(3) Ezek. i. 1, 3; iii. 23; and cf. x. 15, 20, 22, and
xliii. 3.

(4) See J. A. Montgomery, _Aramaic Incantation Texts from
Nippur_, 1913

(5) Hilprecht, _Explorations_, p. 555 f.

Of the many thousands of inscribed clay tablets which were found in
the course of the expeditions, some were kept at Constantinople, while
others were presented by the Sultan Abdul Hamid to the excavators, who
had them conveyed to America. Since that time a large number have been
published. The work was necessarily slow, for many of the texts were
found to be in an extremely bad state of preservation. So it happened
that a great number of the boxes containing tablets remained until
recently still packed up in the store-rooms of the Pennsylvania Museum.
But under the present energetic Director of the Museum, Dr. G. B.
Gordon, the process of arranging and publishing the mass of literary
material has been "speeded up". A staff of skilled workmen has been
employed on the laborious task of cleaning the broken tablets and
fitting the fragments together. At the same time the help of several
Assyriologists was welcomed in the further task of running over and
sorting the collections as they were prepared for study. Professor Clay,
Professor Barton, Dr. Langdon, Dr. Edward Chiera, and Dr. Arno Poebel
have all participated in the work. But the lion's share has fallen to
the last-named scholar, who was given leave of absence by John
Hopkins University in order to take up a temporary appointment at the
Pennsylvania Museum. The result of his labours was published by the
Museum at the end of 1914.(1) The texts thus made available for study