the oldest records, and had apparently no motive to make a wilful mis-statement. Moreover, other documents have been found in different places confirming the statement on the cylinder of Nabonidus, and the opinion of the best and latest authorities has come round to accept the date of about 3800 B.C. as authentic. Professor Sayce, in his Hibbert Lecture in 1888, gives a detailed account of the evidence which had overcome his original scepticism, and forced him to admit the accuracy of this very distant date. Since the discovery of the cylinder of Nabonidus, several tablets have been found and deciphered, containing lists of kings and dynasties of the same character as the Egyptian lists of Manetho. One tablet of the kings who reigned at Babylon takes us back, reign by reign, to about 2400 B.C. Other tablets, though incomplete, give the names of at least sixty kings which are not found in this record of the Babylonian era, and who presumedly reigned during the interval of about 1400 years between Khammuragas and Sargon I. The names are mostly Accadian, and if they did not reign during this interval they must have preceded the foundation of a Semite dynasty by Sargon I., and thus extend the date of Chaldæan history still further back. The probability of such a remote date is enhanced by the certainty that a high civilization existed in Egypt as long ago as 5000 B.C., and there is no apparent reason why it should not have existed in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates as soon as in that of the Nile.