s often difficult
now to determine their place of discovery.

A very large number of these tablets, from the collection of T. Simon, now
in the Berlin museums, were copied and edited by G. Reisner, as
_Tempelurkunden aus Telloh_.(18) The admirable abstracts of the contents
there given(19) will furnish all the information that anyone but a
specialist will need. They consist of lists of all sorts of natural
products, harvests from fields, seed and other expenses allowed for
cultivating fields, lists of the fields with their cultivators, numerous
receipts for loans or grants, accounts of sheep and cattle, stipends or
allowances for certain people; but only one, number 125, is doubtfully
said to concern a sale of some slaves.

Dr. H. Radau, in his _Early Babylonian History_, gives the texts of a
large number of similar tablets.(20) He also classified, transliterated,
and tentatively translated most of them. The kind of information to be
obtained is well brought out in his notes and comments.(21) They contain
receipts, accounts of all sorts, lists of animals, skins, wool, oil, wine,
grain, pitch, and honey; but none relate to the usual subjects treated in
contract-tablets.

M. Thureau-Dangin edited and discussed a number of tablets of the same
character in the _Revue d'Assyriologie_.(22) Especially valuable is his
memoir, _L'accomptabilite agricole en Chaldee_,(23) where many interesting
facts are collected and published.

(M24) A very large number of texts of this period were published by Mr. L.
W. King, in _Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets, etc., in the British
Museum_.(24) These have been discussed in a few instances by various
writers in scientific journals. In the short descriptions prefixed to
these editions mention is made of "contracts," but it is difficult to see
to which the term could be properly applied.

A number of extracts from early "contracts" are given by Professor V.
Scheil in the recent files of the _Receuil de Travaux_. According to the
descriptions given, many of them are legal instruments. Besides advances
of grain and receipts for the same,(25) or sales of land,(26) we have a
legal decision concerning a marriage.(27) Of several of these only a few
lines are given and the description of others is misleading. They are
mostly preserved at Constantinople. Some are purely Sumerian, others
Semitic. The same remarks apply to this author's publications in his _Une
Saison de fouilles a Sippar_. Val