Unlike the letters which will comprise the bulk of this series, the tablets with administrative texts are very varied in their format. Without doubt much of the administration of the Neo-Assyrian empire was written on waxed wooden writing boards in cuneiform or on materials such as leather or papyrus in Aramaic. These have of course perished, and what we have here is therefore only a very partial record. But even within the clay tablets there is great variety: some are well-prepared, excellently written and many-columned tablets, while others are scrappy notes on poor clay with coarse script. Even within groups of obviously related material there are considerable variations in the quality of clay, the size and shape of the tablet, the disposition of the text (in the layout of its lines and columns), and the tidiness and size of the script. Johns' original copies in ADD make no attempt to convey any of this information, nor could even the best copyist substitute for a photograph. We have therefore tried to illustrate the degree of variation in the Plates at the end of the volume.
F.M. Fales & J.N. Postgate
F.M. Fales & J.N. Postgate, 'The Documents', Imperial Administrative Records, Part I: Palace and Temple Administration, SAA 7. Original publication: Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 1992; online contents: SAAo/SAA07 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2021 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa07/introduction/thedocuments/]