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At this point it may be useful to insert a few general remarks about excavations and publication of texts because little is known about these problems outside the small circle of the initiated.A modern excavation is a highly complex enterprise. A staff of architects, draftsmen, photographers, epigraphers, and philologists have to assist the archeologist in his field work. But this is only the first and easier phase of an excavation. The preservation of the ruin, the conservation of the objects found, and, most of all, the publication of the results, remains the final task for which the work in the field is only the preliminary step.
Here a sad story indeed must be told. While the field work has been perfected to a very high standard during the last half century, the second part, the publication, has been neglected to such a degree that many excavations of Mesopotamian sites resulted only in a scientifically executed destruction of what was left still undestroyed after a few thousand years. The reasons for this fact are trivial. The time required for the publication of results is a multiple of the requirements for the field work. The available money is usually spent when a fraction of the original planned excavation has been completed, benefactors are hard to find to pay for many years of work without tangible or spectacular results, and.the scholars get interested in special aspects of the problem involved or go out for new material instead of performing the tedious work of publishing the thousands of details which the accidents of excavation have provided. The final result is not much different from the one obtained by the treasure-hunting attitude of the earliest excavators.
Here a sad story indeed must be told. While the field work has been perfected to a very high standard during the last half century, the second part, the publication, has been neglected to such a degree that many excavations of Mesopotamian sites resulted only in a scientifically executed destruction of what was left still undestroyed after a few thousand years. The reasons for this fact are trivial. The time required for the publication of results is a multiple of the requirements for the field work. The available money is usually spent when a fraction of the original planned excavation has been completed, benefactors are hard to find to pay for many years of work without tangible or spectacular results, and.the scholars get interested in special aspects of the problem involved or go out for new material instead of performing the tedious work of publishing the thousands of details which the accidents of excavation have provided. The final result is not much different from the one obtained by the treasure-hunting attitude of the earliest excavators.
