In connection with the question as to what divinity was worshipped at Jerusalem, the tablet known as _B._ 105 is of importance. Line 14 of the letter in question reads: “The city of the land of Jerusalem, its name is Bît-Ninip, the city of the king, is lost—(it is) a place of the men of Kelti.” What was this “city of the king,” or “royal city”? The general opinion at first was, that the place meant was Jerusalem itself, for that must have been from the earliest times “a royal city” _par excellence_. Winckler, however, translates “_A_ city of the land of Jerusalem,” which certainly seems a reasonable rendering. Properly speaking, however, the idiomatic Semitic Babylonian expression for “_a_ city” would be _išten âlu_, “_one_ city.” Though Winckler’s rendering is a perfectly reasonable one, therefore, the first translation is not excluded, and in any case there remains the clear statement that a city of the territory of Jerusalem—that is to say a city which owned the sway of her kings—possessed, as its patron-deity, the god whom the Babylonians and Assyrians called Ninip, and worshipped under many names. Among these may be mentioned Madanunu, explained as “the proclaimed (?), the renowned, the high”; En-banda, probably meaning “the distinguished lord,” a name which he bore as “Ninip, he who takes the decision of the gods.” Another of his names was Ḫalḫalla, “Ninip, protector of the decision, father of Bêl”; and, more interesting still, he was called Me-maḫa (“supreme word”), as “Ninip, guardian of the supreme commands.” The Assyrians worshipped him both under the name of Ninip and Apil-Êšarra, “son of the house (temple) of the host.” It is this deity whose name occurs in the Assyrian royal names Tukulti-Ninip and Tukulti-âpil-Ê-šarra, or Tiglath-pileser. On these points, as on many others, we must wait for more light from the East. In the matter of Sarai, Abraham’s wife, giving her handmaid Hagar to Abraham as a second or inferior wife, because she had no children herself, it is not improbable that we have a record of what was a common custom at the time. On p. 174 ff. translations of Babylonian tablets are given, which seem to have some analogies with what is stated in the Biblical narrative. In these inscriptions, however, the woman of inferior position, though she is expected to be the servant of the other, is raised, to all appearance, into a higher position, and described as the sister of the first wife, apparently by adoption, this supposition being based on the statement that Iltani was daughter of Sin-âbu-šu, though both Iltani and Taram-sagila were taken in marriage from Uttatum, their father. Apparently there was to be no difference in the status of the children of either of them, and it was apparently on account of the hope that Hagar’s son would be as her own, that the patriarch’s wife acted as she did.