

 earlier than the library of Ashurbanipal. 



The same is true of the deluge story, 

 which is represented by more ancient 

 versions. Moreover, the one in the li- 

 brary of J. Pierpont Morgan, dated about 

 2000 B. C., clearly shows that it is a copy 

 of a still older version. Not only is the 



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