standards of Babylonian literature, and later generations were content to copy them instead of composing new works for themselves. Clay, the material on which they were written, was everywhere abundant, copies were multiplied, and the veneration in which the texts were held fixed and stereotyped their style. Even the language in which they were written remained the language of literature up to the period of the Persian conquest. Thus it happens that texts of Rim-agu, Sargon, and Khammuragas, who lived at least a thousand years before Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus, are composed in the same language as the texts of these later kings, there being no sensible difference in style to match the long interval between them. We have, however, clear proof that, although the language of devotion and literature remained fixed, the speech of the bulk of the people was gradually modified; and in the time of Assur-bani-pal, when the texts of the Genesis legends which we possess were copied by Assyrian scribes, the common speech of the day was widely different from that of literature. The private letters and despatches of this age which have been discovered differ considerably in language from the contemporary public documents and religious writings, showing the change the language had undergone since the style of the latter had been fixed. So, too, in our own country the language of devotion and the style of the Bible differ in several respects from those of the English of to-day. These considerations show the difficulty of fixing the age of a cuneiform document from its style, and the difficulty is further increased by the uncertainty which hangs over all Babylonian chronology—an uncertainty that can be cleared away only when the ruined cities of Babylonia are excavated. Chronology is always a thorny subject, and dry and unsatisfactory to most persons besides; some notice must, however, be taken of it here, in order to fix something like an approximate date or epoch for the original composition of the Genesis legends.