favorable, the conclusion was drawn that the sign was a favorable one and hence in the event of its recurrence some favorable incident might be expected according to existing circumstances--victory in an impending battle, suppression of an uprising, recovery of some member of the royal household who may be lying ill, good crops at the approaching harvest or whatever the case may be--or in general a favorable answer to any question put by a ruler. The same would apply to a combination of signs, one of the fundamental principles of divination being--once favorable, always favorable. Among the birth-omen reports we have one containing a historical reference of unusual interest[30]. 'If the foetus is male and female--omen of Azag-Bau who ruled the land. The king's country will be seized. If a foetus is male and female, without testicles, a son of the palace[31] will rule the land or will assert himself against the king.' We must assume in this case that a monstrosity has been born, having partly male and partly female organs. The priest by way of interpretation notes a series of signs registered in the collections, all prognosticating an abnormal state of affairs--a woman on the throne, captivity, seizure of the throne by an usurper and revolt. We frequently find in the collections several interpretations registered in this way,--a valuable indication of the manner in which these collections were compiled by the priests from a variety of documents before them. The name of this female ruler, hitherto known only from this report and from a list of proper names in which Azag-Bau occurred, has now turned up in an important list of early dynasties ruling in the Euphratean Valley, discovered and published by Scheil[32]. We may conclude, therefore, that at the time that Azag-Bau sat on the throne or shortly before, such a monstrosity actually came to light. As an unusual occurrence it presaged something unusual, and was naturally associated with the extraordinary circumstance of a woman mounting the throne. Azag-Bau according to the newly discovered list is the founder of a dynasty ruling in Erech as a centre and whose date appears to be somewhere between 2800 and 3000 B. C.--possibly even earlier. As a founder of a dynasty that overthrew a previous one, Azag-Bau must have engaged in hostilities with other centres, so that the second interpretation that 'the king's country will be seized' may well refer to some historical event of the same general period. Be that as it may, the important point for us is that we have here another proof of the practical purpose served by the observation of birth-omens. IV