(M833) Marduk-shâkin-shum is another of the same group, with twenty-five letters. They are of the same domestic nature as the last. Ishtar-shum-êresh is the writer of a score of letters and about thirty astrological reports. He was evidently a younger member of the group, son of Nabû-zêr-lîshir, and chief scribe to Ashurbânipal. In the reign of Esarhaddon he ranked as a _mašmašsu_. Akkullânu, who was an _êrib bîti_, of Asshur, writes sixteen letters and some dozen astrological reports. (M834) We have seen that in the second epoch the king had to fix the time when intercalary months should be inserted. In this period the calendar was very carefully regulated by astronomical observations. As a new month began on the day on which the new moon was seen, it is clear that a month would often exceed twenty-nine days, but that a new moon might sometimes be seen on the twenty-ninth. Nabûa, the astronomer of the city Asshur, sends a number of such letters as:(921) On the twenty-ninth, we kept watch, we did not see the moon. Nabû and Marduk be gracious to the king, my lord. From Nabûa of Asshur. So Nabû-shum-iddin writes:(922) To the Gardener, my lord, thy servant Nabû-shum-iddin, the _rabûte_ of Nineveh. Nabû and Marduk be gracious to the Gardener, my lord. On the fourteenth we kept watch on the moon. The moon suffered an eclipse. The gardener, or rather irrigator, may be a royal title. At present these observations are useless to us in our attempts to fix chronology, as we do not know the month and year of many of them. (M835) The queen-mother was always an important personage in the state and she had very great influence indeed at court. But probably few ladies ever obtained a higher degree of power than did Naki’a, or Zakutu as she was also called, the wife of Sennacherib and mother of Esarhaddon. She had a sister Abirami.(923) The queen-mother resided in Laḫiru, but there seem to have been more than one city of the name. Her necklace, or some part of it, is in private possession and has been described by Professor Scheil.(924) She survived her son, and, with her grandsons, Ashurbânipal, Shamash-shum-ukîn, and the nobles of Assyria, issued a proclamation to the empire, declaring Ashurbânipal the true heir to the throne. (M836) It is, of course, uncertain whether the person addressed as mother of the king is always Zakûtu, since we cannot always date the letters. But the letter of Nâ’id-Marduk,(925) which names Ummanigash as King of Elam, was certainly addressed to her. Nâ’id-Marduk was a son of Merodach Baladan, who, in the reign of Esarhaddon, when his brother Nabû-zêr-kînish-lîshir was killed by Ummanaldash II., threw himself on the mercy of Esarhaddon and was by him made ruler of his ancestral domain of Bît Jakin, as a vassal king. He speaks for himself: