During the spring of 1957, the British School of Archaeology in Iraq carried out a second short season of excavations at Balawat, ancient Imgur-Bel. The excavation of the temple of the god Mamu was continued and to the east of the cella two small rooms were uncovered. In one of these was found a collection of forty tablets, in varying state of preservation. Of this collection I publish twenty-nine, the others being too badly preserved to give a useful text.

The majority of the tablets were written between 697 and 671 B.C., during the reigns of Sennacherib and Esarhaddon. There are three isolated documents of earlier date: BT.101, 710 B.C.; BT.106, 734 B.C.; BT.131, 719 B.C. There is one isolated tablet of much later date, belonging to the reign of Sin-šar-iškun, BT. 105. It is noticeable that these tablets do not contain any of the names familiar from the transactions of the main group of documents.