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 scores of places are untouched or waiting to be dug deeply enough to reach these ancient strata.

The one or two hundreds of thousands of tablets recovered are thus only a small fraction of the probably still existing tablets of the pre-Abrahamic period which must amount to several millions.

At most places, early or late, there seems not to have been one collection merely, but several, some found in connection with schools, some with administration buildings or store houses, many small collections of family documents under the floors of private houses or in graves. Sometimes too a collection seems to be a mere dump of waste tablets, often broken as of no further use or by the accidents of fire and military wasting.

Among the more interesting of the libraries which have so far been excavated of this period are those of Tello (Lagash or Shirpurla), Sippara and Nippur. The