Fig. 159.—Drawing on a tablet.
We found the tablets far more frequently in an early secondary position than in the original one, a fact which clearly proves that these documents were often thrown away when they were of no further use. They are found in groups, either in the street or inside the houses. The Hammurabi tablets in room 25 þ (cf. Fig. [155]) lay immediately under the floor in the filling of the foundations, and had been laid level with some care; that these were cancelled documents is shown by certain examples which were struck through across and across, and also that besides those that were complete a very large proportion were
Fig. 160.—Pottery urn with tablets.
Fig. 161.—Bowls.
in fragments. In the house in Fara just mentioned there were a number of smaller ones in good condition embedded in the mud mortar between the courses of mud brick. It seems as though a certain reverence for written documents frequently led the Babylonians, the graphomaniacs of the ancient world, to cherish the specimens of their beloved art even after they were no longer needed and had to be put out of the way, for a later period unforeseen by them, when after thousands of years the lucky people of to-day can gain the information conveyed by them.
Fig. 162.—Aramaic incantation bowl.