numbers the total of enemies slain or of booty carried off and even a
slight exaggeration would be pardonable. But what shall we say as to
the accuracy of numbers in our documents when one edition gives the
total slain in a battle as 14,000, another as 20,500, the next as
25,000, and the last as 29,000! Is it surprising that we begin to
wonder whether the victory was only a victory on the clay tablet of
the scribe? What shall we say when we find that the reviser has
transformed a booty of 1,235 sheep in his original into a booty of
100,225! This last procedure, the addition of a huge round number to
the fairly small amount of the original, is a common trick of the
Sargonide scribe, of which many examples may be detected by a
comparison of Sargon's Display inscription with its original, the
Annals. So when Sennacherib tells us that he took from little Judah no
less than 200,150 prisoners, and that in spite of the fact that
Jerusalem itself was not captured, we may deduct the 200,000 as a
product of the exuberant fancy of the Assyrian scribe and accept the
150 as somewhere near the actual number captured and carried off.

This discussion has led to another problem, that of the relative order
of the various annals editions. For that there were such various
editions can be proved for nearly every reign. And in nearly every
reign it has been the latest and worst edition which has regularly
been taken by the modern historians as the basis for their
studies. How prejudicial this may be to a correct view of the Assyrian
history, the following pages will show. The procedure of the Assyrian
scribe is regularly the same. As soon as the king had won his first
important victory, the first edition of the annals was issued. With
the next great victory, a new edition was made out. For the part
covered by the earlier edition, an abbreviated form of this was
incorporated. When the scribe reached the period not covered by the