The “dead” temple archive of Eanna consists of about 8,000 published and unpublished texts mostly acquired on the antiquities market in the early twentieth century and now housed in major museums and collections in the US (Yale, Princeton) and Europe (Paris, Berlin, London). In addition, there are thousands of tablets and (predominantly) fragments found by the German excavations. The archive contains some material from the time of the Assyrian domination, but dense information is only available from the beginning of the reign of Nabopolassar. There is a clear break in the second year of Darius, possibly connected to the investigations into the affairs of the corrupt temple slave Gimillu; only comparatively few later texts are known. The latest texts dates to 29 Dar.

The high percentage of contracts found in the Eanna archive (vis-à-vis Ebabbar/Sippar), at least in the collections, originating from illicit excavations, is striking. What this means for the structure of the archive remains to be investigated. Another clear distinction is the fact that only few and comparatively small private archives could be identified in the material originating from the clandestine excavations.