Of the results of the work of those three expeditions of the University of Pennsylvania, and of the studies for which they furnished materials to Professor Hilprecht, Professor Sayce wrote with much enthusiasm in the "Contemporary Review" of January, 1897, as follows: "In my Hibbert Lectures on the 'Religion of the Ancient Babylonians' I had been led by a study of the religious texts of Babylonia to the conclusion that Nippur had been a centre from which Babylonian culture was disseminated in what we then regarded as prehistoric times. Thanks to the American excavations, what were prehistoric times when my Hibbert Lectures were written have now become historic, and my conclusion has proved to be correct. … For the first time in Babylonia they have systematically carried their shafts through the various strata of historical remains which occupy the site, carefully noting the objects found in each, and wherever possible clearing each stag away when once it had been thoroughly examined. The work began in 1888, about two hundred Arabs being employed as labourers. … The excavations at Nippur were carried deeply and widely enough not only to reveal the history of the city itself but also to open up a new vista in the forgotten history of civilised man. The history of civilisation has been taken back into ages which a short while since were still undreamed of. Professor Hilprecht, the historian of the expedition, upon whom has fallen the work of copying, publishing, and translating the multitudinous texts discovered in the course of it, declares that we can no longer 'hesitate to date the founding of the temple of Bel and the first settlements in Nippur somewhere between 6000 and 7000 B. C., possibly even earlier.' At any rate the oldest monuments which have been disinterred there belong to the fifth or sixth millennium before the Christian era. Hitherto we have been accustomed to regard Egypt as the land which has preserved for us the earliest written monuments of mankind, but Babylonia now bids fair to outrival Egypt. The earliest fixed date in Babylonian history is that of Sargon of Akkael and his son Naram-Sin. It has been fixed for us by Nabonidos, the royal antiquarian of Babylonia. In one of his inscriptions he describes the excavations he made in order to discover the memorial cylinders of Naram-Sin, who had lived '3200 years' before his own time. In my Hibbert Lectures I gave reasons for accepting this date as approximately correct. The recent discoveries at Niffer, Telloh, and other places have shown that my conclusion was justified. … {14}