office. The historical
and chronological works of the Assyrian libraries are therefore
particularly important. They have enabled us to restore the chronology
of the royal period of Israelitish history, and to supplement the Old
Testament narrative with the contemporaneous records of the Assyrian
kings. The Babylonians were less historically exact, perhaps because
they had less of the Semitic element in their blood; but they, too,
carefully kept the annals of their kings, and took a deep interest in
the former history of their country.

Contract and other tablets relating to trade and business formed,
however, the larger part of the contents of most Babylonian libraries.
They have revealed to us the inner and social life of the people, so
that the age of Khammurabi, or even of Sargon, in Babylonia, is
beginning to be as well known to us as the age of Perikles in Greece.
Along with the contract-tablets must be counted the numerous legal
documents and records of law-cases which have been preserved. Babylonian
law was, like English law, built upon precedents, and an elaborate and
carefully considered code had been formed at an early date.

Collections of letters, partly royal, partly private, were also to be
found in the libraries. The autograph letters of Khammurabi, the
Amraphel of Genesis, have come down to us, and we even have letters of
his time from a lover to his mistress, and from a tenant to his
landlord, whom he begs to reduce his rent. Boys went to school early,
and learning the cuneiform syllabary was a task that demanded no small
amount of time and application, especially when it is remembered that in
the case of the Semitic Babylonian this involved also acquiring a
knowledge of the dead language of Sumer. One of the exercises of the
Sumerian schoolboy bids him "rise like the dawn, if he would excel in
the school of the scribes."

Purely literary texts were numerous, especially poems, though nothing
corresponding to the Egyptian novel has been met with. The epic of
Gilgames, composed by Sin-liqi-unnini, has already been referred to. Its
twelve books answered to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and the
eleventh accordingly contains the episode of the Deluge. Gilgames was
the son of a royal mother, whose son was fated to slay his grandfather,
and who was consequently confined in a tower. But an eagle carried him
to a place of safety, and when he grew up he delivered Erech from its
foes, and made it the seat of