The Tablet 6 A 343, which is now in the possession of the Danish National Museum at Copenhagen, was excavated in the year 1936 by the Danish Expedition to Hama in Syria. For permission to publish the text, I am indebted to the Carlsberg Foundation, which sponsored the excavations; to Professor Harald Ingholt, Yale University, who directed the Expedition; and to Mr. Niels Breitenstein, Keeper of the Department of Classical Antiquities at the Danish National Museum. I take the opportunity to thank Mr. Breitenstein for his interest in my work with the Hama tablets in general. For very generous and valuable assistance with the reading and interpretation of difficult signs and passages especially in the latter part of the text, I am much indebted to Professor Benno Landsberger of the University of Chicago.
The tablet 6 A 343 was found in the remains of the ancient city of Hama, in Building III of Level E, which provides us with the year 720 B.C. as a lower date: the year in which Hama was conquered by the armies of Sargon II of Assyria. It is, however, possible that at least some of the tablets found in Building III should be dated to the ninth century B.C., inasmuch as a letter (6 A 334) found in the same archaeological context may with some probability be dated to the reign of one Marduk-apil-uṣur, a local ruler of Suḫi and a contemporary of Shalmaneser III of Assyria.