 The tablet is a short term contract and historian Daniel Arnaud has concluded that only a very short time (“weeks”) elapsed between its preparation and the cataclysmic destruction of the city by “hordes of enemies”.Despite the carnage wrought by the times on mighty empires such as that of the Hittites, whose capital Hattusa was sacked around the middle of his reign, there continued to be scientific scribal and construction activity in Babylonia.A divination text lists 25 omens determined by the flight path of a falcon, or "surdû", and raven, or "āribu", and was written by Bēl-nadin-šumi, son of Ila-ušaršanni, and dated the month of Araḫsamnu, the 8th day, the 3rd year, the 2nd year, using the curious double-dating formula adopted during his predecessor’s reign.