The only legitimate inference is that the main purpose of the collectors of incantation texts was to exhaust the subject so far as lay in their power. They included in their codes as much as possible. The exorciser would have no difficulty in threading his way through the complicated mass. He would select the division appropriate to the case before him without much concern of what preceded or followed in the text. Moreover, these divisions in the texts were clearly marked by dividing lines, still to be seen on the clay tablets. These divisions correspond so completely to divisions in the subject-matter that the purely practical purpose they served can hardly be called into question, while at the same time they furnish additional proof for the compiled character of the texts. As for the date of the composition of the texts, the union of the Babylonian states under Hammurabi, with its necessary result, the supremacy of Marduk, that finds its reflection in the texts, furnishes us with a terminus _a quo_ beyond which we need not proceed for _final_ editing. On the other hand, there are indications in the language which warrant us in not passing below 2000 B.C. as the period when many of the incantation texts received their present form, and the editions were completed from which many centuries afterwards the Assyrian scribes prepared their copies for their royal masters. There is, of course, no reason for assuming that all our texts should be of one age, or that the copying and, in part, the editing should not have gone on continually. Necessity for further copies would arise with the steady growth of the temples. Priests would be engaged in making copies for themselves, either for their edification as a pious work, or for real use; and accordingly, in fixing upon any date for the texts, one can hardly do more than assign certain broad limits within which the texts, so far as their present contents are concerned, may have been completed. The _copies_ themselves may of course belong to a much later period without, for that reason, being more recent productions.