[Illustration: 081.jpg TABLE] Is the difference in the calculations the fault of the scribes, who, in mechanically copying and recopying, ended by fatally altering the figures? Or is it to be explained by some circumstance of which we are ignorant--an association on the throne, of which the duration is at one time neglected with regard to one of the co-regents, and at another time with regard to the other; or was it owing to a question of legitimacy, by which, according to the decision arrived at, a reign was prolonged or abbreviated? Cotemporaneous monuments will some day, perhaps, enable us to solve the problem which the later Chaldaeans did not succeed in clearing up. While awaiting the means to restore a rigorously exact chronology, we must be content with the approximate information furnished by the tablets as to the succession of the Babylonian kings. Actual history occupied but a small space in the lists--barely twenty centuries out of a whole of three hundred and sixty: beyond the historic period the imagination was given a free rein, and the few facts which were known disappeared almost completely under the accumulation of mythical narratives and popular stories. It was not that the documents were entirely wanting, for the Chaldaeans took a great interest in their past history, and made a diligent search for any memorials of it. Each time they succeeded in disinterring an inscription from the ruins of a town, they were accustomed to make-several copies of it, and to deposit them among the archives, where they would be open to the examination of their archaeologists.* When a prince undertook the rebuilding of a temple, he always made excavations under the first courses of the ancient structure in order to recover the documents which preserved the memory of its foundation: if he discovered them, he recorded on the new cylinders, in which he boasted of his own work, the name of the first builder, and sometimes the number of years which had elapsed since its erection.** * We have a considerable number of examples of copies of ancient texts made in this manner. For instance, the dedication of a temple at Uruk by King Singashid, copied by the scribe Nabubalatsuikbi, son of Mizirai (“the Egyptian “), for the temple of Ezida; the legendary history of King Sargon of Agade, copied from the inscription on the base of his statue, of which there will be further mention (pp. 91- 93 of this History); a dedication of the King Khammurabi; the inscription of Agumkakrimi, which came from the library of Assurbanipal. ** Nabonidos, for instance, the last king of Babylon before the Persian conquest, has left us a memorial of his excavations. He found in this manner the cylinders of Shagashaltiburiash at Sippara, those of Khammurabi, and those of Naramsin.