smelters of metal (Brit. Mus. No. 26234). In another he commands the same personage to see to the mustering of crews for transport-barges (Brit. Mus. No. 27288). Others contain instructions to attend to the repair of the banks of the Euphrates at various points. But his duties were not exclusively civil; judicial affairs fell to his charge also; thus it is that to him the king writes regarding a dispute between a landlord and his tenant concerning the payment of rent for land, while he is perpetually receiving orders to arrest delinquent officials and other misconducted persons. In one letter (Brit. Mus. No. 12827) Khammurabi directs Sin-Idinnam to postpone the date of a certain trial, owing to the presence of the plaintiff, one Ili-Ippalzam, in the city of Ur at a certain festival. Elsewhere (Brit. Mus. No. 12841) Khammurabi issues a report to the same overburdened official to the effect that certain persons have cancelled a deed of mortgage, and commands the instant presence of Enubi-Marduk, who received their lands on mortgage, in Babylon. Many of the letters of these early kings of Babylon embody the royal wishes regarding the date of sheep-shearing, or the reaping of corn, as well as instructions concerning the irrigation canals. In one letter, Samsu-iluna (Brit. Mus. No. 27269) instructs Sin-Idinnam and the judges of Sippar to prohibit certain fishermen from fishing in forbidden waters; at other times the same judges are directed to send a particular case for trial in the capital (cf. Brit. Mus. No. 27266). Another collection of letters written in cuneiform and on clay tablets are the famous Tell el-Amarna Letters,—generally of somewhat larger size and less distinctly oblong than the ordinary Babylonian despatches. The majority of them are rectangular, though a few are oval. Some are convex on both sides, some are flat on both sides, while others are plano-convex or pillow-shaped. These tablets were discovered at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt; they represent nearly all that remains of the official and diplomatic correspondence which passed between the Pharaohs Amenḥetep III and Amenḥetep IV of the Eighteenth Dynasty (i.e. they belong to the fourteenth or fifteenth century B.C.), and their various officials and vassals in Palestine. Some of the tablets found at Tell el-Amarna are inscribed with letters from the King of Babylon, from the King of Mitani, from the King of Alashiya, and other royal potentates, but as they are mostly of Palestinian and Egyptian interest, a detailed consideration of them would be out of place in this volume.