We may thus provisionally place the sixty-first year of Rîm-Sin's rule at Larsa in the tenth year of Samsu-iluna's reign, when we may assume that he revolted and took the field against his suzerain. It was in that year that Tell Sifr changed hands for a time. But it is probably a significant fact that not a single document of Samsu-iluna's reign has been found in that district dated after his twelfth year. In fact we shall see reason to believe that the whole of Southern Babylonia soon passed from the control of Babylon, though Samsu-iluna succeeded in retaining his hold on Nippur for some years longer. Meanwhile it will suffice to note that the suggested sequence of events fits in very well with other references in the date-lists. The two defeats of Nîsin by Hammurabi and his father Sin-muballit, which have formed for so long a subject of controversy, now cease to be a stumbling-block. We see that both took place before Rîm-Sin's capture of Nîsin,[37] and were merely temporary successes which had no effect upon the continuance of the Nîsin dynasty. That was brought to an end by Rîm-Sin's victory in his seventeenth year, when the Nîsin era of dating was instituted. That, in cities where it had been long employed, the continued use of the era alongside his own formulæ should have been permitted by Hammurabi for some eight years after his capture of Larsa, is sufficiently explained by our assumption that Rîm-Sin was not deposed, but was retained in his own capital as the vassal of Babylon. There would have been a natural reluctance to abandon an established era, especially if Babylon's authority was not rigidly enforced during the first few years of her suzerainty, as with earlier vassal states.[38] The overlapping of the Dynasty of Nîsin with that of Babylon for a period of one hundred and eleven years, which follows from the new information afforded by the Yale tablets, merely carries the process still further that was noted some years ago with regard to the first three Dynasties of the Babylonian List of Kings. At the time of the earlier discovery considerable difference of opinion existed as to the number of years, if any, during which the Second Dynasty of the List held independent sway in Babylonia. The archæological evidence at that time available seemed to suggest that the kings of the Sea-Country never ruled in Babylonia, and that the Third, or Kassite, Dynasty followed the First Dynasty without any considerable break.[39] Other writers, in their endeavours to use and reconcile the chronological references to earlier rulers which occur in later texts, assumed a period of independence for the Second Dynasty which varied, according to their differing hypotheses, from one hundred and sixty-eight to eighty years.[40] Since the period of the First Dynasty was not fixed independently, the complete absence of contemporary evidence with regard to the Second Dynasty led to a considerable divergence of opinion upon the point.