The tablet is the only ‘author’ on this site that has never existed. Assyria is a real civilisation with an enormous surviving literature — tens of thousands of catalogued cuneiform tablets, many in the British Museum, covering law, omens, letters, epic poetry and a great deal of accounting — which is exactly what makes the fake work. Readers know the tablets are real, assume this is one of them, and never ask for a catalogue number. Genuine Assyrian and Babylonian texts do complain, at length, about bad times and worse neighbours. None of them complains that everyone wants to write a book.