THIRD DYNASTY OF UR TO KASSITE DYNASTY, CIRCA 2112-1155 B.C.

According to W.G. Lambert (op. cit., p. 62), the dating is difficult to establish since "most of the sign forms would be normal on stone at any time from the end of the third millennium B.C. to the middle of the second millennium," and some signs are in "an older linear form, so clearly archaizing. Since the script as a whole may be archaizing perhaps one should allow the beginning of the Third Dynasty of Ur and the end of the Kassite dynasty as the extreme limits between which this object was probably written." The text includes a common incantation formula of unknown meaning, and mentions three well-known Sumerian gods, Enlil, Enki and Nergal, while the rest remains obscure.

For a related amulet, compare the one in the Nies Babylonian Collection, Yale Peabody Museum (inv. no. YPM BC 005504; see no. 16 in N.B. Nies, Babylonian Inscriptions in the Collection of James B. Nies, vol. II, pl. VIII, no. 16).