"Assyriologists have long had in their possession a cuneiform text which contains the annals of the reign of Sargon, and of the first three years of the reign of his son. It is a late copy of the original text, and was made for the library of Nineveh. Our 'critical' friends have been particularly merry over the credulity of the Assyriologists in accepting these annals as authentic. … So far from being unhistorical, Sargon and Naram-Sin prove to have come at the end of a long-preceding historical period, and the annals themselves have been verified by contemporaneous documents. The empire of Sargon, which extended from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, was not even the first that had arisen in Western Asia. And the art that flourished under his rule, like the art which flourished in Egypt in the age of the Old Empire, was higher and more perfect than any that succeeded it in Babylonia. … Henceforward, Sargon and Naram-Sin, instead of belonging to 'the grey dawn of time,' must be regarded as representatives of 'the golden age of Babylonian history.' That they should have undertaken military expeditions to the distant West, and annexed Palestine and the Sinaitic Peninsula to the empire they created need no longer be a matter of astonishment. Such campaigns had already been undertaken by Babylonian kings long before; the way was well known which led from one extremity of Western Asia to the other. … "It is Mr. Haynes [Director of the explorations from 1893] who tells us that we are henceforth to look upon Sargon of Akkad as a representative of 'the golden age of Babylonian history,' and his assertion is endorsed by Professor Hilprecht. In fact, the conclusion is forced upon both the excavator and the palæographist. Professor Hilprecht, who, thanks to the abundant materials at his disposal, has been able to found the science of Babylonian palæography, tracing the development of the cuneiform characters from one stage of development to another, and determining the age of each successive form of writing, has made it clear to all students of Assyriology that many of the inscriptions found at Niffer and Telloh belong to a much older period than those of the age of Sargon. The palæographic evidence has been supplemented by the results of excavation. … As far back as we can penetrate, we still find inscribed monuments and other evidences of civilisation. It is true that the characters are rude and hardly yet lifted above their pictorial forms. They have, however, ceased to be pictures, and have already become that cursive script which we call cuneiform. For the beginnings of Babylonian writing we have still to search among the relics of centuries that lie far behind the foundation of the temple of Nippur.