ABSTRACT
The records of the Egibi family constitute the largest and most important privatearchive from the Neo-Babylonian and early Achaemenid periods (sixth and early fifth centuries BC). Local people hoping to find antiquities to sell discovered the tablets in the 1870s and 1880s among the ruins of private houses in the Babylon area. They were found in sealed earthen jars, a sure sign that they had been consciously set aside by their owners. The archive is said to have originally comprised some three to four thousand tablets, but the rough handling during excavation, shipment, and trade inevitably reduced their number. George Smith acquired the bulk of this archive for the British Museum in 1876, the rest was dispersed among many collections in Europe and America. Today about 1,700 texts can be confidently attributed to this archive, discounting duplicates and joined fragments.
