Abstract
This first paper will present the history of publications of Paleo-Babylonian archival texts from 1882 to the present : no fewer than 35 192 texts have now been published in full, with a pace that accelerated considerably after the Second World War : the peak was reached in the decade 1982-1991, with 6 523 texts published in 10 years, thanks to the explosive publication of the Mari texts under the direction of J.- Focus onM. Durand (3 385 texts during this period). This retrospective will show the extent to which certain working tools are now largely obsolete, starting with dictionaries : when the CAD began in 1956, only 8 851 texts from Palaeo-Babylonian archives had been published. And when the AHw was completed in 1981, the number of texts published after a century was only 17 510, i.e. half the current corpus ! This observation is accompanied by a number of forward-looking considerations. In particular, we'll be highlighting the importance of tools such as the Archibab database for better exploiting the mass of data now available, and which will continue to grow : from 2000 to 2022, 8, ,012 texts were published, i.e. an annual average of 348, texts, more than one per working day ! We need to publicize such figures, so that our colleagues in other historical fields - and the authorities who distribute posts and credits - understand just how much we are dealing with a constantly renewing specialty.
