Chapter 4

FRAGMENT OF SUMERIAN SCULPTURE REPRESENTING SCENES OF WORSHIP BEFORE THE GODS.—In the Louvre; Déc. en Chald., pl.23.

It would thus appear that at the earliest period of which remains or records have been recovered, Semites and Sumerians were both settled in Babylonia, the one race in the north, the other southwards nearer the Persian Gulf. Living at first in comparative isolation, trade and war would gradually bring them into closer contact. Whether we may regard the earliest rulers of Kish as Semites like their later successors, is still in doubt. The character of Enbi-Ishtar's name points to his being a Semite; but the still earlier king of Kish, who is referred to on the Stele of the Vultures, is represented on that monument as a Sumerian with shaven head and face.[56]But this may have been due to a convention in the sculpture of the time, and it is quite possible that Mesilim and his successors were Semites, and that their relations with the contemporary rulers of Lagash represent the earlier stages in a racial conflict which dominates the history of the later periods.

Of the original home of the Sumerians, from which they came to the fertile plains of Southern Babylonia, it is impossible to speak with confidence. The fact that they settled at the mouths of the great rivers has led to the suggestion that they arrived by sea, and this has been connected with the story in Berossus of Oannes and the other fish-men, who came up from the Erythraean Sea and brought religion and culture with them. But the legend need not bear this interpretation; it merely points to the Sea-country on the shores of the Gulf as the earliest centre of Sumerian culture in the land. Others have argued that they came from a mountain-home, and have cited in support of their viewthe institution of the ziggurat or temple-tower, built "like a mountain," and the employment of the same ideogram for "mountain" and for "land." But the massive temple-tower appears to date from the period of Gudea and the earlier kings of Ur, and, with the single exception of Nippur, was probably not a characteristic feature of the earlier temples; and it is now known that the ideogram for "land" and "mountain" was employed in the earlier periods for foreign lands, in contradistinction to that of the Sumerians themselves.[57]But, in spite of the unsoundness of these arguments, it is most probable that the Sumerians did descend on Babylonia from the mountains on the east. Their entrance into the country would thus have been the first of several immigrations from that quarter, due to climatic and physical changes in Central Asia.[58]

Still more obscure is the problem of their racial affinity. The obliquely set eyes of the figures in the earlier reliefs, due mainly to an ignorance of perspective characteristic of all primitive art, first suggested the theory that the Sumerians were of Mongol type; and the further developments of this view, according to which a Chinese origin is to be sought both for Sumerian roots and for the cuneiform character, are too improbable to need detailed refutation. A more recent suggestion, that their language is of Indo-European origin and structure,[59]is scarcely less improbable, while resemblances which have been pointed out between isolated words in Sumerian and in Armenian, Turkish, and other languages of Western Asia, may well be fortuitous. With the Elamites upon their eastern border the Sumerians had close relations from the first, but the two races do not appear to be related either in language or by physical characteristics. The scientific study of the Sumerian tongue,inaugurated by Professors Zimmern and Jensen, and more especially by the work of M. Thureau-Dangin on the early texts, will doubtless lead in time to more accurate knowledge on this subject; but, until the phonetic elements of the language are firmly established, all theories based upon linguistic comparisons are necessarily insecure.

In view of the absence of Semitic influence in Sumer during the earlier periods, it may be conjectured that the Semitic immigrants did not reach Babylonia from the south, but from the north-west, after traversing the Syrian coast-lands. This first great influx of Semitic nomad tribes left colonists behind them in that region, who afterwards as the Amurru, or Western Semites, pressed on in their turn into Babylonia and established the earliest independent dynasty in Babylon. The original movement continued into Northern Babylonia, and its representatives in history were the early Semitic kings of Kish and Akkad. But the movement did not stop there; it passed on to the foot of the Zagros hills, and left its traces in the independent principalities of Lulubu and Gutiu. Such in outline appears to have been the course of this early migratory movement, which, after colonizing the areas through which it passed, eventually expended itself in the western mountains of Persia. It was mainly through contact with the higher culture of the Sumerians that the tribes which settled in Akkad were enabled later on to play so important a part in the history of Western Asia.

[1]In point of time, the work of Loftus and Taylor (see below, pp. 32 ff.) preceded that of De Sarzec, but the results obtained were necessarily less complete. It would be out of place in the present volume to give any account of excavations in Assyria, as they have only an indirect bearing on the period here treated. For a chronological sketch of the early travellers and excavators, see Rogers, "History of Babylonia and Assyria," vol. i. pp. 100 ff., who also gives a detailed account of the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions; cf. also Fossey, "Manuel," I., pp. 6 ff. For a similar chronological treatment, but from the archaeological side, see the sections with which Hilprecht prefaces his account of the Nippur excavations in "Explorations in Bible Lands," pp. 7 ff.

[2]See above,p. 11.

[3]Cf. "Cun. Texts in the Brit. Mus.," Pt. XVI., pl. 36, l. 4 f.; as written here the name might also be read Lagarum or Lagadil. That Lagash is the correct reading is proved by the fragment of a duplicate text published in Reisner, "Sum.-Bab. Hymnen," pl. 126, No. 81, where the final character of the name is unmistakably written asash; cf. Meissner, "Orient. Lit.-Zeit.," 1907, col. 385.

[4]Separate mounds in the group were referred to by De Sarzec under the letters A-P, P', and V. For the account of the diggings and their results, see E. de Sarzec and Léon Heuzey, "Découvertes en Chaldée" ("Description des fouilles" by De Sarzec; "Description des monuments" by Heuzey; "Partie épigraphique" by Amiaud and Thureau-Dangin), Paris, 1884-1906; see also Heuzey, "Une Villa royale chaldéenne," and "Revue d'Assyriologie,"passim.

[5]The plate opposite p. 20 illustrates the way in which Gudea's gateway has been worked into the structure of the Parthian Palace. The slight difference in the ground-level of the two buildings is also clearly shown.

[6]See the plate oppositep. 26.

[7]From the nature of this building Amiaud christened the mound the "Tell de la Maison des Fruits."

[8]A description of these buildings is given in Chap. IV.,pp. 90 ff.

[9]Cf. "Zeits. für Assyr." II., pp. 406 ff.

[10]Cf. Messerschmidt, "Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler," p. v. f., pl. 1 ff.

[11]The name is still often transcribed as Gishkhu or Gishukh; for the reading Umma, supplied by a Neo-Babylonian vocabulary, see "Cun. Texts," XII., pl. 28, Obv., l. 7, and cf. Hrozný, "Zeits. für Assyr." XX. (1907), pp. 421 ff. For its identification with Jôkha, see Scheil, "Rec. de trav.," XIX., p. 63; cf. also XXI., p. 125.

[12]Cf. "Mitteil. der Deutsch. Orient-Gesellschaft," No. 16, p. 20 f. Dr. Andrae adds valuable notes on other mounds he visited during this journey.

[13]See below,p. 33 f.

[14]See "Mitteil. der Deutsch. Orient-Gesellschaft," No. 15, p. 9 ff.

[15]Op. cit., No. 17, p. 4 ff.

[16]Each section of a trench is also given a letter, so that such a symbol as IV.bor XII.xindicates within very precise limits theprovenanceof any object discovered. The letter A on the plan marks the site of the house built by the expedition.

[17]This form of brick is characteristic of the Pre-Sargonic period; cf. p. 91.

[18]The positions of some of the larger ones, which were excavated in the northern part of the mounds, are indicated by black dots in the plan.

[19]The houses with the clay tablets were found in trenches VII., IX., XIII., and XV.

[20]In the folding map Fâra has been set on the right bank of the Shatt el-Kâr, in accordance with Loftus's map published in "Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana." From Andrae's notes it would seem that Abû Hatab, and probably Fâra also, lie on the east or left bank. But the ancient bed of the stream has disappeared in many places, and is difficult to follow, and elsewhere there are traces of two or three parallel channels at considerable distances apart, so that the exact position of the original bed of the Euphrates is not certain at this point.

[21]In the plan the trenches and excavated sites are lettered from A to K. The figures, preceded by a cross, give in metres and centimetres the height of the mound at that point above the level of the plain.

[22]Itûr-Shamash, whose brick-inscription furnished the information that Abû Hatab is the site of the city Kisurra, is to be set towards the end of this period; see below, Chap. XI., and cf.p. 283 f., n. 1.

[23]See the extracts from the "Reports of the Expedition of the Oriental Exploration Fund (Babylonian Section) of the University of Chicago," which were issued to the subscribers.

[24]See below, Chap. IV.,pp. 85 ff.

[25]See "Chaldaea and Susiana," pp. 174 ff. and 188 f.

[26]Op. cit., pp. 244 ff., 266 ff.

[27]See his "Notes on the ruins of Mugeyer" in theJournal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1855, pp. 260 ff., 414 f.

[28]See his "Notes on Abû Shahrein and Tel el-Lahm,"op. cit., p. 409. The trench which disclosed this structure, built of uninscribed plano-convex bricks laid in bitumen, was cut near the south-eastern side of the ruins, between the mounds F and G (see plan), and to the north-east of the gulley.

[29]See Weissbach, "Wâdī Brîssā," Col. VI., ll. 46 ff., and cf. pp. 39 ff.

[30]The incantation is the one which has furnished us with authority for reading the name of Shirpurla as Lagash (see above,p. 17, n. 3). It is directed against the machinations of evil demons, and in one passage the powers for good inherent in the ancient cities of Babylonia are invoked on behalf of the possessed man. Here, along with the names of Eridu, Lagash, and Shuruppak, occurs the ideogram for Opis, which is rendered in the Assyrian translation asKi-e-shi,i.e.Kesh, or Kish (cf. Thompson, "Devils and Evil Spirits," vol. i., p. 162 f.)

[31]See above,p. 9.

[32]See George Smith, "Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch.," III., p. 364, and cf. Thureau-Dangin, "Orient. Lit.-Zeit.," 1909, col. 205 f.

[33]The fact that in an early Babylonian geographical list ("Cun. Inscr. West. Asia," Vol. IV., pl. 36, No. 1) the name of Opis is mentioned after a number of Sumerian cities, is no indication that the city itself, or another city of the same name, was regarded as situated in Sumer, as suggested by Jensen (cf. "Zeits. für Assyr.," XV., pp. 210 ff.); the next two names in the list are those of Magan and Melukhkha.

[34]For the fullest treatment of this subject, see Meyer, "Sumerier und Semiten in Babylonien" (Abh. der Königl. Preuss. Akad. der Wissenschaft., 1906).

[35]Cf. Herodotus, III., 8.

[36]The women of the earlier period appear to have worn a modified form of this garment, made of the same rough wool, but worn over the left shoulder (see below,p. 112, Fig. 43). On the Stele of the Vultures, Eannatum, like his soldiers, wears the petticoat, but this is supplemented by what is obviously a separate garment of different texture thrown over the left shoulder so as to leave the right arm free; this may have been the skin of an animal worn with the natural hair outside (see the plate oppositep. 124).

[37]A very similar fringed mantle was usually worn by the Sumerian women of the later period, but it was draped differently upon the body. Pressed at first over the breasts and under each arm, it is crossed at the back and its ends, thrown over the shoulders, fall in front in two symmetrical points; for a good example of the garment as seen from the front, see below,p. 71.

[38]See below, p. 245,Fig. 59.

[39]Remains of an inscription upon Fig. 6 treat of the dedication of a temple to the god Ningirsu, and to judge from the characters it probably does not date from a period earlier than that of Gudea.

[40]See the plate facingp. 52, and cf. p. 68 f.

[41]See below, Chap. VIII.,pp. 220 ff.

[42]According to the traces on the stone the figure immediately behind the beardless chief has a shaven head and face, like his other two followers in Fig. 3. The figure on the right of this fragment wears hair and beard, and probably represents a member of the opposite party conducting them into the presence of his master.

[43]See "Déc. en Chaldée," pl. 1bis, Figs. 3-7.

[44]The fact that on seals of this later period the Moon-god is represented in the Sumerian mantle and headdress may well have been a result of the Sumerian reaction, which took place under the kings of Ur (see below, p.283 f.).

[45]See below,p. 131, Fig. 46.

[46]Seep. 49. In Fig. 14 the hair and beard of the god who leads the worshipper into the presence of the goddess is clearer on the original stone. In Fig. 15 the locks of hair and long beards of the seated gods are more sharply outlined; they form a striking contrast to the figures of Sumerians, who are represented as pouring out libations and bringing offerings to the shrine.

[47]Seep. 50, Fig. 16.

[48]Cf. Langdon, "Babyloniaca," II., p. 142; this explanation is preferable to treating the crowns as a feathered form of headdress. The changes in the dress of the Sumerian gods, and in the treatment of their beards, appear to have taken place in the age of the later Semitic kings of Kish and the kings of Akkad, and may well have been due to their influence. The use of sandals was certainly introduced by the Semites of this period.

[49]See Clay, "The Amer. Journ. of Semit. Lang, and Lit.," XXIII., pp. 269 ff. In later periods the name was pronounced as Ellil.

[50]Cf. "Nachträge zur aegyptischen Chronologie," p. 44 f., and "Geschichte des Altertums," Bd. I., Hft. II., p. 407.

[51]See Thureau-Dangin, "Sum. und Akkad. Königsinschriften," p. 38, Col. I., l. 26; the word isdam-kha-ra, which he rightly takes as the equivalent of the Semitictamkhara, "battle" (cf. also Ungnad, "Orient. Lit.-Zeit.," 1908, col. 63 f.).

[52]In this respect the early Sumerian texts are in striking contrast to those of the later periods; the evidence of strong Semitic influence in the latter formed the main argument on which M. Halévy and his followers relied to disprove the existence of the Sumerians.

[53]See Messerschmidt, "Orient. Lit.-Zeit.," 1905, col. 268 ff.; and cf. King, "Chronicles," I., p. 180, n. 3.

[54]See Ungnad, op. cit., 1908, col. 62 ff.

[55]See below, Chap. VII. f.

[56]See below,p. 141, Fig. 48.

[57]See above, p. 14, n. 1.¨¨

[58]See further, Appendix I.

[59]Cf. Langdon, "Babyloniaca," I., pp. 225 f., 230, 284 ff., II., p. 99 f. The grounds, upon which the suggestion has been put forward, consist of a comparison between the verb "to go" in Sumerian, Greek, and Latin, an apparent resemblance in a few other roots, the existence of compound verbs in Sumerian, and the like; but quite apart from questions of general probability, the "parallelisms" noted are scarcely numerous enough, or sufficiently close, to justify the inference drawn from them.

Considerable changes have recently taken place in our estimate of the age of Sumerian civilization, and the length of time which elapsed between the earliest remains that have been recovered and the foundation of the Babylonian monarchy. It was formerly the custom to assign very remote dates to the earlier rulers of Sumer and Akkad, and although the chronological systems in vogue necessitated enormous gaps in our knowledge of history, it was confidently assumed that these would be filled as a result of future excavation. Blank periods of a thousand years or more were treated as of little account by many writers. The hoary antiquity ascribed to the earliest rulers had in itself an attraction which outweighed the inconvenience of spreading the historical material to cover so immense a space in time. But excavation, so far from filling the gaps, has tended distinctly to reduce them, and the chronological systems of the later Assyrian and Babylonian scribes, which were formerly regarded as of primary importance, have been brought into discredit by the scribes themselves. From their own discrepancies it has been shown that the native chronologists could make mistakes in their reckoning, and a possible source of error has been disclosed in the fact that some of the early dynasties, which were formerly regarded as consecutive, were, actually, contemporaneous. Recent research on this subject has thus resulted in a considerable reduction of the early dates, and the different epochs in the history of Sumer and Akkad, which were at one time treated as isolated phenomena, have been articulated to form a consistentwhole. But the tendency now is to carry the reaction rather too far, and to compress certain periods beyond the limits of the evidence. It will be well to summarize the problems at issue, and to indicate the point at which evidence gives place to conjecture.

In attempting to set limits to the earlier periods of Sumerian history, it is still impossible to do more than form a rough and approximate estimate of their duration. For in dealing with the chronology of the remoter ages, we are, to a great extent, groping in the dark. The material that has been employed for settling the order of the early kings, and for determining their periods, falls naturally into three main classes. The most important of our sources of information consists of the contemporary inscriptions of the early kings themselves, which have been recovered upon the sites of the ancient cities in Babylonia.[1]The inscriptions frequently give genealogies of the rulers whose achievements they record, and they thus enable us to ascertain the sequence of the kings and the relative dates at which they reigned. This class of evidence also makes it possible to fix certain points of contact between the separate lines of rulers who maintained an independent authority within the borders of their city-states.

A second class of material, which is of even greater importance for settling the chronology of the later Sumerian epoch, comprises the chronological documents drawn up by early scribes, who incorporated in the form of lists and tables the history of their own time and that of their predecessors. The system of dating documents which was in vogue was not a very convenient one from the point of view of those who used it, but it has furnished us with an invaluable summary of the principal events which took place for long periods at a time. The early dwellers in Babylonia did not reckon dates by the years of the reigning king, as did the later Babylonians, but they cited each yearby the event of greatest importance which took place in it. Such events consisted in the main of the building of temples, the performance of religious ceremonies, and the conquest of neighbouring cities and states. Thus the dates upon private and official documents often furnish us with historical information of considerable importance.

But the disadvantages of the system are obvious, for an event might appear of great importance in one city and might be of no interest to another situated at some distance from it. Thus it happened that the same event was not employed throughout the whole country for designating a particular year, and we have evidence that different systems of dating were employed in different cities. Moreover, it would have required an unusually good memory to fix the exact period of a document by a single reference to an event which took place in the year when it was drawn up, more especially after the system had been in use for a considerable time. Thus, in order to fix the relative dates of documents without delay, the scribes compiled lists of the titles of the years, arranged in order under the reigns of the successive kings, and these were doubtless stored in some archive-chamber, where they were easily accessible in the case of any dispute arising with regard to the date of a particular year. It is fortunate that some of these early Sumerian date-lists have been recovered, and we are furnished by them with an outline of Sumerian history, which has the value of a contemporary record.[2]They have thrown light upon a period of which at one time we knew little, and they have served to remove more than one erroneous supposition. Thus the so-called Second Dynasty of Ur was proved by them to have been non-existent, and the consequent reduplication of kings bearing the names of Ur-Engur and Dungi was shown to have had no foundation in fact.

From the compilation of lists of the separate years it was but a step to the classification of the reigns of the kings themselves and their arrangement in the formof dynasties. Among the mass of tablets recovered from Niffer has been found a fragment of one of these early dynastic tablets,[3]which supplements the date-lists and is of the greatest value for settling the chronology of the later period. The reverse of the tablet gives complete lists of the names of the kings who formed the Dynasties of Ur and Isin, together with notes as to the length of their respective reigns, and it further states that the Dynasty of Isin directly succeeded that of Ur. This document fixes once for all the length of the period to which it refers, and it is much to be regretted that so little of the text has been recovered. Our information is at present confined to what is legible on part of one column of the tablet. But the text in its complete form must have contained no less than six columns of writing, and it probably gave a list of various dynasties which ruled in Babylonia from the very earliest times down to the date of its compilation, though many of the dynasties enumerated were doubtless contemporaneous. It was on the base of such documents as this dynastic list that the famous dynastic tablet was compiled for the library of Ashurbani-pal at Nineveh, and the existence of such lengthy dynastic records must have contributed to the exaggerated estimate for the beginnings of Babylonian history which have come down to us from the work of Berossus.

A third class of material for settling the chronology has been found in the external evidence afforded by the early historical and votive inscriptions to which reference has already been made, and by tablets of accounts, deeds of sale, and numerous documents of a commercial and agricultural character. From a study of their form and material, the general style of the writing, and the nature of the characters employed, a rough estimate may sometimes be made as to the time at which a particular record was inscribed, or the length of a period covered by documents of different reigns. Further, in the course of the excavations undertaken at any site, careful note may be made of the relative depths of the strata in which inscriptions have been found. Thus, iftexts of certain kings occur in a mound at a greater depth than those of other rulers, and it appears from an examination of the earth that the mound has not been disturbed by subsequent building operations or by natural causes, it may be inferred that the deeper the stratum in which a text is found the earlier must be the date to be assigned to it. But this class of evidence, whether obtained from palaeographical study or from systematic excavation, is sometimes uncertain and liable to more than one interpretation. In such cases it may only be safely employed when it agrees with other and independent considerations, and where additional support is not forthcoming, it is wiser to regard conclusions based upon it as provisional.

The three classes of evidence that have been referred to in the preceding paragraphs enable us to settle the relative order of many of the early rulers of Babylonia, but they do not supply us with any definite date by means of which the chronology of these earlier ages may be brought into relation with that of the later periods of Babylonian history. In order to secure such a point of connection, reliance has in the past been placed upon a notice of one of the early rulers of Babylonia, which occurs in an inscription of the last king of the Neo-Babylonian empire. On a clay cylinder of Nabonidus, which is preserved in the British Museum, it is stated that 3200 years elapsed between the burial of Narâm-Sin's foundation-memorial in the temple of the Sun-god at Sippar, and the finding of the memorial by Nabonidus himself when digging in the temple's foundations.[4]Now Narâm-Sin was an early king of Akkad, and, according to later tradition, was the son of the still more famous Sargon I. On the strength of the figure given by Nabonidus, the approximate date of 3750 B.C. has been assigned to Narâm-Sin, and that of 3800 B.C. to his father Sargon; and mainly on the basis of these early dates the beginning of Sumerian history has been set back as far as 5000 and even 6000 B.C.[5]

The improbably high estimate of Nabonidus for the date of Narâm-Sin has long been the subject of criticism.[6]It is an entirely isolated statement, unsupported by any other reference in early or late texts; and the scribes who were responsible for it were clearly not anxious to diminish the antiquity of the foundation-record, which had been found at such a depth below the later temple's foundations, and after so prolonged a search. To accept it as accurate entailed the leaving of enormous gaps in the chronological schemes, even when postulating the highest possible dates for the dynasties of Ur and Babylon. An alternative device of partially filling the gaps by the invention of kings and even dynasties[7]was not a success, as their existence has since been definitely disproved. Moreover, the recent reduction in the date of the First Dynasty of Babylon, necessitated by the proof that the first three dynasties of the Kings' List were partly contemporaneous, made its discrepancy with Nabonidus's figures still more glaring, while at the same time it furnished a possible explanation of so high a figure resulting from his calculations. For his scribes in all good faith may have reckoned as consecutive a number of early dynasties which had been contemporaneous.[8]The final disproof of the figure is furnished by evidence of an archaeological and epigraphic character. No such long interval as twelve or thirteen hundred years can have separated the art of Gudea's period from that of Narâm-Sin; and the clay tablets of the two epochs differ so little in shape, and in the forms of the characters with which they are inscribed, that we must regard thetwo ages as immediately following one another without any considerable break.

By rejecting the figures of Nabonidus we cut away our only external connection with the chronology of the later periods, and, in order to evolve a scheme for earlier times we have to fall back on a process of reckoning from below. Without discussing in detail the later chronology, it will be well to indicate briefly the foundations on which we can begin to build. By the aid of the Ptolemaic Canon, whose accuracy is confirmed by the larger List of Kings and the principal Babylonian Chronicle, the later chronology of Babylon is definitely fixed back to the year 747 B.C.; by means of the eponym lists that for Assyria is fixed back to the year 911 B.C. Each scheme controls and confirms the other, and the solar eclipse of June 15th, 763 B.C., which is recorded in the eponymy of Pûr-Sagale, places the dead reckoning for these later periods upon an absolutely certain basis. For the earlier periods of Babylonian history, as far back as the foundation of the Babylonian monarchy, a chronological framework has been supplied by the principal List of Kings.[9]In spite of gaps in the text which render the lengths of Dynasties IV. and VIII. uncertain, it is possible, mainly by the help of synchronisms between Assyrian and Babylonian kings, to fix approximately the date of Dynasty III. Some difference of opinion exists with regard to this date, but the beginning of the dynasty may be placed at about the middle of the eighteenth century B.C.

With regard to Dynasty II. of the King's List it is now known that it ruled in the Sea-country in the region of the Persian Gulf, its earlier kings being contemporary with the close of Dynasty I. and its later ones with the early part of Dynasty III.[10]Here we come to the first of two points on which there is a considerable difference of opinion. The available evidence suggests that the kings of the Sea-country never ruled in Babylon, and that the Third, or Kassite, Dynasty followed the First Dynasty of Babylon without any considerable break.[11]But the date 2232 B.C.,which probably represents the beginning of the non-mythical dynasties of Berossus,[12]has hitherto played a considerable part in modern schemes of chronology, and, in spite of the fact that no amount of ingenuity can reconcile his dynasties with those of history, there is still a strong temptation to retain the date for the beginning of Dynasty I. of the Kings' List as affording a fixed and certain point from which to start calculations. But this can only be done by assuming that some of the kings of the Sea-country ruled over the whole of Babylonia, an assumption that is negatived by such historical and archaeological evidence as we possess.[13]It is safer to treat the date 2232 B.C. as without significance, and to follow the evidence in confining the kings of the Sea-country to their own land. If we do this we obtain a date for the foundation of the Babylonian monarchy about the middle of the twenty-first century B.C.

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