PEISER made some acute suggestions as to the readings of the text and their meanings. On no. 809 MEISSNER wrote a full discussion in the _Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft_, 1903, pp. 85-96. In 1883 H. V. HILPRECHT published _Freibrief Nebukadnezar’s I._ (Leipzig, Hinrichs), with great advances on the previous treatment, and published others in _Old Babylonian Inscriptions_, vol. i, part 1 (1893), nos. 80, 83, part 2 (1896), nos. 149, 150. In 1891 K. L. TALLQVIST wrote on _Babylonische Schenkungsbriefe_ (Helsingfors). In the _Beiträge zur Assyriologie_, 1894, pp. 258-73, FR. DELITZSCH published and admirably treated _Der Berliner Merodachbaladan-Stein_. ED. CUQ in _La Propriété foncière en Chaldée_ gave a new view of the meaning of these documents and the significance of their first appearing in the Kassite period. It will be seen from the titles given in the above works that no complete unanimity prevails as to their nature and purpose. We may now turn back to the class of texts usually called contracts. The Assyrian empire has not yielded much of this class of document, before the time of Sargon II, B.C. 785-722. A number of texts have been reported in the _Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin_ as found at Asshur by the German excavators there, which date from times both early and late. The publication of these texts will doubtless soon be achieved and add greatly to our knowledge. The treatment in Assyria seems to be largely reminiscent of that of Babylonia under the First Dynasty, but there are wide divergences doubtless due to the foreign elements in the Assyrian population. We are not yet possessed of sufficient material to assign the changes to their true causes, but we know enough to be sure that they were not on the whole due to contemporary developments in Babylonia. In _Assyrian Deeds and Documents relating to the transfer of Property_, in three volumes, by C. H. W. JOHNS, published in 1898-1901 (Deighton, Bell & Co., Cambridge, 3 vols.), practically all the material of this class in the British Museum then catalogued was edited. These tablets apparently all came from Nineveh. There are now many more similar tablets in the British Museum listed in the _Supplement to the Catalogue_. Recently in _Assyrische Rechtsurkunden von J. Kohler und A. Ungnad_ (Leipzig, Ed. Pfeiffer, 1913), a series of transliterations and translations have been commenced which will form a key to the whole, including many other texts since published. It was on these texts that J. OPPERT formed his views given in _Das Assyrische Landrecht_, and in _Le droit de retrait lignager à Ninive_, see p. 72.