of a special nature, which, for the space of one year,
made its holder the most conspicuous man in the country; they became
_limmu_, and throughout their term of office their names appeared on
all official documents. The Chaldaeans distinguished the various years of
each reign by a reference to some event which had taken place in
each; the Assyrians named them after the _limmu_.* The king was the
_ex-officio limmu_ for the year following that of his accession, then
after him the _tartan_, then the ministers and governors of provinces
and cities in an order which varied little from reign to reign. The
names of the _limmu_, entered in registers and tabulated--just as,
later on, were those of the Greek archons and Roman consuls--furnished
the annalists with a rigid chronological system, under which the facts
of history might be arranged with certainty.**

* According to Delitzsch, the term _limu,_ or _limmu_, meant
at first any given period, then later more especially the
year during which a magistrate filled his office; in the
opinion of most other Assyriologists it referred to the
magistrate himself as eponymous archon.

** The first list of _limmu_ was discovered by H. Rawlinson.
The portions which have been preserved extend from the year
893 to the year 666 B.C. without a break. In the periods
previous and subsequent to this we have only names scattered
here and there which it has not been possible to classify:
the earliest _limmu_ known at present flourished under
Ramman-nirari I., and was named Mukhurilani. Three different
versions of the canon have como down to us. In the most
important one the names of the eponymous officials are
written one after another without titles or any mention of
important events; in the other two, the titles of each
personage, and any important occurrences which took place
during his year of office, are entered after the name.

The king still retained the sacerdotal attributes with which Cossaean
monarchs had been invested from the earliest times, but contact with the
Egyptians had modified the popular conception of his personality. His
subjects were no longer satisfied to regard him merely as a man superior
to his fellow-men; they had come to discover something of the divine
nature in him, and sometimes identified him--not with Assur, the master
of all things, who occupied a position too high abov