In order to understand the position to which we must assign the legends of early Chaldea, it is necessary to give some account of the literature of the Ancient Babylonians and their copyists, the Assyrians. As has been already stated, the fragments of burnt brick on which these legends are inscribed were found in the débris which covers the palaces called the South West Palace and the North Palace at Kouyunjik; the former building being of the age of Sennacherib, the latter belonging to the time of Assur-bani-pal. The tablets, which are of all sizes, from one inch long to over a foot square, are generally in fragments, and in consequence of the changes which have taken place in the ruins the fragments of the same tablet are sometimes scattered widely apart. They were originally deposited, it would seem, in one of the upper chambers of the palace, from which they fell on the destruction of the building. In some of the lower chambers the whole floor has been found covered with them, in other cases they lay in groups or patches on the pavement, and there are occasional clusters of fragments at various heights in the earth which covers the ruins. Other fragments are scattered singly through all the upper earth which covers the floors and walls of the palace. Different fragments of the same tablet or cylinder are found in separate chambers which have no immediate connection with each other, showing that their present distribution has nothing to do with the original position of the tablets of which they formed part. The inscriptions show that the tablets were arranged according to their subjects. Stories or subjects were continued on other tablets of the same size and form as those on which they were commenced, in some cases the number of tablets in a series and on a single subject amounting to over one hundred.