The accuracy of their work has been sufficiently verified. At the suggestion of the Royal Asiatic Society, four translations of several hundred lines of the inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I. were made independently by Sir Henry Rawlinson, Mr. Fox Talbot, Dr. Hincks and Dr. Oppert, and submitted under seal to the secretary of that society. When opened and compared, it was found that they exhibited a remarkable resemblance to each other, even in the transliteration of proper names, and the rendering of individual passages. This triumphant result abundantly proved the fact that their method was a sound one, and that they were working on a solid basis. Absolute certainty, of course, is unattainable at present, but the decipherment of these inscriptions has reached a degree of accuracy sufficient for all practical purposes. Scholars, perhaps, will always dispute about the exact meaning of certain words or phrases, as they do in reference to the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, but in either case it is seldom that any important point turns upon the particular shade of meaning. Still, it is evident that the Orientalists who have undertaken to restore the early chronology of Assyria and Babylonia have a difficult task in hand. One of the points most surely settled by the deciphering of these inscriptions is, that so far as certain peoples are concerned the world of letters extends much farther back than has generally been supposed. HISTORIC TABLETS. There are philological tablets which are apparently designed, in some cases, to give the manner in which the names of Semitic kings were pronounced or written by their Accadian subjects. An instance of this is found in the name of Sargon of Accad, the ancient hero of the Semitic population of Chaldea, who founded the first Semitic empire in the country and established a great library in his capital city, Accad, near Sippara. The seal of his librarian, which is of beautiful workmanship, is now in Paris, and has been published by M. de Clercq,[27] while a copy of his annals, together with those of his son Naram-Sin, may be found in Western Asia Inscriptions.[28]