The development is clear. Often an important event has been impressed upon the memory and now serves as a landmark from which the few years that it is possible to count are reckoned. Such events multiply, and when their succession is known, a longer period can be mastered. Finally the process is systematised, so that every year has its event (necessarily even if it be an unimportant one), and is named from that: hence the reckoning of the years becomes also the history of the people. This kind of time-reckoning is really used by every one of us. Whoever looks back over his past life sees chiefly the more important events, not the dates of the years, and to these he joins the more peripheral events and so finds his way in the labyrinth of memory. But we mark the events by the dates, and thereby obtain an estimation of the course of time, which is the last acquisition of the human mind in this domain. The mode of reckoning in question penetrates deeply among the culture peoples. The same method of distinguishing the years from one another was employed in ancient Babylonia, in the days of the Sumerian kingdom of Ur in the second half of the third millenium B. C., and also later under the first dynasty in Babylon, and was only replaced by the reckoning according to the years of the king’s reign under the dominion of the Kassites[457]. For our historical knowledge of the events these so-called ‘year-formulae’ are of extreme importance. They vary in each case according to the towns, and shew that these in some respects maintained an independent position. The adoption of the year-formulae of the main locality implies the complete subjugation of the town[458]. No trace of an era or any reckoning by the years of the reign is to be found. Only the king’s accession to the throne is utilised for distinguishing the years, the first complete year of his reign (not the year of accession, therefore,) being described as the year of King X. As marks of the other years the most important national events in the domain of the religious cult and of politics are almost universally employed. Only exceptionally is the year named after some violent natural catastrophe. Rather, it is a striking fact that in none of the 66 year-formulae hitherto discovered is there any mention of an eclipse of the sun, or a comet or meteor. If no important event has occurred, the year is described as the one following such and such a year, e. g. the year 49 of king Dungi is called ‘the year in which the temple of X. was built’; year 50 = ‘the year following that in which the temple of X. was built’; year 51 = ‘the year following that in which the temple of X. was built, the year after this’. We see the clumsy method used in order to avoid counting, instead of simply saying ‘the second year after etc.’: so firmly is the concrete description adhered to. These year-formulae were however used for the dating of documents, and not