Like Egypt also, Mesopotamia came to have its upper and lower kingdoms. The former, the Biblical Padan-Aram, became associated with the history of the Assyrians; the latter, the Plain of Shinar, with that of the Chaldæans and Babylonians. It was the lower or southern part that seems to have been first occupied, by a people apparently of non-Semitic stock, whose origin is unknown. Named by different scholars Akkadians or Sumerians, they were an unwarlike race which early attained a considerable degree of civilisation. Their chief city was Babylon, whence the country derived the name of Babylonia. It is supposed that these people invented the cuneiform system of writing, which was later employed by the Babylonians and Assyrians, while its use spread to the other nations from Persia to the Mediterranean. This wedge-shaped script was in its origin a form of pictorial or ideographic writing and developed its peculiar character from the fact that the writing was done on tables of soft clay. Pressure was needed to make the marks and accordingly the stylus came to be formed of three plane surfaces, meeting at a point like the angle of a cubic triangle. As the system grew the ideogram from merely picturing the object was used to denote the first syllable of its name and then by degrees to denote that syllable in whatever word it might occur. The clue to the reading of the cuneiform script was discovered in 1802 by a German, Georg Friedrich Grotefind, whose work was carried farther by Christian Lassen of Bohn. Meanwhile, the Englishman, Henry Rawlinson had mastered the secret through a study of Persian cuneiform script. Thus an immense mine of knowledge was opened up to the scholars, for the kings of Babylonia and Assyria kept most extensive records, not only of their wars and personal prowess in the chase, but also of commercial transactions, while many of them epitomised the history of past periods. For example, it is from one of these records, made by Napa-haik, the last native king of Babylonia (555-538 <small>B.C.</small>), that we get the earliest date of the so-called Akkadians. For he caused it to be written that, while he was restoring an ancient temple at Sippar, he found among the foundations a record of Sargon I--not to be confused with the later Assyrian king of the same name--which dated back 3200 years before its discovery. Moreover, an Assyrian scribe makes this Sargon relate of himself that he was born in secret, exposed as an infant in a basket of rushes on a river, rescued and brought up by a shepherd, chosen the leader of a band in the mountains and finally became a king. It would be interesting to know the date of this record, but presumably it was after the Jews had been carried captive to Assyria. * * * * *