[1] Most of the surviving examples of the work are from the library of King Assurbanipal of Nineveh, "one of the most important repositories of texts from the entire ancient world".
The poem began with a cosmogonic introduction, now lost, followed by the description of the place of litigation, a gallery forest (qīšu), and the contenders, a poplar (ṣarbatu) and an ash (martû).
The other preserved sections contain speeches of either Poplar or Ash, the order of which is difficult to determine.
The series is mentioned by title in the Neo-Assyrian inventory Rm.618, along with other disputation poems, and in the Catalogue of Texts and Authors.
[5] According to the latter, it was written by the Babylonian exorcist Ur-Nanna, who may have lived in the second half of the second millennium BCE.