The so-called Assyrian Canon affords us an exact chronology up to the year B.C. 909, and a series of contemporaneous monuments, together with one or two chronological allusions in later inscriptions, enables us to work back from this date to a period falling between B.C. 1450 and 1400 when Assyria was brought into close relation with the southern kingdom of Babylonia. Babylonia was at the time under the sway of a foreign dynasty of Kossæan princes from the mountains of Elam, which was overthrown, as we learn from the Assyrian records, about B.C. 1270. It had been in possession of the country for a considerable time, since a fragmentary list which gives the names of the first nine sovereigns composing it does not come down to the time when the first of the princes who came into close contact with Assyria was reigning. Indeed, a considerable interval must be allowed between the latter period and the last of the nine kings mentioned in the list, in which to insert the isolated names of more than one monarch of the dynasty incidentally mentioned on later monuments. Supposing that not more than fifteen kings preceded Cara-indas in B.C. 1450, and that the average length of their reigns was twenty years, we should have B.C. 1750 as the approximate date of the leader of the dynasty. He could not have been later than this, and there are many reasons which would lead us to suppose that he was earlier. Khammuragas was the leader of the dynasty in question. He had conquered the rulers of the two kingdoms into which Babylonia was at this time divided. One of these was a queen, with whom ended a dynasty, famous in the annals of early Babylonia, whose seat was at Agané or Agadé, near Sepharvaim. She had been the successor of Naram-Sin, the son of Sargon, who, like his father, had extended his power far and wide, and had even penetrated as far as the shores of the Mediterranean. Sargon had been a great patron of learning as well as a conqueror; he had established a famous library at Agané, and had caused a work on astronomy and astrology to be compiled, which remained the standard authority on the subject up to the end of the Assyrian Empire. It was entitled, “The Illumination of Bel,” and was in seventy-two books. Berosus, the historian, seems to have translated it into Greek.