The Babylonian literature above described must be understood to include the Assyrian.  Civilization was first established in Babylonia, and there apparently were produced the great epic poems and the legends.  But Assyria, when she succeeded to the headship of the Mesopotamian valley, in the twelfth century B.C., adopted the literature of her southern sister.  A great part of the old poetry has been found in the library of Assurbanipal, at Nineveh (seventh century B.C.), where a host of scribes occupied themselves with the study of the ancient literature.  They seem to have had almost all the apparatus of modern critical work.  Tablets were edited, sometimes with revisions.  There are bilingual tablets, presenting in parallel columns the older texts (called Sumerian-Accadian) and the modern version.  There are numerous grammatical and lexicographical lists.  The records were accessible, and often consulted.  Assurbanipal, in bringing back a statue of the goddess Nana from the Elamite region, says that it was carried off by the Elamites 1635 years before; and Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon (circa B.C. 550), a man devoted to temple restoration, refers to an inscription of King Naram-Sin, of Agane, who, he says, reigned 3200 years before.  In recent discoveries made at Nippur, by the American Babylonian Expedition, some Assyriologists find evidence of the existence of a Babylonian civilization many centuries before B.C. 4000 (the dates B.C. 5000 and B.C. 6000 have been mentioned); the material is now undergoing examination, and it is too early to make definite statements of date.  See Peters in American Journal of Archaeology for January-March, 1895, and July-September, 1895; and Hilprecht, ’The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania,’ Vol. i., Part 2, 1896.

The Assyrian and Babylonian historical inscriptions, covering as they do the whole period of Jewish history down to the capture of Babylon by Cyrus, are of very great value for the illustration of the Old Testament.  They have a literary interest also.  Many of them are written in semi-rhythmical style, a form which was favored by the inscriptional mode of writing.  The sentences are composed of short parallel clauses, and the nature of the material induced a division into paragraphs which resemble strophes.  They are characterized also by precision and pithiness of statement, and are probably as trust-worthy as official records ever are.

[Illustration:  Signature]

     I. THEOGONY

     In the time when above the heaven was not named,
     The earth beneath bore no name,
     When the ocean, the primeval parent of both,
     The abyss Tiamat the mother of both....

     The waters of both mingled in one. 
     No fields as yet were tilled, no moors to be seen,
     When as yet of the gods not one had been produced,