The six letters here edited, four of them substantially complete, are amongst the hitherto unpublished tablets found at Nimrud in 1952. The legibility of these letters, first copied by me in Baghdad in 1954, has been much improved by the skilled treatment they have received at the hands of Mr. C. A. Bateman of the British Museum; in one case the extensive improvement in legibility rendered it advisable to make a completely new copy, and on other tablets obscure passages have become (at least physically) clear. I wish to express my thanks to my friend and colleague Professor D. J. Wiseman, Joint-Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, for arranging for these and other letters of the collection to be put at my disposal for further study.

LXV is written from Babylon by an official, probably the governor of Arrapha, on behalf of himself and the Turtan at the moment that the gates of Babylon had been forced at the final crushing of the Ukin-zer rebellion in 730 B.C. Possibly connected with the aftermath of the rebellion is LXVI, which is taken to be a reply to a royal enquiry informing the king that no Babylonian “fifth column” had appeared during the Assyrian action against the southern capital.