THE BABYLONIAN PERIOD
first of these affords a type of the business collection and the second of a school collection — although there were certainly other collections at both places. Nippur has almost every sort of a collection known to the times and the times extend from earliest to very late.
At Lagash most of the tablets were found in a small hill about 650 feet from the palace hill. They were found piled in regular layers five or six deep in two groups of narrow brick galleries which had low ledges on both sides, on which were beds of tablets. De Sarzac and Heuzey compare these to the little store-rooms where the surplus votive offerings of ancient temples were stored. Some 30,000 tablets were found here mostly of the Ur dynasty period and so close before Abrahamic times but some antedating the first Sargon (2750, 3200 or ?) even. These are wholly business records "dealing for the most part with the accounts,
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