In a very real sense these come from a record office, but are confined to royal rather than state documents; though a few duplicates of charters occur. Hence we look in vain for many classes of documents, such as are common in the archives of temples or private families. We have no marriage settlements, no adoptions, no partnerships.
Can we believe that such transactions were less common in Nineveh than fifteen centuries before in Sippara, or Larsa, or Babylon; or later in Babylon, Sippara, or Nippur? There cannot be a shadow of doubt that such documents exist in shoals somewhere in the ruins of Nineveh and will one day be found. Hence we must regard it as extremely improbable that the ordinary citizens of Nineveh contributed the records of their transactions to the Kouyunjik Collections now in the British Museum. They either kept them in their own houses or in some temple archives. As will be seen later, a few have already been found; but it is extremely difficult to locate them exactly. It is quite certain that a few of the tablets in the British Museum were found at other localities, such as Sherif Khan, Ashur, Kalah, Erech, Larsa, and Babylon.
For the most part these appear to have been placed in one collection by the discoverers, and only internal evidence can now decide where they were found. But the great bulk of the Kouyunjik Collections, as far as contracts, legal documents, and kindred tablets are concerned, are the result of explorations conducted on the site of the ancient Nineveh, by Layard and Rassam. They probably came from palace archives, and as a result possess a special character of their own.
Aramaic dockets
Aramaic dockets very early attracted the attention of Assyriologists. The presence of short inscriptions in Aramaic on a few contract-tablets naturally raised hopes, in the early days of decipherment, of finding some check upon the reading of cuneiform. So far as these went they were by no means inconsistent with the readings of the cuneiform. But they were too few, too disconnected, and in themselves too uncertain, to be of great value. Indeed, for many of them, it is the cuneiform that now gives the key to their possible sense. The whole of these Aramaic inscriptions have now been published by Dr. J. H. Stevenson in his Assyrian and Babylonian Contracts with Aramaic Reference Notes, where references to the literature will be found.
The collections of tablets
In connection with these Aramaic legends a number of the texts of Assyrian contracts were published in the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, Pars Secunda, Tomus I. A number more were published in Vol. III. of the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, by Sir H. C. Rawlinson. A few others were published in various journals; and by Oppert in his epoch-making treatise on the juristic literature, Documents Juridiques; by Peiser, in Vol. IV. of Schrader's Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek; and by Strassmaier in his Alphabetisches Verzeichnis. The whole of the texts of the Assyrian contracts from the Kouyunjik Collections in the British Museum are now published in Assyrian Deeds and Documents recording the Transfer of Property, etc. (three volumes published).[55] A bibliography will be found there, on page ix of the preface to Vol. I.
Their peculiar style
The very remarkable style which most of these tablets show is so unlike the contemporary documents in Babylonia that we may expect that transactions between private [pg 034] citizens in Assyria at this time were quite different. A few such documents exist. Professor V. Scheil, in the Receuil de Travaux,[56] published the text of four which are quite unlike any of the Kouyunjik examples.
The plan of arrangement in the volume