The tablet reads:
(Regarding) 1.5 minas (0.75 kg) of gold, the property of Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, the chief eunuch, which he sent via Arad-Banitu the eunuch to [the temple] Esangila: Arad-Banitu has delivered [it] to Esangila. In the presence of Bel-usat, son of Alpaya, the royal bodyguard, [and of] Nadin, son of Marduk-zer-ibni. Month XI, day 18, year 10 [of] Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.
The tablet was acquired by the British Museum in 1920, and came from the ancient city of Sippar, southwest of Baghdad. Sippar was excavated by the British Museum around 1880 by an Iraqi, Hormuzd Rassam. Whether this was a tablet originally found by Rassam in the 19th c. (he uncovered 70.000 clay tablets in Sippar), I'm not sure.I do know that Rassam's story as the only prominent Middle Eastern archaeologist in the 19th century is fascinating. David Damrosch has told it well in a recent book The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh (Holt, 2006). It's a great book, not just about Rassam, but also about the decipherment of cuneiform in the early 19th c. and continuing to Saddam Hussein's fascination with Gilgamesh.
For an excerpt of the book see the May 2007 issue of Smithsonian magazine, "Epic Hero," the story of George Smith, first translator of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which contains an early version of the flood story. It is reported that when Smith, sitting in the British Museum, realized what he was translating, he shed his clothes and began dancing around his desk in his underwear. (You see him on the right in a more modest moment.) Great summer reading, believe it or not!
