On the other hand, a comparison of the Hebrew Scriptures with the clay books of Assyria is on the side of accuracy in the text. The scribes employed in the libraries of Assyria, and presumably, therefore, in the older libraries of Babylonia, were scrupulously exact in their copies of earlier texts. Where the tablet which they copied was injured and defective, it was stated to be so, and the scribe made no attempt to fill up by conjecture, however obvious, what was missing in the document before him. He even was careful to note whether the fracture was recent or not. Where, again, he was not certain about the Assyrian equivalent of a Babylonian character of unusual form, he gave alternative representatives of it, or else reproduced the questionable character itself. Perhaps the most striking example of the textual honesty of the Assyrian and Babylonian scribes is, however, to be found in a compilation known as the _Babylonian Chronicle_—a chronological abstract in which the history of Babylonia is given from a strictly Babylonian point of view. Here the author candidly confesses that he does ‘not know’ the year when the decisive battle of Khalulê took place, which laid Babylon at the feet of Sennacherib; his materials for settling the matter failed him, and, unlike the modern Hexateuchal critics, he abstained from conjecture. We are more fortunate than he was; for, as we possess the annals of Sennacherib, in which the Assyrian king gives a highly-coloured account of the battle, we are able to determine its date.