It notices a large number of peoples or states, the principal being the people of the coast, Subartu or Syria, Assyria, Elam, the Kassi, the Sutu, Goim, Lullubu, and Accad. The Izdubar legends, containing the story of the Flood, and possibly also the history of Nimrod, were probably written in the south of the country, and at least as early as B.C. 2000. These legends were, however, traditions before they were committed to writing, and were common in some form to the whole of Chaldea. The account of the Creation in days, though probably of late Assyrian origin in its present form, may nevertheless rest on older traditions. At present, however, it is not possible to assign to it any great antiquity. It should, of course, be remembered, that the texts we possess at present are written in Semitic Babylonian or Assyrian—Babylonian and Assyrian being but slightly varying dialects of the same language. They are, however, mostly translations of earlier Accadian documents, and belong to the same period as that which witnessed the foundation of the library of Agané. We shall not be far wrong, therefore, in dating them in their present form about B.C. 2000. The translations then made were copied by successive generations of librarians and scribes, the latest copies of which we know being those that have been brought from the library of Kouyunjik. To the same early period belonged various other literary compositions, among which we may particularize a long work on terrestrial omens, compiled for Sargon of Agané, as well as the syllabaries, grammars, phrase-books and vocabularies, and other bilingual tablets by means of which a knowledge of the old language of Accad was conveyed to the Babylonian or Assyrian scholar. On the other hand, a series of tablets on evil spirits, which contained a totally different tradition of the Creation from that in days, goes back to the Accadian epoch; and there is a third account from the City of Cutha, closely agreeing in some respects with the account handed down by Berosus, which must be placed about the same date.