Page:The Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876).djvu/42

20 in consequence of the changes which have taken place in the ruins the fragments of the same tablet are sometimes scattered widely apart. It appears from a consideration of the present positions of the fragments that they were originally in the upper chambers of the palace, and have fallen on the destruction of the building. In some of the lower chambers they lay covering the whole floor, in other cases they lay in groups or patches on the pavement, and there are occasional clusters of fragments at various heights in the earth which covers the buildings. The other fragments are scattered singly through all the upper earth which covers the floors and walls of the palace. Different fragments of the same tablets and cylinders are found in separate chambers which have no immediate connection with each other, showing that the present distribution of the fragments has nothing to do with the original position of the tablets.

A consideration of the inscriptions shows that these tablets have been arranged according to their subjects in various positions in the libraries. Stories or subjects were commenced on tablets and continued on other tablets of the same size and form, in some cases the number of tablets in a series and on e single subject amounting to over one hundred.

Each subject or series of tablets had a title, the title being formed by the first phrase or part of phrase in the subject. Thus, the series of Astrological tablets, numbering over seventy tablets, bore the