MORE BALAWAT TABLETS

At Balawat in 1956 M.E.L. Mallowan excavated a small group of 18 Neo-Assyrian documents near the Mamu Temple. These are now published here in copies by A.R. Millard and J.N. Postgate, along with four tablets from his later work at the site in 1957 which were not included in Barbara Parker’s edition of the majority of the texts from that season. They are all Neo-Assyrian utilitarian documents from the 7th century BC, mainly “legal” but in a few cases administrative. Parker observed (1963: 89) that the 1956 tablets “are a quite distinct group from the present collection” (that is, the 1957 group), and indeed there is little overlap in respect of content and prosopography between the two groups. A few of the 1956 tablets show that individuals whose private documents were kept in the town were engaged in agricultural and horticultural activities in (presumably) neighbouring villages, but they also include some rather informal conveyances of males and females.