[Footnote 29: For Pukhia, son of Asiru and king of the land of Khurshitu, see "Sum. and Akk.," p. 287. Khurshitu may have been the name of a district on the Ak-su, a tributary of the Adhem, since a brick from his palace is said to have been found at Tuz-khurmati on that stream; cf. Scheil, "Rec. de trav.," XVI., p. 186; XIX., p. 64. The region of King Manabaltel's rule (cf. Pinches, "Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch.," XXI., p. 158) is quite uncertain, but the archaic style of the writing of the tablet, dated in his reign, suggests that he was a contemporary of one of the earlier West-Semitic kings.] [Footnote 30: See above, p. 105 f.] CHAPTER VII THE KASSITE DYNASTY AND ITS RELATIONS WITH EGYPT AND THE HITTITE EMPIRE The Kassite conquest of Babylonia, though it met with immediate success in a great part of the country, was a gradual process in the south, being carried out by independent Kassite chieftains. The Sea-Country kings continued for a time their independent existence; and even after that dynasty was brought to an end, the struggle for the south went on. It was after a further period of conflict that the Kassite domination was completed, and the administration of the whole country centred once more in Babylon. It is fortunate for Babylonia that the new invaders did not appear in such numbers as to over-whelm the existing population. The probability has long been recognized that they were Aryan by race, and we may with some confidence regard them as akin to the later rulers of Mitanni, who imposed themselves upon the earlier non-Iranian population of Subartu, or Northern Mesopotamia. Like the Mitannian kings, the Kassites of Babylonia were a ruling caste or aristocracy, and, though they doubtless brought with them numbers of humbler followers, their domination did not affect the linguistic nor the racial character of the country in any marked degree. In some of its aspects we may compare their rule to that of Turkey in the Tigris and Euphrates valley. They give no evidence of having possessed a high degree of culture, and though they gradually adopted the civilization of Babylon, they tended for long to keep themselves aloof, retaining their native names along with their separate nationality. They were essentially a practical people and produced successful administrators. The chief gain they brought to Babylon was an improved method of time-reckoning. In place of the unwieldy system of date-formulæ, inherited by the Semites from the Sumerians, under which each year was known by an elaborate title taken from some great event or cult-observance, the Kassites introduced the simpler plan of dating by the years of the king's reign. And we shall see that it was directly owing to the political circumstances of their occupation that the old system of land tenure, already to a great extent undermined by the Western Semites, was still further modified.