The taxes of the empire were carefully regulated. A cadastral survey was an institution which had long been in existence; it had been borrowed from Babylonia, where, as we have seen, it was already known at a very early epoch. The amount to be paid into the treasury by each town and province was fixed, and the governor was called upon to transmit it each year to Nineveh. Thus in the time of Sennacherib the annual tribute of Carchemish was 100 talents, that of Arpad 30, and that of Megiddo 15, while, at home, Nineveh was assessed at 30 talents, and the district of Assur at 20, which were expended on the maintenance of the fleet, the whole amount of revenue raised from Assyria being 274 talents. Besides this direct taxation, there was also indirect taxation, as well as municipal rates. Thus a tax was laid upon the brick-fields, which in Babylonia were economically of considerable importance, and there was an _octroi_ duty upon all goods, cattle, and country produce which entered a town. Similar tolls were exacted from the ships which moored at the quays, as well as from those who made use of the pontoon-bridges which spanned the Euphrates or passed under them in boats. Long lists of officials have been preserved. Certain of the governors or satraps were allowed to share with the King the privilege of giving a name to the year. It was an ingenious system of reckoning time which had been in use in Assyria from an early period and was introduced into Cappadocia by Assyrian colonists. From Asia Minor it probably spread to Greece; at all events, the eponymous archons at Athens, after whom the several years were named, corresponded exactly with the Assyrian _limmi_ or eponyms. Each year in succession received its name from the eponym or officer who held office during the course of it, and as lists of these officers were carefully handed down it was easy to determine the date of an event which had taken place in the year of office of a given eponym. The system was of Assyrian invention and never prevailed in Babylonia. There time was dated by the chief occurrences of a king’s reign, and at the end of the reign a list of them was drawn up beginning with his accession to the throne and ending with his death and the name of his successor. These lists went back to an early period of Babylonian history and provided the future historian with an accurate chronology.