and all the chief elements of their culture. Scarcely less surprising was the discovery of the immense antiquity of the Sumerian civilisation. The evidence derived from the cuneiform documents, combined with the results of the excavations carefully conducted at Nippur by Dr. Peters and others, have carried back the beginnings of Sumerian history to an almost incredible antiquity, sometimes estimated at B.C. 6000.[2] From the written documents now in our possession, we are able to reconstruct the records of Southern Babylonia from about B.C. 4000, and an entirely new page in the history of the human race has been opened. We can trace the beginnings of civilisation among the lagoons of the Persian Gulf, the rise of a great commerce with the Mediterranean, with Egypt, and possibly with India; the descent of the Semitic nomads into the rich cities created by the industry of the Turanian population; the foundation of a Babylonian Empire reaching across to the Mediterranean at a period still anterior to the reputed age of Abraham. We can note many incidents in the struggle for the possession of Syria in which Egypt for a time remained the victor. We assist at the foundation of the infant kingdom of Assyria some 2000 years after our records begin; all the events of its rise and fall are engraved on our imperishable books of stone, and many incidents in the writings of the Jews have received illustration. Finally, on the fall of Assyria we see the old Empire of Babylon recover from its partial eclipse and flourish for a time under the great Nebuchadnezzar. Then follow the rise of Persia and the extinction of the great Semitic Empires, events on which our cuneiform records have thrown new and important light. Considering that the existence of the old Babylonian Empire was previously entirely unknown; that our knowledge of the Assyrian Empire hitherto depended altogether on a few passages in the Hebrew Scriptures, and some absurd legends collected by Herodotus and Ctesias; that the very existence of a second Babylonian Empire seems to have entirely escaped the knowledge of the Greeks, we are in a position to estimate the gain to the range of our historical information. The inscriptions have also shown the origin of many myths popular in ancient times; and of legends that even still enter into current theology. They have exhibited the Semitic people in the new light of a polytheistic race, and they have illustrated the important position filled by the Turanians at the dawn of civilisation.