In the present chapter, from information recently made available, we have given some account of the system of administration adopted by the early kings of Babylon, and we have described in some detail the various classes of the Babylonian population, their occupations, and the conditions under which they lived. In the two preceding chapters we have dealt with the political history of Western Asia from the very earliest period of the Sumerian city-states down to the time of the Kassite kings. In the course of this account we have seen how Mesopotamia in the dawn of history was in the sole possession of the Sumerian race and how afterwards it fell in turn under the dominion of the Semites and the kings of Elam. The immigration of fresh Semitic tribes at the end of the third millennium before Christ resulted in the establishment in Babylon of the Semitic kings who are known as First Dynasty kings; and under the sway of Hammurabi, the greatest of this group of kings, the empire thus established in Western Asia had every appearance of permanence. Although Elam no longer troubled Babylon, a great danger arose from a new and unexpected quarter. In the Country of the Sea--which comprised the districts in the extreme south of Babylonia on the shores of the Persian Gulf--the Sumerians had rallied their forces, and they now declared themselves independent of Babylonian control. A period of conflict followed between the kings of the First Dynasty and the kings of the Country of the Sea, in which the latter more than held their own; and, when the Hittite tribes of Syria invaded Northern Babylonia in the reign of Samsu-ditana, Babylon’s power of resistance was so far weakened that she fell an easy prey to the rulers of the Country of the Sea. But the reappearance of the Sumerians in the rôle of leading race in Western Asia was destined not to last long, and was little more than the last flicker of vitality exhibited by this ancient and exhausted race. Thus the Second Dynasty fell in its turn before the onslaught of the Kassite tribes who descended from the mountainous districts in the west of Elam, and, having overrun the whole of Mesopotamia, established a new dynasty at Babylon, and adopted Babylonian civilization.